65F and thunderstorms, with heavy downpour at the moment.
Daughter’s basketball game this am, and my hobby (that isn’t prepping) has a monthly meeting… so I’ll open with this thought….
From watching the Olympic ceremony last night, who could have predicted that [probably] Trump’s hard line with NORK would bring them to the table? And, it’s abundantly clear, the only way to be taken seriously on the world stage is to become a nuclear power. Man o man, did we really want to set that example for the mass o crazies?
nick
And, it’s abundantly clear, the only way to be taken seriously on the world stage is to become a nuclear power. Man o man, did we really want to set that example for the mass o crazies?
Obama and Cankles set the example, aiding the Arab Spring in Libya and setting the stage for Khadafy’s execution by sodomy with a red hot bayonet.
Khadafy had a deal with Bush. Bush honored the deal as long as Khadafy surrendered his weapons programs and kept to himself. Things changed after Jan. 20, 2009. Lesson learned.
That’s been abundantly clear since August 6th, 1945…
Killer Kankles From Outerspace set the example on how to destroy a country, murder 100’s and “lose” billions whilst banging Huma. Reset button, AWAY!!!
Mr Atoz,
I was going to say your name for Killary was over the top, then I remembered how I heard about what a mess Libya was. One of the first articles about the Libyan 9/11, was this one about the death of an Eve Online player in Libya. Yes, Sean Smith, one of the four who died in Libya, was an Eve Online player. Since Eve Online is the biggest sci fi or space RPG, you are actually quite right about Killer Kankles From Outerspace.
“This Student Failed Her Assignment Because Her Professor Said “Australia Isn’t A Country””
https://www.buzzfeed.com/davidmack/australia-is-real-i-swear
The student needs her money back.
Hat tip to:
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2018/02/10/there-is-no-australia/
@nick, we got over two inches of rain last night. The old swimming hole in the backyard overfloweth.
My digital weather station say 2.2 inches since midnight. The buckets all have more than that in them. A couple of the feeder creeks I drove by today were WAY full, but the bolus has passed and they are back down to normal “full” levels.
Nice bit of daylight for a bit, but overcast again.
72F and DAMP.
n
I told the wife that our DirecTV bill was $155 yesterday when I opened the bill. Her response was it may be time to move to Netflix, Amazon, and rabbit ears. I’m not there but I can see it from here. The DirecTV bill has been increasing by $2 to $4 per month since AT&T bought them.
I would need to get at least one Tivo though so I can record broadcast stuff. Probably two Tivos. Maybe three (den, game room, and daughter’s room).
My DirecTv went to $142 total. I had one HD DVR and one standard box (extra $7/month). I turned it all off. After almost eighteen years they were like, “buh-bye!”.
I bought an antenna at WallyWorld for $50 and used the existing wiring, MY wiring, to feed one TV. I get the five networks from Austin in HD plus a few SD sub-channels on each. A few other stations also.
Downsides? Few. If the weather does “whatever” we lose 36 and PBS first, then 24. Just for a few hours. I don’t know what the “whatever” is, it’s not raining or foggy… not a big deal, it’s happened twice since June 2017.
Upsides? For one, the local channels are in HD. Yeah, pay DirecTv for HD and your locals are in SD. Other than the cost of the antenna and a few days tweaking the aim, it’s free.
Look at tvfool.com for help to aim your antenna.
I bought a Roku. I used the HDMI cable the DVR used. That was easy. The Roku connected to my wi-fi with no problem. We watch stuff on Amazon. We paid for Prime, so a movie almost every night….
I have Sling. Orange to start. For college football. Now on Blue for Nascar. Or get both at the same time for about $40/month. Switching plans is easy. Sling has a DVR option.
With locals on the antenna and Sling, we have almost everything DirecTv had. Missing the ID channel, so no Joe Kendra for us. But we survive somehow.
The Roku has a ton of free stuff available. More than I have time to watch.
I’m not interested in a DVR. I’ll catch the re-runs. 🙂
Other than installing an antenna, you’ll need a Roku for each TV. I have the Premier. After buying the hardware all you need to pay for is Sling Orange and Blue. $40/month plus Amazon Prime, it’s crazy.
The student needs her money back.
She did. Last part of the story. The “teacher” was also terminated.
The student needs her money back.
She did. Last part of the story. The “teacher” was also terminated.
I missed that. I thought it was more click ads.
@lynn, tivo has a smaller box that works as an extension to their bigger box for the other rooms, you network them. If you don’t have cat pulled but do have coax, you could use the MOCA adapter from DirecTV. Lots of those on ebay too…
I have had TiVo since the SD days of the series 2… and I’ve got two boxes right now. One on the big tv with cable cards for the extra channels, one without.
I’ve mentioned I’m trying to get a good solution to watching youtube in the bedroom. Kodi boxes are extremely cheap on ebay. Don’t use them for watching pirate content and you are fine. Or do. Lots of people do. But you may want a VPN to hide the traffic from your ISP.
I had a win10 tiny pc in there, and liked it a lot. $140~ but I never got a remote for it. I’ve got a dedicated Kodi box (KitTV) that I got for $1 at a thrift store, but I don’t have a remote (works with USB mouse and keyboard.) The Kodi interface is designed as a “Six foot” interface to be used with a remote. I’m pretty sure I’ll just get a remote on ebay for a few bux and use that. Or I could get a wireless mouse and use the win10 atom box I bought.
Ironically, the tivo premier in the bedroom has a terrible youtube app. It freezes every 10 seconds, and the home page is cr@p. Otherwise I’d just use it.
My two Roku boxes finally aged out. No new upgrades, and the apps stopped working with the services.
Apple tv is another choice. You can use Youtube, Netflix, or the apple store, not sure about Amazon, they were in a pissing match. Lots of one generation back appleTVs on ebay for ~$40. The new appleTV 4K is stunning (customer has one, paired with a 4k projector.)
I’m this close to going broadcast and net and dropping the cable. We really just don’t watch tv anymore. (although we consume a great deal of video….)
nick
I plan on dropping cable TV this coming week. Cox is our provider. I’ll have to do some research on just keeping ‘net access. They may require basic cable or mess with your speed.
Happy with my DirecTV. Don’t have the movie channels. But do use the DVR for time-shifting shows – and skipping through commercials.
Also have Amazon Prime and NetFlix. That’s good for us.
Two units. Programming is the $65 level, plus equipment. Total mMonthly cost is $87.
Ironically, the tivo premier in the bedroom has a terrible youtube app. It freezes every 10 seconds, and the home page is cr@p. Otherwise I’d just use it.
My Series 3 has a built in web server which allows access to recorded material. Unfortunately, you can only download recorded broadcast shows which are “free” (over the air), download speed is fixed for streaming to the app, about 1.5 Mbps, and you have to decrypt the video once you download it.
If you want to try it for yourself, use a browser to access your TiVo’s IP address, https://[your tivo]/. Username is “tivo” password is your MAK, available in the TiVo settings.
I have a long standing personal project to automate pulling material off of the TiVo to feed a private Roku channel available anywhere on my home network. So many projects, so little time.
I just signed an offer letter for a job in Austin proper to start at the end of the month. No more daily commute to Belton, but the job carries a 25% travel requirement. There is always a catch.
The student needs her money back.
Some universities have an ombudsman for such situations. Others will refund tution on a pro-rated bases, tied to the amount of time left in a semester.
Of course, Texas doesn’t refund tuition pro-rated, but places that do will usually have state tuition subsidized at a much lower percentage. WA State, for instance, only covers about 1/3 the tuition cost at the public universities. *In state* at UW was pushing $15k when we left.
After we escaped the Northwest, my thesis advisor at Washington State University did something stinky which resulted in him being removed from campus at Spring Break the following academic year. When I called to inquire about adding a formal complaint about my degree situation (or lack thereof) to the professor’s troubles with the administration, I received a response phone call from a Dean of the Graduate College. I swear she was feeling me out to see if I would sue; lots of pauses and audible writing.
Finally, I said, “Look. All I want is to make sure this putz doesn’t teach again.”
“Oh, that won’t be a problem.”
@greg, and that’s what Kodi is for, only you go to the web for it (the content you want), or you can see any of your media servers on your network.
I haven’t set it up, but I bought a yard sale usb drive that has a couple hundred movies on it. If I put that on a pc, point a media server library at it, it should be visible from the Kodi box on my tv. To a certain degree tivo used to do that, and winpcs of various flavors do too. But IMHO win10 is much more than is needed to play back stored video.
Yeah, too many projects.
Speaking of which, I did put some seeds in one of the ‘window boxes’ during a break in the rain. I moved some onion bunches, splitting them up, to one of the window boxes too.
I also found a nice piece of pipe to use with my ham antenna at a sale today. $5 instead of $80. So finally, I’ll put my vertical antenna back up, and it’ll be at least 10 feet higher. Should help my reception.
It looks like my citrus (which shed all their leaves) might be fine after all. They look like they might be budding out leaves. The apple trees are starting leaves. Feels late for the spring garden, but it’s really not.
Rent house repairs, getting cr@p out of the driveway, driveway gate/fence, garden, front yard landscaping improvement, radio projects (new antenna, old one remounted, vehicle projects), and master bath/hurricane room….. so much to do.
n
I haven’t set it up, but I bought a yard sale usb drive that has a couple hundred movies on it. If I put that on a pc, point a media server library at it, it should be visible from the Kodi box on my tv. To a certain degree tivo used to do that, and winpcs of various flavors do too. But IMHO win10 is much more than is needed to play back stored video.
VLC does a decent job of playback for most formats on my MacBook Pro turned Windows 7 laptop, 2.4 GHz “Santa Rosa”. The latest version even converts and streams to Chromecast according to the docs, but I haven’t tried it.
MPEG2 for PAL or NTSC DVD will play decently on just about any computer made since ~2001 in my experience. The codec was not even new tech when Warner and Toshiba created the disc format. I worked on a manufacturing line for teleconferencing hardware using MPEG2 chips circa 1992-3.
I started out four hours ago by stumbling on to one of Mr. Thompson’s videos on youtube. Curious that he had not posted another video in over 6 years I decided to google about him. Googling led me to his home science website and then to this journal. I didn’t stay very long on the journal (not sure why – it’s very interesting) I then found Al’s” blog about his passing. It is then I returned here and have read every post since slightly before his entering the hospital and a few after his death. I want to say that many will, like myself, learn that someone we never knew is now very missed. You all were very encouraging and I have been thrilled to read your rallying cries.
@willG, Welcome.
You are right that there is a huge RBT shaped hole in the world now.
We’ve all found it varying degrees of strange to realize that someone we’ve never actually met IRL had become such a part of our lives and circle of friends.
Please stick around and join us in carrying on this community that Bob built.
nick
‘The “teacher” was also terminated.’
The article says she was replaced. Perhaps just for that student, perhaps sacked…
Anyway, Australia is a continent. The real name of the country is New Holland.
Greg Norton wrote:
“…my thesis advisor at Washington State University did something stinky which resulted in him being removed from campus at Spring Break the following academic year.”
What did he do?
The article says she was replaced.
Yeh right, same as I was “replaced” at a couple of my jobs. That is simply lawyer-speak for the door hit her in her arse on the way out.
I haven’t fiddled with Roku or anything, really. I figure I really ought to, just to know what’s available out there. We currently have basic cable, which gives us local channels plus BBC and EuroSport. We rarely watch movies or TV episodes – whoever does, just downloads and watches on their computer. Cable/Internet costs around $50/month, with a 100/10 internet connection.
The cable connection used to be unreliable, until an absolute genius of a technician finally identified a broken spot in the cable. It’s now absolutely stable. The only thing I find irritating is that they are no where close to IPv6 ready. I ask them about once a year, but they don’t even have a date.
Because the cable connection used to be wonky, we have a second connection over the old phone line. I expect we’ll cancel that soon, as the phone connection is an ancient wire hanging in the trees, and is limited to 20/5.
Question for y’all: Right now we still have a land-line. We are also pretty much the only people to ever call that number – when one of us wants to talk to “any” member of the family who happens to be home. We’re considering dropping it, and just having mobile numbers. Anyone made that jump? Was it any sort of inconvenience?
I’d like to have a 20/5 connection. 5/1 is the best the wISP will provide. $56.85 with all taxes.
We went all mobile a few years ago. The only inconvenience is remembering to connect the charger.
In any kind of disaster with widespread power outages, landlines will continue to work long after everything else fails. Other than that, not much reason to keep one. I’ve got a VOIP solution as my “land line”. I’m thinking of just dropping it too. I like that I can distribute it to my land line extensions in various parts of the house, but even that isn’t enough reason now that my business phone use is minimal.
n
Question for y’all: Right now we still have a land-line. We are also pretty much the only people to ever call that number – when one of us wants to talk to “any” member of the family who happens to be home. We’re considering dropping it, and just having mobile numbers. Anyone made that jump? Was it any sort of inconvenience?
I’ll always have copper, but I’m old school phone company, having worked for the two biggest US carriers.
Professional prejudice aside, once service is established and lines re-dug where necessary during installation, I’ve *never* lost copper line phone service to any of our houses in Florida, WA State, or Texas, even during hurricanes in FL.
We haven’t had copper ever since Charter/Spectrum first offered it (25+ years ago ?). Outages (shortest was 4 hours, usually 8) while on copper were every couple of months. With Charter/Spectrum we have had maybe 3 outages, each less than 1 hour, in all the years we have had it. At least in my area Charter/Spectrum is serious about keeping phone service up, too bad they don’t feel the same about internet and TV.
We have been with T-Mobile since 2004. Extremely reliable and great coverage that is only getting greater. You have to know how to deal with them though otherwise you will not get the best plan and rate. We have a truly unlimited (no data throttling, ever) everything world-wide access plan that they continually try to “upgrade” us out of. It is a real science and art when choosing a plan to get one that they cannot arbitrarily change on you, which is just about every plan out there by all carriers.
I will not consider dropping our landline phone, remember I am a belt and suspenders guy at the least. So yes, I also have a couple of “burner” phones with minutes that do not expire with time.
Other than that, not much reason to keep one.
My alarm system uses one.
I dropped the landline when somebody dialed long distance on my phone and I got 3 months of long distance billing for the trouble. I hadn’t even been using the landline for much and I had dropped long distance 2 years prior. When I got the bill ($90 for the LD at the time), I called to complain. They told me I would have to pay it or else. Cancel my phone service altogether & kiss my fanny.
I unplugged at the d-mark and left it unplugged. Phone company sent a couple of nasty letters, which I ignored. Other than complaints from the water company, I never had a problem. Water company wound up putting in a wireless reader. They wanted to charge me because I unplugged the phone line & wouldn’t let them use it. I offered to turn off the water & go back on the well. Nada.
My advice: go ahead & cut the cord. It’s just around your neck.
@ech, most alarm companies will offer a drop in upgrade to cellular for your alarm system. Better for you if you are attacked by sophisticated thieves too.
n