Well, this wasn’t a best kind of morning, and in fact I haven’t had one of those in years. But sleeping in when you got up early and worked hard the previous day, especially when you have two little ones, and your wife has plans for you is precious.
75F and 90%RH, sunny and generally nice this AM here in Houston.
I’m stiff as a board from standing on concrete for 12 hours and humping those tubs around.
We’re supposed to go to the Houston Rodeo and Livestock Show today (last day) but the plan was to go early and leave early for other commitments. Don’t know yet how that’s gonna play out.
I’ve not been paying much attention to the international news, and I suddenly find that our allies the TURKS are attacking our allies the KURDS; that Russia is withdrawing ambassadors and staff and kicking out foreign diplomats; and that Russia assassinated a former spy in broad daylight in a foreign capital……. anyone else getting a bit nervous about the nearness of a major conflict???
nick
I’m hoping this is the beginning of the end for Facecrack.
Filling out my proxy a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that Sheryl Sandberg no longer sits on the board at Disney. I would have sold my stock immediately had the “Lean In” twit become CEO at The Mouse.
http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-data-breach-reactions-executives-response-twitter-2018-3
@greg, that link greys out unless you turn off your ad blocker, so F them….
I haven’t looked at the details, but since fb EXISTS to harvest details about their users, and SPECIFICALLY allows the third party collection, how is anyone outraged that one particular third party did so? Or is it a case of “but we never meant for THOSE KINDS of people to do it!!!11!!”
NEVER give an ally any power you wouldn’t want used against you by an enemy. Political hacks (and prog leaders of companies) forget this to their peril.
n
(and GWB and GHWB forgot it to ALL of our peril)
(and GWB and GHWB forgot it to ALL of our peril)
Bush Sr. was tired and gave up. I remember Clinton’s polls were in the teens until Carson retired and Perot went nutty, both in the space of a few weeks in Summer 1992. I think it was a foregone conclusion after the Fleetwood Mac started playing at the Democrat Party convention.
(BTW — watch the CA Governor race. I still believe a strong showing by Newsom will mean the “Can’t Stop Thinkin’ About Tomorrow” Tour 2.0 rolls out against Trump in 2020.)
As for Bush Jr., who knows if he really wanted to be President. At least Jeb! had the good sense to do the minimum for his family’s dynastic ambitions with George P. in 2016 and then go back to hanging with his ex-Playboy Bunny girlfriend in FL.
Ah, no Rodeo for me this year. Kids acting snotty and the lateness of the start put the kibosh on that. So, out to the garage and raised beds I go…
n
Ah, the joys of diversity:
“Eleven people arrested in possible animal ritual sacrifice in San Antonio as police find dead goats and chickens”
“Dead goats, chickens and other animals were found at a home in San Antonio on Friday after police received calls that animals were possibly being sacrificed.
Bexar County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a call around 7pm that animal cruelty was occurring on the 11400 block of Bronze Sand Road, reported the San Antonio Express-News.
According to Sergeant Elizabeth Gonzalez, authorities arrived to find at least a dozen people gathered in a circle in the garage of the house where a woman was cutting up ‘animal parts’ and another person was draining chicken blood into a container
‘It appears that they were having some sort of unknown ritual,’ she said.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5515577/Eleven-arrested-possible-animal-ritual-sacrifice-San-Antonio.html
I note that animal sacrifice and ritual is a part of the twisted catholicism of the MS 13 crowd….
n
I note that animal sacrifice and ritual is a part of the twisted catholicism of the MS 13 crowd….
And an appropriate punishment is for them to be drawn and quartered.
94F and 53%RH in the sun has me thinking I’m glad I’m not in the asphalt prairie at the Rodeo.
Got my vertical ham antenna up. Added about 15ft of height overall. I’m about as high as I’d like without a propper tower or guy lines. Now I just have to finish the cable run thru the attic and down to my office. I’m hoping to use one of my existing runs to the attic. The shorter your antenna run, the more of your signal gets to the antenna, so I want to be pretty close to dead on for this.
Finishing this project means that 2 pieces of pipe are out of the driveway, and my antenna (itself 10ft of bristling pipe) is out of the backyard.
Onward…ho
n
Crankshaft, “I chased him but I couldn’t catch him”
http://comicskingdom.com/crankshaft/2018-03-18
Been feeling kinda punk the last couple of days–runny nose, sore throat, slight fever. Consequently wasted most of Sat. afternoon and evening on the couch watching “Live PD” on A&E.
Apropos of Nick’s “What did you do to prep for life?” Friday post, a smart move is to avoid drugs and alcohol altogether. What I learned over the last couple of days is that if you absolutely MUST indulge in weed or heroin or alcohol in excess, don’t inhale, inject, or imbibe just prior to hitting the road. The cops were surprisingly lenient about the abused substances, but had zero tolerance towards erratic driving or other questionable activity, especially if there was a strong MJ odor emanating from the vehicle or drug paraphernalia in plain sight therein. Oh, and if you’re going to host drunken and/or drugged parties, don’t blast the music so loud that the neighbors call the police.
Of course, the fools depicted on the episodes I watched weren’t the type given to deep thinking, much less minimal foresight.
One other life hint is both profound and useless, but worth mentioning.
Pick the right (wo)man. The wrong one will ruin your life, or possibly even take it. Some of them if you get away with some of your money and rights intact, you’ve gotten off easy.
It’s good advice because the right spouse is a partner to support you and extend you. The wrong one will destroy you financially, emotionally, and even physically.
It’s impossible advice because with many people, it’s not clear until much too late that they are the wrong one.
If you have early warning though, heed the advice and scram….
n
Well, the antenna seems to be working. I don’t normally listen during the day, so I’m not sure how it compares but I’m hearing a lot of stations on 14 mhz SSB and I don’t usually hear much there.
No chance to TX yet. We’ll see how it sounds tonight.
n
added been listening to a QSO for the last 10 minutes or so of a guy in Grass Valley CA. He’s got a nice setup and I can only occasionally hear who he’s talking to. 14.243.000mhz
This is an age old scam- call 911 and communicate thru the door. And it’s not a bad idea to answer the door armed.
The variation is them kicking in your back door when you are busy in the front. I always look at my back door first, before looking out the front.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5516179/Man-45-beaten-robbed-woman-two-male-accomplices.html
“Portland man, 45, suffers shocking injuries after he answered the door to a woman screaming for HELP – only to be brutally beaten and robbed by her and two male accomplices’
Josh Morrison, 45, was attacked in his home by three robbers on March 11
Morrison said he heard a woman knocking at his door and screaming for help
When he answered, she charged him and repeatedly struck him in the head
Two male accomplices then rushed inside Morrison’s home and attacked him ”
nick
I was running errands today and turned on Fox on the Satellite. Chris Wallace and his cronies were clutching their pearls over tRump said this, tRump tweeted that. Never tRumpers till the end.
The only thing better than Tillerson getting the news on the crapper, is if he was on the phone when tRump tweet fired him as a turd was coming out.
The Dumbocrats are imploding and tRump is crushing the Redumblicans. The revolution might come sooner than you think.
I’m hoping this is the beginning of the end for Facecrack.
“Millions of us took that Facebook quiz myPersonality, that scored you on Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism and gave access to our Facebook profiles.
“The information that Facebook holds on its users (at least 98 data points per user) is deeply revealing – including of their tastes, preferences, habits, sexuality, politics, hopes and fears.”
“Can we just say it? Facebook is evil. Its entire raison d’etre is the balkanization of communities and nations in pursuit of financial profit.”
“Portland man, 45, suffers shocking injuries after he answered the door to a woman screaming for HELP – only to be brutally beaten and robbed by her and two male accomplices’
Josh Morrison, 45, was attacked in his home by three robbers on March 11
Morrison said he heard a woman knocking at his door and screaming for help
When he answered, she charged him and repeatedly struck him in the head
Two male accomplices then rushed inside Morrison’s home and attacked him ”
Portland. Nothing more needs to be said.
If you absolutely must live there, find a place in “Vantucky” (Vancouver, WA) if you commute allows it.
Update: The intersection where the guy’s house sits is actually a “nice” section of town by Portland standards, not far from Reed College (where Steve Jobs went to school) and just down from a Trader Joes.
Haven’t tried this myself yet but, contrary to popular belief, it IS possible to delete your FB account.
I should dump Facebook but…. Farmville is still fun and I have friends there. I mostly ignore the various quizzes about “how smart are you” and the like. Really, the entire thing is a big effing commercial.
I should dump Facebook but…. Farmville is still fun and I have friends there. I mostly ignore the various quizzes about “how smart are you” and the like. Really, the entire thing is a big effing commercial.
And that is why Zuckerberg spends half of his days depositing checks down at the bank.
I have serious admiration for his programming crew. They are the real thing.
Wow. Just … wow.
A prepping fall….
The first hummingbird of the year appeared today. We had the sliding door open and he buzzed in a few inches into the house and chirped. So I made sugar water. Then went to get a 10# bag of sugar. Huh, the bag of flour on top is full of weevils. The weevils had eaten through the grocery store bag and through another bag into the bag of sugar.
Oh well, a 5# bag of flour isn’t a huge loss. And of you’re hungry a bit of extra protein isn’t going to be problem.
The few dead critters in the sugar don’t matter….. Hummingbirds don’t care.
@medium wave, well that is the end state of moral relativism….
cue OFD for moral comment…. oh how I want one.
Cannibalism, incest, sex slavery, organ harvesting, what’s next?
What is acceptable and SELF FILMED in modern amateur porn is shocking in its violence and dehumanizing aspects. Brave New World has been used as an instruction manual along with 1984.
n
Wow. Just … wow.
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/291613/
What do you expect from a bunch of earth worshipers ? I just pray that they do not start building brass baal statues again. The statues were hollow so that the priests would build a fire inside. Then they would lay the babies on the statue arms and sacrifice them. Horrible, just horrible.
Bob Dylan sings a song about this:
“But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed”
“You’re gonna have to serve somebody,”
“It may be the devil or it may be the Lord”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CwHby-YTNo
“But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed”
“You’re gonna have to serve somebody, …”
It’s a cookbook! 😀
Well, either tonight is a really good night for RF propagation or my new height and new cable for the vertical antenna REALLY makes a difference.
I’m hearing so much more on the ham bands than I’ve every heard except on the best days.
Gotta say, there is still a lot of static-y noise, that is characteristic of a vertical vs a horizontal or some other type of antenna, but I’m hearing so much more it’s amazing.
nick
I have serious admiration for his programming crew. They are the real thing.
Facebook’s PHP runtime VM, HHVM, is quite an accomplishment.
When the bytecode stabilizes, someone will get a Masters thesis out of an LLVM back end targeting HHVM similar to what Emscripten does for JavaScript. I wrote a proof of concept last year for a Compilers class, but the bytecode output generated by my toy compiler is already obsolete.
@ greg, wow, the words all made sense individually, and even in combination, some meaning was conveyed to my brain, but MAN I’ve been out of any real software development for a LONG time……
[insert crude joke about backends here]
🙂
n
@Nick: I understood perfectly what Greg was trying to convey–and now I’m thinking that I REALLY need to get out of the house more! 😉
Computer-related: NASA Gets Response From Spacecraft 13 Billion Miles Away
@ greg, wow, the words all made sense individually, and even in combination, some meaning was conveyed to my brain, but MAN I’ve been out of any real software development for a LONG time……
I almost understood what Greg said. If he would write the terminology in Fortran 77, I would probably understand it perfectly “grin”.
Appalled by the student’s moral indifference, Ms. Haugaard concludes, “Today, for the first time in my thirty years of teaching, I looked my students in the eye and not one of them in my class could tell me that this society, this cultural behavior was a bad thing.”
By that very same standard, there was nothing wrong with slavery in pre-civil war America. I remember reading “The Lottery” in high school. I also remember how horrible I found it.
I will be the first to come up with “standards of the day” when discussing the morality of a civilization. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were slaveowners. They were also good men. I have a hard time reconciling the two, so I don’t try. I recognize that their standards are different than mine without thinking that slavery is acceptable.
However, there is no way I could go to 1796 Virginia and slide into that lifestyle. It is not who I am. Slavery was a bad thing. Still is.
The Lottery is a tale of horror.
@ greg, wow, the words all made sense individually, and even in combination, some meaning was conveyed to my brain, but MAN I’ve been out of any real software development for a LONG time……
With far fewer resources than Oracle or Microsoft, a team at Facebook created a third alternative to Java and .Net.
Ah, that makes sense. I’m thinking that adding people to programming teams doesn’t really work, unless they’re extraordinary people? MS seems to have headed down the “lots of mediocre code is better than a little great code” path long ago.
Adding 4 painters to the sistene chapel remodel crew doesn’t help, but adding 4 painters to the Joe’s Strip Mall remodel would.
I guess the question is whether modern code is painting pictures or painting rooms…one scales one doesn’t.
n
Last week while out of town I checked the house cameras
https://photos.app.goo.gl/myqMcTjdYj5iv1rX2
I made up some hummingbird food the next day.
Ah, that makes sense. I’m thinking that adding people to programming teams doesn’t really work, unless they’re extraordinary people? MS seems to have headed down the “lots of mediocre code is better than a little great code” path long ago.
Adding 4 painters to the sistene chapel remodel crew doesn’t help, but adding 4 painters to the Joe’s Strip Mall remodel would.
My personal favorite is why can’t nine women have a baby in one month ?
https://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineering-Anniversary/dp/0201835959
Microsoft used to use Tiger Teams for their software development. They would give three tiger teams the code requirements and stand back. The first team with the bestest code won. Sometimes the code was actually usable.
I made up some hummingbird food the next day.
Nice!