76F, 88%RH and headed for another hot one. I’d say, summer is firmly here in Houston, I don’t expect it to be much cooler from here on out.
Last week of school in our district. Testing is over, and now they’re just running out the clock. No idea what our family will be doing this summer, but it will involve some day camps to keep the kids in a learning mood. I’ve got some ideas too, but we’ll see if I get the time.
Can’t believe how quickly this year is passing. Common theme, I know, but still true.
I guess I better get started on today’s pile o stuff….
n
ping!
81º and sunny. I broke down & put the AC in the windows at the house yesterday. My kids were really glad after that hot car ride home. I was glad that I could get to sleep.
Yes, 81º is hot to me. I don’t know how you Texans do it. When I was younger I’d just go to the basement to work. Can’t do that when it’s that hot.
I just lost an hour+ that I’ll never get back. Ear bent listening to one of the owners talk about how the company operates. I’m glad to be back to work, but sheesh. I’d like to get some work done.
Yes, 81º is hot to me. I don’t know how you Texans do it. When I was younger I’d just go to the basement to work. Can’t do that when it’s that hot.
AC. The season can start as early as February.
Florida is more brutal. I have one 18 year-old Trane AC unit in our current house near Austin, and a similar model we put in the FL house in 2002 was done by 2011.
Temps aren’t as hot, but 80+ is possible year ’round south of I-4 in FL, and high humidity is a constant.
It’s 81F in my office, due to all the heat from pcs (house is set at 74F today), and I feel a bit chilled as I sit here in flannel pjs and a tank top. It might just be that it’s snack time and I need some fuel for my body…
or, well, to a certain extent you get used to it.
I lived in the Phoenix area for several years, and rode a motorcycle/scooter/or bicycle as primary transportation. First year was a misery, 2 and 3 were fine, 4 started to get oppressive. 85F was “warm” in the apartment, 83F was “cool”.
My problem here in Houston is the humidity which prevents good natural body cooling. At 100F+ with low humidity, my joints feel like they’ve been lubed with hot oil, and that feels great. 100F with high humidity and I feel like I’m gonna stroke out lifting a soda can….
n
Gaah!
Went for a walk at lunch. As @Nick mentioned – low humidity helps today. Yesterday was awful at the same temp. Today I just walked outbound in the shade as much as possible (about 15%) and was fine. Coming back was a little warm & I’ve worked up a little sweat. The fan feels great. MUCH better than yesterday.
So at lunch, I went to the local Y to pick up a 3×5 card box (it’s a plastic thing from Wal-Mart). I had left it with the race director to keep track of make-up times, but I need it back so I have records to fall back on. She lost the lid. Yes, it’s a little teeny-tiny thing. But it’s not THAT hard to keep on as it has little latches to keep it in place. Little thing. Less than a buck. But it’s annoying as heck. I’ll need to pick up another the next time I’m out so I have the equipment I need to keep things in order.
Gaaah.
I just lost an hour+ that I’ll never get back. Ear bent listening to one of the owners talk about how the company operates. I’m glad to be back to work, but sheesh. I’d like to get some work done.
Running a business is like making sausage. You don’t really want to know what goes on in there. When I started running our business in 1995, I got my eyes opened big time. The fact that most money is spent automatically each month on such items as rent, employee salaries, insurance, etc, etc, etc is very disheartening.
And my air conditioning blower switch in the Expy is working great. Cycles up and down just fine. But I had the blower at max all the way to work this morning.
Now if I could just get my CD player in my truck to work consistently so I could listen to my book on tape. It is a pain when the CD is ejected and you lose your place. And the forward and reverse features on my CD player are incredibly slow, around 4X is all. And you have to hold the forward / reverse button down which is distracting while driving. Oh well, if I replace it then I can get a backup camera on my license plate.
Now if I could just get my CD player in my truck to work consistently so I could listen to my book on tape.
What is CD? And this “tape” you speak of? Is it Scotch disappearing tape?
😉
You can’t even make stuff this absurd up…
“Shocking moment terrorist on prison day release stabs two Belgium policewomen and uses THEIR guns to shoot them dead while screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’ before killing nearby motorist”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5781939/Two-police-officers-shot-dead-Belgium-attacker-took-woman-hostage-killed.html
“Herman was a violent drug dealer with additional convictions for both robbery and assault, who had been let out on day-release from a local prison on Monday.”
“RTBF claimed investigators are looking into whether he had converted to Islam, with sources within the prison service saying he had been close to radicalised inmates and had wanted to ‘carry out attacks when released’.”
and they let him out on a day pass???
n
“A.F. Branco Cartoon – Not A Real Scientist Guy”
https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-not-a-real-scientist-guy/
Yup.
Currently listening to a drug bust stake out on the scanner. They’ve got at least 3 agencies, an undercover agent, a “cover team” for the UC’s security, an air asset (helo), and they’re watching for the deal to leave [someplace], and come to [someplace else] where they’ll do the [exchange]. They just announced the address, so I have the google map up and see both locations.
n
“United States remains the world’s top producer of petroleum and natural gas hydrocarbons”
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=36292
“The United States remained the world’s top producer of petroleum and natural gas hydrocarbons in 2017, reaching a record high. The United States has been the world’s top producer of natural gas since 2009, when U.S. natural gas production surpassed that of Russia, and the world’s top producer of petroleum hydrocarbons since 2013, when U.S. production exceeded Saudi Arabia’s. Since 2008, U.S. petroleum and natural gas production has increased by nearly 60%.”
Amazing, simply amazing. We are blessed beyond belief here in the USA.
“Is Your Router Vulnerable to VPNFilter Malware?”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/361431/is-your-router-vulnerable-to-vpnfilter-malware
“Below is a list of routers vulnerable to VPNFilter, malware that can brick your device.”
Sigh. This is going to get a lot worse.
I’m using a ubiquiti edge router as my demarc for my network here.
n
Drug supplier currently being tracked by helo on I-10 westbound, cool….
n
add- I can follow along with the cross street reports from the helo
I use a variation of the DD-WRT router to protect my network. More geek than I really want, but I had to learn about VPNs one way or another, and the geek requirements helped.
I use a variation of the DD-WRT router to protect my network. More geek than I really want, but I had to learn about VPNs one way or another, and the geek requirements helped.
Newegg still sells a ton of the WRT54GL to use with DD-WRT.
I moved mine to being the secondary hotspot after my cable modem speeds went above 100 Mbps. I now use an older ASUS AC router with the manufacturer’s firmware.
Drug supplier currently being tracked by helo on I-10 westbound, cool….
Accused drug supplier currently being tracked by helo on I-10 westbound, cool….
FTFY.
Well, they have the drugs, he got the money, and then drove away…
Went down and picked up another guy, then came almost all the way back, then did a zigzag thru a neighborhood to shake any tails…
but the eye in the sky sees all.
n
Accused drug supplier currently being tracked by helo on I-10 westbound, cool….
Do the police aircraft need to broadcast ADS-B “Out”?
My guess is that they don’t since that would be convenient for the bad guys.
I haven’t looked to see if I can see him on the ADS-B, good idea though
Unless he’s really in a Beech aircraft, he doesn’t show on the one map that claims to be ‘unfiltered.’
n
This guy drove thru several areas, reversed himself, got on and off freeways, and then headed the opposite direction.
n
Interesting that the eye has a ‘mapping system’ that is tracking the streets and even provides the address.
n
beech aircraft exited the area, but the eye is still in the sky, with 1 hour of fuel left….
n
fascinating.
And they’re wrapping up their op, with the suspects having arrived at a home, and parked under a carport. Eye says they’ve got video of the last couple hours, and can identify clothes but probably not faces ‘since they were pretty high up.’
Very interesting.
They had ATF, HPD, DEA, and the air asset that never identified. Several hours of flight time ain’t cheap, so these must be some big time guys.
n
Unless he’s really in a Beech aircraft, he doesn’t show on the one map that claims to be ‘unfiltered.’
The web maps may or may not have all the data.
The Realtek TV dongles work really well to generate your own ADS-B feed. I branched dump1090 for my thesis work, but other programs are out there.
https://github.com/gsnorton/dump1090
Anything more powerful than a Raspberry Pi 2 should be fine to run the compiled program.
“A.F. Branco Cartoon – Not A Real Scientist Guy”
Bill Nye “The DooshNozzle Guy.” His 15 minutes were up years ago.
But the science is settled!!111!!111!!
n
I had some real problems with some illegal immigrants this morning. I took my dog out this morning and was standing in the shade while she did her business. All of a sudden, I felt something bite my right foot. Yup, some fire ants snuck into into a wooden joint in my back patio. About 10 or so of them got me. I got them with a can of Raid ant and roach spray.
The wife’s getting a new state photo ID for her 85 year wheelchair bound dad is not going well. But they did just find his birth certificate. I suspected that she was overly optimistic on getting this done in 2 days.
Then she has a travelling notary on call to witness him signing the 3 out of the 4 timeshare cancellation documents. The wife does have poa for her dad but she does not want to sign these in case anything goes wrong. The timeshare cancellation documents are from the timeshare companies themselves.
Man, I’d have someone read those, very carefully. You could be signing up for MORE debt.
n
I had some real problems with some illegal immigrants this morning. I took my dog out this morning and was standing in the shade while she did her business. All of a sudden, I felt something bite my right foot. Yup, some fire ants snuck into into a wooden joint in my back patio. About 10 or so of them got me. I got them with a can of Raid ant and roach spray.
For now, Amdro works. Fire ants laugh at the sprays.
We have a lot of dogs, cats, and kids running around the neighborhood so I’m really careful with insecticides.
Man, I’d have someone read those, very carefully. You could be signing up for MORE debt.
Be *especially* careful with Westgate.
Thanks to Harry Potter, the Orlando timeshare industry has recovered sufficiently that the “Queen of Versailles” is moving forward to finish her giant house.
I’m likely to regret this. I just punched the auto-update button on my laptop, which needs to go from Ubuntu 17.04 through Ubuntu 17.10 to Ubuntu 18.04. What are the chances of success?
Somehow, I expect I’ll be doing a clean install this evening or tomorrow morning, but who knows? Miracles can happen…
OMG… The upgrade from 17.04 to 17.10 hung. When I killed it, it said “your system is broken”. With nothing to lose, I said to go ahead and upgrade to 18.04, and…it looks like everything worked! Whew…
And in other tech news, I read that they intend to remove Serialization from Java, and replace it with something a lot more complex. Serialization works, it’s by far the easiest way to transfer data between two Java programs. Because some idiots have done stupid things with it (loading stuff from untrusted sources, not doing any validation), all of us have to pay the price.
Java has “jumped the shark” – while it was never a clean language, it has become a total hodge-podge. Lamba expressions in an OO language? “var” types, because people can’t be bothered to properly declare their variables? Now removing a popular, simple-to-use feature, because some programmers are idiots? Java is beginning to remind me of Ada, which quite literally was designed by committee.
I stopped using java years ago. When we review software, the one big “NO” box is Java. Java is dead to me. I cannot wait to bury it. I just a few things that still rely, and they’re going away. One server…..
I also just upgraded from Ubuntu 16.04 to 18.04, but in my case it was involuntary. The disk holding the os files crashed, so I had to install a new drive and then do a clean OS install from a USB stick. My backups recovered OK, but I couldn’t figure out a way to make Deja Dup restore just some of the files. Fortunately, I had enough room on the data disk to just pull in everything so I can get to the files I need.
Now I need to look for a different backup solution that will let me specify which files or directories I want to recover.
Java has “jumped the shark” – while it was never a clean language, it has become a total hodge-podge. Lamba expressions in an OO language? “var” types, because people can’t be bothered to properly declare their variables? Now removing a popular, simple-to-use feature, because some programmers are idiots? Java is beginning to remind me of Ada, which quite literally was designed by committee.
Java was supposed to be C++ simplified, but they’ve ventured far from that.
The C++11 “auto” keyword is just as controversial as “var”, for many of the same reasons. I’ll admit to using it for obvious quick access to iterators, but I’m careful with the word beyond that.
Lamda expressions were crucial in C++, where things like XML processing and SQLite database table reads are still most efficient using C libraries and function pointers. In Java, Lambdas are syntactic sugar, and, IIRC, a private class is still generated.
The C++11 “auto” keyword is just as controversial as “var”, for many of the same reasons. I’ll admit to using it for obvious quick access to iterators, but I’m careful with the word beyond that.
The auto keyword should only be used in templates, IMHO. And templates should only be written by senior experts who sit and think about the repercussions of each line of code for an hour or two.
Lynn wrote:
“Amazing, simply amazing. We are blessed beyond belief here in the USA.”
Are the Saudis still trying to drive US shale out of business?
Nick, why don’t they use encrypted radios? The druggies could listen too.
Are the Saudis still trying to drive US shale out of business?
The Saudis are trying to keep the Kingship. The new 34 year old crown prince is a very busy man trying to get rid of the nonsense such as the religious police. He does not have time to play oil price wars that they lost.