56F! Dang that’s chilly. Actually dripping wet too. My old bones are stiff and aching.
Looks like youtube was down, and not just for me. Whatever the reason turns out to be, if the majors are vulnerable like that, imagine the little guys. Like our Republic, the Internet was designed for virtuous and conscientious users. It won’t survive when the majority are neither.
Whether this is a sign of the coming future, I’ll leave to the reader as an exercise, but I’m long hardcopy and local ownership…
n
Well, unfortunately I wasn’t off by much:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6285769/Ten-killed-40-injured-explosion-school-Russian-occupied-Crimea.html
Although who knows, maybe it’s freedom fighters and not terrorists. /sarc
n
Stuff happens, even to the big guys. Usually, it’s something stupid. Remember 2016, when Microsoft’s Azure was down on Feb 29th, because it didn’t know about leap years?
It will be fascinating to see what happens in the midterm elections. Turnout is typically anemic, so…which side will succeed in motivating voters to actually get off their collective duffs and vote?
In Germany, the equivalent of the alt-right (the AFD) just won a major victory in one of the most important German states – they went from zero to more than 10% of the parliamentary seats. They took their 10% from the party that has held an absolute majority there for decades. Poland, Italy, Austria and numerous other EU states are also seeing a strong move to the right.
Without any discussion or information, our school district has apparently bought into the SEL experiment to remake our society. I got this from them in an email yesterday:
“Fall 2018 Lesson Topics
Social-Emotional Lessons (SEL)
September: Courage/Stand Safe, Stay Strong
October: Red Ribbon Week/Bullying
November: Self-Awareness/ Conflict Resolution
December: Respect, Citizenship, Accepting Differences”
Maybe MrAtoz and the Houston group can have a meet up when he gets here to skim off some of the .edu cream???
n
“also seeing a strong move to the right. ”
The pendulum swings, the wheel turns…
What do you do with the invaders that are already in place by the time the sentiment shifts though? They are a cancer on the body politic.
n
I found a light frost on the commute car this morning. What happened to Fall? This qualifies as winter around these parts.
Commute was unusually exciting, there was an accident working at one of the major intersections and when I arrived some idiot with self destructive impulses decided that he (yes it was a he) didn’t want the delay and sped around the smashed cars in the left had lane, right into an oncoming pickup. All lanes were blocked for 45 min. Happily, first responders were already on the way because of the first accident and arrived in seconds. Didn’t look like any serious injuries but at least 3 totaled vehicles and traffic tied up for almost an hour. This being Memphis, I see the remnants of accidents almost every day but this is the first week that I have witnessed an accident every day so far.
Which brings up a complaint. While I like my “new” 2017 Hyundai Sonata sedan, roomy, comfortable, great mileage, I do have a complaint. Only after driving it a few days did I notice that the visibility sucks. Not in major, obvious, ways but in subtle yet dangerous ones. The roof pillars obscure traffic from not-quite 90 degree intersections. And the low, comfortable seating hides visibility of curb level obstacles, like, well, curbs. I find myself swinging wide to avoid hitting curbs and parking a foot or so back from curbs because I can’t accurately tell where they are. I didn’t have these problems in my old HHR, which I still have BTW. The HHR had its own issues, not roomy, mediocre gas mileage, and nearly unreadable dash gauges. That last was a major WTF issue. Under most lighting conditions, the major dash gauges were washed out by glare. You would have thought that the drive testing staff would have noticed something so obvious. One redeming thing about the HHR is that it’s paid off.
Still haven’t found the perfect car.
Can you raise the seat to improve the visibility? Or move the seat and steering wheel?
I almost always raise the seat in rental vehicles. I like to feel tall, and see farther.
I’ve also gotten in the habit of “swaying” my head to see into the blind spot caused by the A pillar at intersections, and ‘pausing’ to allow time for any vehicle hidden by it to emerge into view. Only took once to start those habits.
n
Anyone have any experience with the Duke TIP program?
n
Can you raise the seat to improve the visibility? Or move the seat and steering wheel?
The steering wheel can move up-down and in-out, but the seats are all simple manual mechanical with only backward-forward adjustments. I much prefer manual to electric seats after the expense & hassle of replacing a broken electric seat in the 2009 Suburban.
Back in the swivel head mode after the great visibility of the HHR. The HHR seating is high and has excelent visibility even if you couldn’t read the spedo. Giving it to the granddaughter. Crazy drivers here in MPHS keep you on your toes.
While I like my “new” 2017 Hyundai Sonata sedan, roomy, comfortable, great mileage, I do have a complaint. Only after driving it a few days did I notice that the visibility sucks. Not in major, obvious, ways but in subtle yet dangerous ones.
Pretty standard. The government’s rollover mandates reduced visibility which, in turn, resulted in the mandate for backup cameras in all cars. Even after three years, I’m not convinced my wife can see out of her Exploder. Watching the cops rolling around downtown from my office windows, I don’t think the Austin PD can see out of their Exploders either.
I went from a 2001 Toyota to a 2018, and I’m still getting used to the reduction in visibilty. However, with Toyota, the reduction isn’t nearly as bad as some other manufacturers.
Lane Assist is the new standard feature which drives me nuts. Even with it off, at times, the car thinks I might want it and switches the center screen to the config menu for the system.
Why we prep. “… large swaths of the Florida Panhandle and tens of thousands of residents face a dark, powerless future.” Many will be without power for weeks if not longer.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/weather/hurricane/article220099670.html
A couple of years ago a spring storm knocked out a local power station and put downed trees over many distribution lines. We were without power for 5 days. Even after that, the power wasn’t reliable for over a week as they kept having to shut it down while making more repairs. We had just purchased a Champion portable generator and we ran it 4 hours in the morning and 4 in the evening to keep the Fridge and two chest freezers cold, run some lights and fans. Didn’t lose any food but the house was too warm for comfort. Put the family in a nearby motel while I camped out in the house. This was a local event and I had no problem getting out for supplies and propane for the generator. If it were a much larger and longer event we would have been is deeper shit. We have about 60+ days food, 5 days water on hand and enough fuel for a month of cooking and a week of minimum electricity. A county wide emergency like in Florida, or larger, would mean relocation ASAP. I have worked on Business Continuance plans in the past and one of the primary concerns is when to declare an emergency. We need to create a checklist on when to go from hunker-down to Bug-Out mode. If I were in the affected areas of Florida (above link) I’d be bugging out to relatives. What are your thoughts?
Firefox is eliminating the RSS feed / bookmark functionality. Boy, does that suck. Now I’m looking for add-ons that will give me something close to what worked so well for years. We’ll see.
Re: visibility – This past weekend I had a “teachable moment” when a lady’s teenager was going to run an errand. The van has two mirrors on the outside, a mirror on the inside, and the backup camera. Almost backed up over his little brother. I think there’s such a thing as TOO much. In the old days, we’d get out, walk around the car to check for obstructions, then ask bystanders if it was safe to back up.
That “teachable moment”? My two daughters were nearby & saw the event. It reinforced my instructions to stay the heck away from the back of cars, no matter what. They’re dangerous. They both had concerned looks and agreed that the little brother was foolish for being there.
Maybe MrAtoz and the Houston group can have a meet up when he gets here to skim off some of the .edu cream???
Yes, there’s nothing like those sweet, sweet goobermint SEL bucks. Learn the acronym and learn it well my fellow socialists.
Where else but in the greatest country on Earth does something like this happen:
Instagram-loving pets owners will spend nearly $500M on animal costumes this Halloween
lol!
I *found* a copy of Crack in the World. Now I feel dirty. Can’t wait to watch it, though.
RE: Crack in the World
I can remember watching this in the theater when I was 13. Haven’t seen it since but still recall Dana Andrews and the tension as the crack made it’s way through Africa. I’d love to see it again, if I ever get any TV time. I watch maybe 1 hr TV a day now. Wife still loves NCIS and NCIS New Orleans so we record them and watch one a day. I am pleasantly surprised that little (5 yr old) granddaughter isn’t interested in spending time in front of the TV. She only wants to play with her “babies” (dolls) pretending to hold a school day and teaching them the ABCs and numbers. Great way to reinforce what she learns in Kindergarten.
A county wide emergency like in Florida, or larger, would mean relocation ASAP. I have worked on Business Continuance plans in the past and one of the primary concerns is when to declare an emergency. We need to create a checklist on when to go from hunker-down to Bug-Out mode. If I were in the affected areas of Florida (above link) I’d be bugging out to relatives. What are your thoughts?
@pcb_duffer sent me two long emails on actual conditions. He has a lot of very personal information in there that I do not feel comfortable sharing. Basically, he bugged out from the Florida panhandle to Mobile, Alabama which did not get touched. The authorities were not letting anyone back in so he was waiting for that to change. Plus his job was suppose to reopen yesterday, I do not have a clue if that happened.
And yes, I need to get a generator.
My daughter participated in it for several summers. She went to the Duke campus and U of Kansas. She loved it. She still has the medal she got for them for being one of the top performers on the verbal part of the SAT.
Wizard of Id: Lame Horse
https://www.gocomics.com/wizardofid/2018/10/17
Groan !
One thing we see again and again, in all different domains, by the time you think you should do something, it’s usually too late. This is true about getting out of the stock market, leaving a deteriorating neighborhood, or bugging out.
You should have a list of “triggers” for the action, and trust your list.
In my case, with hurricanes, Cat4 headed right for us = send the wife and kids inland. My house is 60 miles inland and yet Ike came right over our heads. In the mean time, I’m hardening here as much as possible. I’ve got boards to cover all windows (thanks Ike), the whole house gennie going in (and the little one in reserve), the reinforced room half done (bath/closet makeover), and the other preps for afterwards. Any window remodel has to be hurricane resistant. Any re-roof too.
I’m looking HARD at the neighborhood. I don’t like some of the changes I see, but I also like some of the responses I see from neighbors. I’d have said that OG walking a pit bull on a clothesline leash would have been enough of a trigger, but it turns out it wasn’t. Inertia and complacency are tough customers. Violent home invasion in the neighborhood is gonna be a big trigger too.
n
If I were in the affected areas of Florida (above link) I’d be bugging out to relatives. What are your thoughts?
This is the first real test of Florida’s anti-gouging laws. The Panhandle communities are remote and an 30+ minute drive minimum from I-10 even under ideal circumstances.
Send the family to relatives’ and hunker down with the sporting goods of your choice if your house survived. The communities may be remote, but they are not barrier islands with controlled access. Looting is bound to happen — the incentive is there for criminal antics even if not present for commercial activity.
The video at this link ran as a commercial on my local TV station last night.
Not sure exactly who these people are, but I like their style!
@mediumwave said:
If you go to the YouTube page to watch the video, read the comments and blather from the from the democrats who turn around what the video says. So what’s new. I bet YouTube pulls it down for being hateful.
You should have a list of “triggers” for the action, and trust your list.
100% Agree !!! Normalcy bias kills.
Sit down now with your wife or family and discuss what the triggers should be, agree on them, write them down, post them in the kitchen. Then ENFORCE them!
If things get better you can always go back home but if you delay you may never get out. In my case, my bug-out destination is across the Mississippi river. The nearest bridges are both via Memphis and in a social break-down or natural disaster situation, would likely be inaccessible or too dangerous to attempt, so the quicker we get out, and across the river, the safer we are.
Greg’s comment on evacuating the family and remaining behind to prevent looting is something to consider. In my case, our neighborhood is close enough to barbarian hordes that a single person could not defend his/her home with any expectation of success. I don’t want to be a martyr trying to save my 65 inch TV. But your mileage may vary.
Greg’s comment on evacuating the family and remaining behind to prevent looting is something to consider. In my case, our neighborhood is close enough to barbarian hordes that a single person could not defend his/her home with any expectation of success. I don’t want to be a martyr trying to save my 65 inch TV.
I don’t have anything non-portable that I would risk my life to protect from looters, but a lot of people here seem to have stocks of preps, tools, machinery, etc. and live in remote areas.
Hordes won’t be motivated to descend on Panama City, but individual or small groups of dirtballs might try to make their way out there.
I watched some of the Robert Francis – Ted Cruz debate last night. Robert Francis totally lied with a smile on his face. He said that we could move everyone to Medicare for All ™ for only $3.5 trillion over ten years. He also said that we could pay for moving everyone on Medicare for All just by raising the corporate tax rate by five points. What a liar !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qDBS_sOaZ4
Ted Cruz came back and said that the true cost was $32 trillion over ten years. And that we could tax 100% of the income of everyone making over a million dollars a year and still not pay for Medicare for All. I turned it off after that when Ted ask Lying Robert why he voted against the Harvey Flood Help package. Lying Robert said that he thought that we could get a better deal. Ted replied that Lying Robert originally said that the Houston area did not need the flood help.
I knew that Lying Robert was a dumbocrat but I did not realize that he was into their communism path hook, line, and sinker. Lying Robert does not represent Texas values as he claims.
More Disaster stuff
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/10/verizon-slammed-for-poor-hurricane-response-as-floridians-lack-cell-service/
Remember that cell towers have around 22 mile coverage footprint depending on the environment could be much less. Most cell towers have battery / generator backup. Batteries can keep a tower up for only a few minutes to an hour. Generators generally run on propane and can keep the tower up for up to a couple of weeks depending on how the fuel tank is sized. So, in a serious power outage, like Florida or Puerto Rico, you may be out of touch with cell phones. That’s why backup comms, CB or FRS / GMRS radios (cheap) is always a good. I carry a pair in each get-home bag. Just don’t expect to get anywhere near the advertised 22+ mile range with the built-in antenna. Five miles is often pushing it.
“Five miles is often pushing it. ”
Five BLOCKS is pushing it in normal flat neighborhood. Wife and I tested them with her in the front yard and me on a bike. LOS means SIGHT. houses and trees will wipe out the signal. Even indoors, I consider the FRS radios to be replacements for yelling across the house, and very little more. They might work vehicle to vehicle if you can see each other…
The GMRS channels can do a little better if your radios actually support the higher power limits. If not, they are glorified FRS. Who knows which channels on your radios are the GMRS channels??
This is where the baofengs come into their own, even if it is a technical violation of FCC rules. Known high power on GMRS channels, and you can label them as such.
n
From @pcb_duffer, he has email but he does not have internet. “Please post the attached to RBT’s web site. I’m assuming that some people would be interested. The biggest “prepping” issue that’s popped up is the complete lack of telecommunications and the very slow repairs to those systems. Effectively, most of us have stepped back 200 years in that regard, although the ability to go 60 miles west is a nice curative. If and when things change I’ll try to send another update.”
Report from the hurricane strike zone: I came home Sunday, and the drive over from my place of refuge took no longer than it would have under normal circumstances. There were a few aid convoys, but I got the impression that by that time the power & tree crews had already made a beeline for the area. There certainly seem to be a lot of them here, and they have a LOT of work ahead of them. One thing I haven’t seen are hordes of telecom & CATV trucks, but to be honest those folks are going to have to wait for the tree & power crews to get things back in place before they can restring all their wires. I’d be interested to know what the normal US inventory of power poles is; off the top of my head we’re going to use up a huge % of that number.
I came in from the county to the west, because that road south from I-10 is four lanes all the way to the coast, none of my other options are. The first sign of actual damage I saw was just west of the county line, the canopy over the fuel pumps at a gas station / convenience store was lying on the ground, and the pumps were out of commission. Right now fuel is a problem. Those stations that have it are being overwhelmed; I’ve seen several where there had to be police keeping order & directing traffic. I brought 30 gallons with me, and one of my first orders of business after making it to my house was pumping 10 gallons of that back into my van.
Every mile that I progressed east brought with it more signs of the storm, usually blown out sign faces and downed trees. Pines seem to want to snap about 15’ – 25’ (5 – 8 meters) above ground level, other trees the whole thing just rotates 90*, bringing the root structure with them. When I pulled up, I noticed that my yard was completely covered in branches of various sizes. Out front, an oak is heavily damaged; the rest will have to come down. To the side, one of the three large pines on the south side of my house was down, and crashed into the new neighbor’s house. My part of the county was on the leeward side, so the winds were out of the north. (The neighbors arrived about 30 minutes after I did, and we spent a few minutes shaking our head and saying “Drat”. Both of us are insured, and we’re going to let the carriers deal with it. After all, we’ve paid them to assume the risk.) The back yard revealed two more destroyed trees and a wooden fence that is in ruins.
When I unlocked the front door to my house, I was greeted by spinning ceiling fans. Yes! Even better there was nary a sign of any damage in my house. I knew that the contents of the refrigerator / freezer were ruined, so I grabbed a couple of garbage bags and filled them with the spoiled stuff. Then I checked my chest freezer, and much to my surprise it survived without thawing. (I had used the standard ice cube in a coffee cup test). So the contaminated food went into the chest freezer, bags and all, to wait a functioning garbage pick up. Meanwhile, with one exception there is neither functioning cell service, land line service, or cable television anywhere in the county. The exception is the folks at “Death Star Telephone” as it’s known here. Either they got extraordinarily lucky with their towers, or the design of same needs to become the industry standard, or the engineers / repair crews are truly magnificent. Their coverage isn’t total, but there are places with service.
Monday morning I got down to work, starting with taking some photos of the various damaged trees & fence, and giving my insurance info to my neighbor. Then I spent about 3 hours dragging debris to the edge of the street, making a pile to match those of everyone else here. As I was doing all this, a tree crew with a heavy crane showed up to get the big pine off my neighbor’s roof, dispatched by his insurer. It was a four man crew, one doing the saw work, one operating the crane, and two turning big pieces into small ones, which again they deposited at the edge of the street. Their last cut left about 8’ of trunk still standing; their job was just to safely get the tree off the roof and nothing more. After I’d gotten all the truly large pieces cut up into manageable sized chunks and moved my damaged knees were aching, so I knocked off, got a shower, and had lunch.
Monday afternoon I journeyed into town. After crossing the bay the level of damage increased noticeably, and it also seems to get a little worse with each mile or two east I went. I wasn’t trying to do recon, rather I was trying to make contact with a few people I was concerned about. The first stop was an older condo complex, less than 100 yards from the bay, where an elderly lady who was a close friend of my mother’s still lives. She answered the door, and said that she hadn’t left. She has no power, no working toilet, no phone service, only a few bottles of water and ice chests, and was completely unwilling to come back to my house! I made her promise to reconsider Tuesday, when I’m going to go back with ice for her. My next stop was at the home of a woman who is literally my first friend in the world. Her carport is damaged, but she & her 15 year old son weren’t at home. I left a note, explaining that I have power, and therefore have A/C, hot water for showers, working toilets, food to cook and a way to cook it, and spare beds for the both of them. I asked her to just come to my house, since we have no way to communicate. Since she didn’t show up I hope that she’s staying with her sister, about 90 minutes away.
My next stop was at the apartment of a woman I work with. I actually offered to get rooms for her & her sons out of town if she wanted to evacuate with me, but she never responded. She wasn’t at home, so I left the same basic note for her that I had for my friend – a place to cool off, bathe, sleep, eat, etc. I did hear her dog barking when I knocked; I don’t know if the thing has had any food & water so I might go back tomorrow to have the management check on the thing. Finally I went towards the north end of town, where my job site is. This road was completely jammed, and the crews were still hard at work cutting trees away from power lines even as the power guys were ½ mile or less behind them. After a tedious journey I was able to get to the work building, and found out exactly nothing. One of the parking lots is completely blocked by downed trees, and many of the ornamental oak have been uprooted. Also, as previously noted, lots of snapped pines lying all over the place. Worse, there were no signs visible with any information for the ~1500 employees. Neither have I heard the site mentioned on the radio, although many other employers have been discussed.
I’m writing this Tuesday night, with the intent of driving west tomorrow, in part to do some inspections on friends’ properties and in part to try to find a working cell phone tower so I can let a couple of people know I’m alive & kicking. I’ll try to have lunch some place with a working wi-fi network, so I can send this and download e-mails. Before I do that I’m going to spend another few hours cutting up the damaged fence, so as to make it easier to haul to the street. Given the state of my knees, three hours worth of work seems to have been more or less the rational limit for the first two days.
Today I went back across the bay to the much more damaged “in town” areas. I’m still unable to convince Mrs. R* to stay at my place, but I was able to bring her a couple of bags of ice. She said that her condos now have functioning water, although we are still under a boil water notice. I was unable to make contact with my friend; the note is still stuck in her door. I was able to make contact with my co-worker. Her apartments are still without power or water, but for reasons I cannot fathom I wasn’t able to convince her to bring herself & the pets to my house. She did say that her sons are staying at her ex husband’s place, out here on the beach, so they have electricity and all that entails. She did let me give her some gasoline, and she let me know some critical information. It seems that my employer is shut down for the foreseeable future, and that they are working to take in displaced employees at other sites. I wish they’d notified us as late as Sunday morning, but what’s done is done. What I can do is to try to make contact with the various phone numbers that provided so as to see what might be available to me.
Having looked at the damage twice, I do have a couple of other observations. First, it’s really fortunate that Bay County has an enormous inventory of hotel & rental condominium rooms on the beach. If we have to host 50,000 repair workers we can do so without breaking a sweat. I don’t have a guess as to how many repair workers we have in town right now. I’m going to guess that every tree service within 500 miles will eventually be here – the need is that great. This is also true of electric line crews, but it’s not practical for all of them to come here. If the electric utilities in Miami or Houston (to pick 2 big cities that would be a solid day’s drive) send 30% of their crews, they will be unable to meet their normal work load without putting a real load on the 70% that would be left. We almost need some measurable % of every line crew in the US to get the readily fixable things repaired. The damage at Tyndall AFB and Mexico Beach is going to be a longer term project to rebuild.
I don’t know how many more updates I will be able to send until net service is restored, and judging by the number of lines down that might be quite a while. Other than that I’m probably just going to be in clean up mode for several days; how much I can get done is a function of how much my knees will take.
The Drudge headline says 4,000 crimmigrants are coming from Honduras to enjoy our welfare state. One MOAB should be enough, maybe two “just to be sure.”
The Drudge headline says 4,000 crimmigrants are coming from Honduras to enjoy our welfare state. One MOAB should be enough, maybe two “just to be sure.”
Ordinarily, I would find a MOAB in this case to be extreme. However, there is an exception for every rule and this is the exception. These are not refugees, they are invaders. Soon there will be millions of invaders if these are not countered.
Holy cow pcb_duffer, thanks for the update.
BE VERY RESPECTFUL OF YOUR LIMITS… if you blow out a knee or back or artery, they won’t be coming to help you. Think twice, plan, and look for everything that could go wrong before undertaking any work that could hurt you. Cut the fence into smaller pieces. Don’t strain.
Throw the garbage on the pile and start freezing water for ice for your neighbors.
Expect your power to go up and down a few times.
All the crews in the US DO head to the disaster. They are nomadic by nature, and never more so than during disaster recovery.
I had a conversation with a nurse in ATT’s disaster response team some years ago. She said that all the other carriers just rent rack space in ATT’s recovery plan. IOW, ATT will get up, then turn on the other gear in the rack. Some companies have the gear pre-positioned in ATT racks, some need to actually bring it to them. (She watched as they moved a whole local exchange (physically) to trailers, and back, without dropping a call during the exercise.)
WRT your acquaintances staying in their non-functioning homes rather than accept your offer, you see that in some of the PA fiction. They don’t really want to acknowledge that their circumstances have changed. Moving in with you or accepting your help would force them to acknowledge that. They’ll hang on until it’s too late, or until services are restored. Keep offering if you can and want to.
Be conservative of your own physical and emotional reserves. You will need them.
Please continue to share, stay safe, and best of luck,
nick
added– keep in mind that MANY OTHERS who are a lot less harmless than your friends will be doing the same thing, and will eventually reach the same point… and then they will blame you for having while they do not, and they will feel perfectly justified taking it from you. WATCH YOUR SECURITY SITUATION AS THINGS DEVELOP.
All the crews in the US DO head to the disaster. They are nomadic by nature, and never more so than during disaster recovery.
My parents were returning home to Port Lavaca last year a week after hurricane Harvey. About 50 miles out, they encountered a convoy of Electrical Linemen bucket trucks heading south to PL also. The convoy was at least a mile long (500 ??? trucks). Each truck had a 50 to 60 ft long line pole strapped to it.
BTW, since the sales person quit two weeks ago, the office manager has closed four new contracts for high five figures of new business. I am beginning to wonder if the sales person was submarining us. Surely not. The sales person was definitely burned out though.
Commissions, Lynn, commissions. Do the work, get the perq.
One thing I haven’t seen are hordes of telecom & CATV trucks, but to be honest those folks are going to have to wait for the tree & power crews to get things back in place before they can restring all their wires.
After Ike, AT&T had portable generators that they took to the landline/DSL/Uverse boxes and ran for a few hours, charging the batteries up to 100%. It was then moved to another box. They did this for weeks until power was up. We never lost our Verizon cell service that I saw. Comcast did nothing like this and cable and internet were down for about a week after we got power.
Commissions, Lynn, commissions. Do the work, get the perq.
Done and implemented.
Comcast did nothing like this and cable and internet were down for about a week after we got power.
As far as I can tell, Comcast still thinks that it is a cable company rather than an internet company with a tv service option.
And now for a public service announcement from the ACLU:
Today is the first-ever International #PronounsDay and our staff are celebrating.
Color me non-binary.
We never lost comcast during Ike, even though we were without power for 14 days.
n
International Pronouns Day. … oy. I know what my gender is and if you don’t believe me I’ll let you look. No charge.
my preferred pronoun is “Fist of God”.
n
That’s a great update from pcb_duffer. Thank you for sending it!!!
Out here, we had over six inches of rain. I say over because the gauge was over flowing at 5 and 1/8th inches, I dumped it and collected another inch. My yard still has puddles but no actual run-off.
Further upstream/west has been “interesting” to say the least. A bridge washed out. Various low water crossings are closed or actually washed out. Video on TV has been interesting.
The dam in Marble Falls that makes the Lake Marble Falls has the gates wide open and yesterday water was going over the dam. Along with boats and docks.
Buchanan Dam is pretty full and has open gates. Mansfield Dam, which makes Lake Travis has open gates. It’s a LOT of water.
Well, they are all flood control lakes. Because of Austin….. not a lot of old buildings south of 3rd and Congress, just saying.
Cell service for folks around Kingsland, if on DeathStar, is not working. I don’t know about Verizon.
Well, the rice farmers near the coast are about to get plenty of water.
Dr visit today, took out the ‘bandage’ contact. 3mm scratch has healed. Still some roughness in the cornea, so my vision is blurry. Pain is mostly gone but there is still “discomfort.” Blurriness is making my head swim if I read too much.
Prognosis is full recovery.
I recommend against sticking things into your eyes.
n
That’s a great update from pcb_duffer. Thank you for sending it!!!
You are welcome. I was amazed to find out that he has been living in his home for 53 years. The longest that I have been living in any single home is 11 years.
I am just glad that he did not lose his house in the storm surge as he lives very close to the beach.
I was amazed to find out that he has been living in his home for 53 years. The longest that I have been living in any single home is 11 years.
Dad was a Marine and even after he retired we moved every three years. It was just awesome for a skinny little kid like me to start at a new school every few years. Not.
I’ve been in this house since 92. No plans to move.
Mom and Dad built their house in 78 or 79. I forget. I’d had the motorcycle wreck and was addled. Anyway. The insurance finally paid and the hospital, etc. took a third, the lawyer took a third, Dad borrowed most of my third, which left me about $3200.
A princely sum at the time.
Old man says he paid it back and did I keep track? He acted shocked when I said no. But, tell you what, as I was figuring how to get by on my own with a string of not-so-great jobs, and oh so wonderful Reaganomics happening, the sort of random 1 or 2 hundred check almost every month really made it work for me.
Heck, I don’t remember how much he borrowed. But they built a house with the money and when Mom passes, it’s my house.
She never probated his will or any of that. I’ve got Dad off of the deed and me on it. So, I own a house with my Mom. If medi whatever decides they want it when she passes, whatever. The taxes have it appraised at about 40 grand or so…. but Dad jumped right on locking the taxes when he hit 65. Which would be about 28 years ago… before the road was even paved. So. Always an adventure. 🙂
my preferred pronoun is “Fist of God”.
Ah, well, if they insist on a pronoun, I’m going with “Horse”. As in, oh, do I have to explain that? Here? Of all places?
Grin.
My preferred pronoun is “I”.
Sample usage: I just talked to Steve. I said that I would have the module ready by tomorrow but I didn’t think that was going to happen.
My preferred pronoun is “I don’t give a crap”. I don’t give a crap how you refer to yourself. If you look like a boy, I’m going to say “he”. If you look like a girl, I’m going to say “she”. If you’re indeterminate I’m going to say “it” or “Pat”.
I spend 10+ hours/day making decisions. I’m not going to give you any frickin’ cycles trying to remember how you want to be referred to. I don’t give a crap.
There are people I’ve been working with for years (one weekend every year) that I don’t remember the names of. I have more important thigns to do.
The exception is the folks at “Death Star Telephone” as it’s known here. Either they got extraordinarily lucky with their towers, or the design of same needs to become the industry standard, or the engineers / repair crews are truly magnificent. Their coverage isn’t total, but there are places with service.
Legacy BellSouth still has some quality people, and Florida does not lack for retired Bell System and GTE workers wiling to take temporary gigs.
I *never* lost landline service in a storm in Florida, even with cable, cell, and power down.
At some point I lost my 5 star former employee designation on my cell account. Not sure how I got it in the first place. Either my account was old enough (predated ATT cellular) or a friend hooked us up during the PCS product launch. Sure made it easier to get someone to do something over the phone though.
I still think there are natural monopolies and landline phone is one of them. Unfortunately, for all the innovation at Bell Labs (subsidized by all subscribers) the customer facing stuff wasn’t particularly innovative.
The breakup was ultimately mostly undone, and we lost Bell Labs in the process. Lots of money was destroyed in the process too. Just the amount spent on each round of ‘rebranding’ is stunning and contributed nothing to the shareholders or the company.
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I still think there are natural monopolies and landline phone is one of them.
Who still has a landline ? Just old people and they are dying off.
…power poles…
Why isn’t this stuff buried? Every road has water and sewage pipes under it – why they don’t simultaneously bury conduits for power, cable, fiber, etc. at the same time? Serious question – it seems to be a standard US thing to leave power lines up on poles, but why? pcb_duffer’s tale illustrates the problem: the whole infrastructure is left vulnerable to storms. Or just falling trees or other accidents…
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@Lynn: I may have mentioned that my wife and I tried to run a little software company for several years. Sales was always the sticking point. We’re both technical, meaning, we’re both lousy with people, so we needed someone else to handle sales. We weren’t big enough to hire a full-time person, so we talked to small companies and individuals about them working for us on a contract basis. None of them would do so, if the contract was purely performance based. All of them wanted fat provisions, even if they did nothing.
On the whisky side (weird combo, but we also had a whisky business), we had less of a problem – the business ran well for over 20 years. However, at one point, we thought to expand to other Scottish imports. That side of the business was big enough to hire a sale guy. We discovered that sales people (or this guy, anyway) have zero clue about finances. Just an example: The sales guy was once really proud of himself for selling a couple of cases of beer. So proud that he personally delivered them, driving about 30 miles each way to do so. And he couldn’t understand why we were displeased – he couldn’t grasp that his time, plus mileage, was about a zillion times more than the profit on the beer. We fired him, soon enough…
Sales and marketing is utterly necessary, but at the same time, it seems to be a swamp of incompetence…
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Pronouns, right. Some random person doesn’t get to dictate how the language works. There’s a lot of mental illness on parade, and lots more people who join the parade just to garner attention. They can celebrate all they want, they’re still “he”, “she”, or (if I can’t tell) “they”.
Most European languages are gendered, although the gender of nouns has nothing to do with any sort of biological gender. In some languages the sun is female and the moon in male; in others, it’s the other way around. Which doesn’t stop SJWs from getting all up in arms about this.
An example: in German, a male student is “der Student”, whereas a female student is “die Studentin”. If you are speaking in the abstract, rather than about a person of known gender, you default to the male “der Student”. Oh no, not PC, you can’t default to male. So my school has officially dictated that all students shall be referred to using the invented word “Studierende” (roughly “the studying one”). Wow. The gender/diversity types get to pat themselves on the back. Only…
…all words have a gender, and the German language makes it clear: “Studierende” is male, so it’s “der Studierende”. So female students are now *always* referred to with a male-gendered word, even if we know that the person in question is female. Good job, SJWs, shot yourselves in the foot again…
Who still has a landline ? Just old people and they are dying off.
I have a copper line, no DSL. It was a nightmare to get installed properly, but it is now extremely reliable.
I do. Wife refuses to give it up. Does not cost much, maybe nothing, maybe negative amount. It is part of the Comcast/Xfinity package where I had data, TV and phone with them. Removing one service will cause the prices of the other services to jump, probably enough to make it more expensive than having all three.
Wife is kind of stuck in the past and really does not like change. Getting a smart phone was a major challenge over the dumb flip phone she had. Her mother is really against change and her daughter is exhibiting the same behavior and getting worse. Both will expend much effort to avoid change and find lots of ways to rationalize their reasons.
Yeh, well, thank you very much.
Comcast/Xfinity has a promotion going where you can get a sixth generation (the newest) Apple iPad, 128 gig for $5.00 a month for 24 months if you have the triple play package (data, TV, phone). Works out to about $132.00 with tax and you can pay it off early. Fairly good deal for a device that goes for $429.00 on just about every site I checked.