Fri. Oct. 19th, 2018 – the weekend cometh…

By on October 19th, 2018 in Random Stuff

65F and wet. Improvement? Bahh.

More to do to get ready for stuff….

Wife is traveling for work (likes pre-Check) so I’ve got all the kid stuff all by my lonesome. Soccer yesterday. School “fun run” and festival today. We usually provide a lot of technical support, but I’m alone so we’ll be scaling WAY back. Hope it is still enough. I guess we’ll see (or not, mostly we add lighting to the super dark outdoor space.)

Meatspace.

n

27 Comments and discussion on "Fri. Oct. 19th, 2018 – the weekend cometh…"

  1. Nick Flandrey says:

    Sweden, the socialist paradise, what could possibly have changed??

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-17/sweden-declares-hand-grenade-amnesty-attempt-stop-explosive-gang-violence

    Because I don’t remember EVER seeing a headline like this ANYWHERE.

    n

  2. dkreck says:

    Anything to avoid the appearance of racism.

  3. DadCooks (Eric Comben) says:

    The truth hurts:
    https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-liawatha/

    Had a power outage of just a bit more than an hour yesterday (15:18 to 16:20). Some idiot with an excavator did not call before he dug and hit a main Bonneville Power Administration power cable that was the main supply to 6 substations. Blacked out 90% of Kennewick as well as totally some surrounding areas. Each of our substations has 2 backup feeds, but they require a manual switchover which is part of why it took an hour to restore power.

    That little power outage drill yesterday was a good exercise. All of my BIG FLASHLIGHTS and lanterns had been put in inconvenient locations. Did a test start of the whole house alternator and switched in the “vital” loads (freezer, refrigerator, minimum lighting).

  4. Ray Thompson says:

    Some idiot with an excavator did not call before he dug and hit a main Bonneville Power Administration power cable that was the main supply to 6 substations.

    That big of a feeder should have been well marked. That much KVA probably took out a big chunk of the excavator’s bucket and filled the operator’s pants.

  5. Nick Flandrey says:

    Took the kids to Jack in the Box yesterday after soccer. Two cheeseburgers, one specialty burger, one large fry, and 3 shakes came to just over $20. How in the flaming he!!s do poor people eat fast food? After taxes, that’s 3 hours of work to feed 3 people one meal, and a poor one at that.

    I buy T bone steak for <$5 per pound routinely. I could buy 4 pounds of steak for the same price as those cr@ppy burgers. That's insane. n

  6. Nick Flandrey says:

    I’ve seen pix of a scrap metal thief who took down a substation, 13.6KV across a buss bar. His body was so hot it discolored the river rock it was laying on.

    n

    NB- burying them doesn’t necessarily keep them safe…….

  7. DadCooks (Eric Comben) says:

    @Ray Thompson said:
    “That big of a feeder should have been well marked. That much KVA probably took out a big chunk of the excavator’s bucket and filled the operator’s pants. ”

    Yes, it is well marked (ha, ha) with red tape supposedly buried the required distance above the cable as “required” by code. It was also in a conduit of unspecified type. The code regarding buried cable is really a mish-mash and totally un-understandable, IMHO, and has been “weakened” over the years due to the public not liking the above ground marking posts, lowered their property value.

    The “crew” involved “appears” to not to be speakers/readers of the English. So what’s new. Blew the bucket arm off the tractor (smoking tires too) and left a big crater. When the police arrived no one would admit to being the operator, he is probably back across the border by now (clean pants notwithstanding).

  8. MrAtoz says:

    This little gem is on Drudge:

    Democrats want to repeal Trump’s tax cuts and replace them with payouts for the poor

    No way! I saved thousands with the tax cuts. I’m keeping my money and NOT giving it to poor crimmmigrants in Kalifornia.

    Time for tRump to get busy with the next wave of tax cuts.

  9. Greg Norton says:

    Took the kids to Jack in the Box yesterday after soccer. Two cheeseburgers, one specialty burger, one large fry, and 3 shakes came to just over $20. How in the flaming he!!s do poor people eat fast food? After taxes, that’s 3 hours of work to feed 3 people one meal, and a poor one at that.

    Back in Vantucky, a trip to Wendy’s would cost us nearly $50 for four of us to eat Singles, fries, and drinks. If Vantucky is the future ($11/hr minimum wage, legal weed, vote-by-mail), God help us all.

    Texas doesn’t have a state minimum wage like WA, but some cities, including Austin (of course) and San Antonio, have passed mandatory paid sick leave laws as a kind of back door minimum wage. Those city laws should be the first thing addressed in the Legislative session next Spring.

  10. Greg Norton says:

    Democrats want to repeal Trump’s tax cuts and replace them with payouts for the poor.

    Will they repeal the cap on deductions for state and local taxes?

    The cap going into effect along with increased interest rates seems to have chilled home sales in some of the neighborhoods around me. 800 yards from my front door, it isn’t unusual for a homeowner to pay $15,000 in county and City of Austin property taxes.

  11. lynn says:

    “US to Withdraw from 144-Year-Old Postal Treaty”
    https://www.pcmag.com/news/364469/us-to-withdraw-from-144-year-old-postal-treaty

    “It costs less to ship something from China to the US than it does to ship within the US. President Trump wants the postal treaty renegotiated or he’s pulling the US out, both of which are bad outcomes for China.”

    I had been wondering why the postal rates from China were so cheap. Now I know, subsidized by the USA government like EVERYTHING else.

  12. lynn says:

    From yesterday:

    We check our website time and crash the software when that does not match.”

    I assume by “crash” you mean “display a message that he needs to pay for the software”? At least, I hope that’s what you mean, else your software just looks unreliable.

    Yes, that is by intent. First, it is more difficult to diagnose a crash in machine language. Second, they already bypassed the first set of software security, these are not potential customers.

    Have you considered moving towards SaaS? That’s the direction we were heading, when we decided to throw in the towel: software-as-a-service, with an optional, locally installed front end. That gives you a lot more control, and by now it’s a pretty widely accepted model. OTOH, it makes your web-server a central point-of-failure for all of your customers, which makes reliability critical – a whole new set of potential headaches. Performance can also be an issue.

    Many of the process plants are now blocking cell phones and internet access as a security measure. They do have heavily firewalled internet access, very heavily firewalled. They have serious trust issues with contractors, etc.

  13. lynn says:

    From yesterday:

    We’ve been at this a long time. I’ve seen every trick under the sun. The last one, by Chinese computer programmers IIRC, was to rip the password decryption algorithm out of our software and replace it with their own algorithm. That way they could provide their own passwords. Simply amazing.

    Preprocessing of AES keys generates distinct patterns in memory. I’ve seen tools which scan all of the system RAM for the patterns.

    We don’t use AES keys. Anymore. They cracked those. We use … sorry, I would have to whisper this in your ear. Lets just say that 1024 bit public / private key cryptography is incredibly difficult to crack. But it is easy to find and replace the public keys in software so those might be encrypted themselves.

    Like I say, I’ve seen a lot of crazy people out there. And they want to crack our software and sell it for 30 dollars, one thousandth of my price. Plus once they crack our software, most of them email me to taunt about their prowess.

  14. lynn says:

    “Border caravan puts Trump legacy on the line”
    https://www.wnd.com/2018/10/border-caravan-puts-trump-legacy-on-the-line/

    “Pat Buchanan: How president handles issue will determine November election, 2020”

    OFD neighbor, Pat Buchanan is right again.

    In olden times, this was called an invasion.

    Hat tip to:
    https://drudgereport.com/

  15. lynn says:

    Trump’s rally for Ted Cruz is now in the Toyota Center since it holds 19,000 people. “Trump moves Texas rally for Cruz, citing ‘huge and unprecedented’ response”
    https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/18/trump-ted-cruz-rally-move-913241

    I would love to go but crowds freak me out nowadays.

  16. Greg Norton says:

    We don’t use AES keys. Anymore. They cracked those. We use … sorry, I would have to whisper this in your ear. Lets just say that 1024 bit public / private key cryptography is incredibly difficult to crack. But it is easy to find and replace the public keys in software so those might be encrypted themselves.

    Just make sure that you didn’t generate the prime numbers using srand()/rand() from Visual C++. The last time I looked (Visual Stuido 2014 … ?) MAXRAND was still 0x7fff, and the algorithm was something BillG cookbooked from Knuth.

  17. Greg Norton says:

    Like I say, I’ve seen a lot of crazy people out there. And they want to crack our software and sell it for 30 dollars, one thousandth of my price. Plus once they crack our software, most of them email me to taunt about their prowess.

    Chinese. My wife’s relatives don’t admire hard work nearly as much as something gained from luck (gambling), tricks, or outright criminal activity. To them, politeness is a weakness.

    The common dream seems to be to have a “ghost house” in Palo Alto, both as a rapidly appreciating asset and something they can deny Americans from affording.

    https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/04/24/are-ghost-homes-becoming-a-problem

  18. SteveF says:

    Cryin’ shame if someone were to drive a bunch of homeless from San Francisco down to a ghost house in Palo Alto…

  19. lynn says:

    “Rush on Hannity for the Full Hour”
    https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2018/10/18/rush-on-hannity-2/

    “These people on the left that you’ve described, the mob behavior, is really a series of psychological disorders that have taken over politics. We have politicized psychological disorders to the point now that they have become the objective of the Democrat Party. Solving all of these disparate, separate psychological disorders — having the government do it — basically determine outcomes and get even with the pressers, the founding majority of the country.”

    HANNITY: If I put you on the spot, prediction?

    RUSH: We hold the House and we increase the Senate, because I think that’s justice. I think that’s just. I think the Democrat Party deserves to lose in the single biggest landslide defeat in my lifetime —

  20. MrAtoz says:

    The mob of crimmigrants pushed (or were let) their way into Mexico. Time to deploy the MOAB. Collateral damage should be contained in Mexico since they completely failed their own borders.

  21. lynn says:

    “MUST WATCH: Mom of 14-Year-Old Car Thief Hilariously Gives Him a Roadside Butt-Whoopin’”
    https://www.redstate.com/alexparker/2018/10/19/lisa-martinez-aaron-whipping-bmw/

    El Paso, Texas !

    Too bad Robert Francis’s mom was not this diligent for his lying butt.

    The video is here:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6kRXJ_XlF4

  22. Greg Norton says:

    El Paso, Texas !

    Too bad Robert Francis’s mom was not this diligent for his lying butt.

    Ironically, Robert Francis’ father was a county judge in El Paso. The mother’s family had the political connections to the Kennedys.

  23. Nick Flandrey says:

    Back from my event. Kids had fun. Touched base with a bunch of folks. Rain mostly held off until I was getting in the truck. Then we got an inch in one half hour.

    Thunder and lightning too.

    n

  24. ~jim says:

    LOL @Nick

    The answer to the question of “just what the heck are the rats still eating”

    Just strikes me funny. Well, now you know — The Rest of the Story…
    **Hat tip Paul Harvey**

    Also @Nick
    Assuming I have the correct email address, I’m awaiting your answer.

  25. Nick Flandrey says:

    @Jim~ just looking at the email now….

  26. SteveF says:

    Touched base with a bunch of folks.

    But was it a good touch or a bad touch?

  27. Nick Flandrey says:

    Joe Biden touch….
    n

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