69F and 95%RH. I believe it.
We’ve got our school carnival tonight, so I hope the rain holds off.
Despite the threats we face, we still haven’t had a collapse. Venezuela did. And it’s an excellent cautionary tale. Food. A way to make water drinkable. MEDICAL SUPPLIES. Gold or other hard assets. Most important- traveling feet.
Famines, pestilence, and war cause huge migrations. THAT is the lesson from history. When things get sporty, people leave. “Go where the food is” isn’t just the punchline from a comedy routine, it’s a basic animal drive. EVERY prepping plan MUST consider both your own migration, and that of all those other folks.
My busy week had very little prepping in it, even with a good stretch of the imagination. I did get some yard and house stuff done, that is important on the neighborhood plane, and with the funeral I attended, I got some work in on the spiritual plane, but nothing on the prepping plane.
Today I’m taking a pickup load to auction. I guess that could count as it will be me cleaning up. And my adventures in meatspace continued. I’m missing several community meetings though, I didn’t realize how many of them were on Tuesday night. Get out of the house and meet some people.
Get some preps stacked. Learn a new skill.
n
(What did YOU do this week to get ready?)
I didn’t see this. Doesn’t match the reality in the stores here. Pork is shockingly low lately. Could be lag…
”
Very foggy and 54f here on the Mississippi.
I agree that everyone interested in prepping should be following the situation in Venezuela closely. Think hard about how you would deal with their problems (hyper-inflation, power outages, water/food/medicine shortages). Venezuelans have the advantage of surrounding economies that are not effected by their foolish choices. In a larger collapse, CME / EMP / Mega-Volcano / Pandemic / small asteroid strike / etc. we may not be so lucky. My brothers son-in-law lost his father in Venezuela last week due to starvation. He was giving his food rations to his grandchildren. And this is a completely ARTIFICIAL disaster. The people of Venezuela voted for evil and then did nothing as it destroyed their rich economy and resources. Now their government, that prohibits food and medical aid, is instead, bringing in foreign (Russian) troops to “stabilize” the situation.
Nick, to echo the others, thanks again for the daily posts to keep the site working.
Also, thanks, Rick, for feeding the hamster who runs on the wheel to keep the thing going.
Nick, a suggestion to alleviate the nuisance of forgetting a daily post or getting the title wrong or feeling tired or lousy in the morning but still needing to get up and make the post: At a convenient time, like every Sunday afternoon, make stubs for the coming week and schedule them to pop out one each morning. If you’re awake and up to it you can replace the stub text with the daily weather report and observations on the world. If not, something will be there anyway.
re Hugos: did anyone notice the absence of a certain demographic among the nominated authors?
re Mary Robinette Kowal, I haven’t read any of her work. She’s been a regular member of the Writing Excuses podcast since I’ve been listening and I think she was a founding member. Of the four regulars, I find her talking points to be the most annoying — I don’t need to hear for the hundredth time about her theater experience — but her craft-oriented advice is good.
“At a convenient time, like every Sunday afternoon, make stubs for the coming week and schedule them to pop out one each morning. ”
but that would take planning and foresight!
I actually have done a few lately that were written the night before, and the opening para and title were added later. If I’m not working from the news, it’s a good way to write longer form posts.
If my brain is empty, then I generally look for a headline to launch from. If my brain is full, I don’t have any problem writing.
I’m thinking of longer form posts on work areas/workbenches, ham radio digital modes, 3D printing, and a couple of others. On the other hand, I re-read the prize list for articles at survivalblog.com and it’s NICE. I might have to write something and submit it there.
Also back on my radar is going thru RBT’s prepping book and fiction. It’s been long enough now, I think I can give it another shot.
All in my copious free time of course…..
n
From JimL:
I expect so. I would have no problem flying United or Southwest today. OTOH, I would fly neither Bangalore airways nor Nepaliano airways.
Back later with my failure investigation experiences.
I didn’t see this. Doesn’t match the reality in the stores here. Pork is shockingly low lately. Could be lag…
The Chinese now own Smithfield. They’ll divert output overseas if the prices justify the shipping costs.
The US can’t use food embargos as a weapon like it did 40 years ago. There is too much foreign ownership of production infrastructure, and the improvements in communication and transportation make the planet one big market.
Nationalize the foreign-owned companies! Why should it always work the other way, with dammfurriners always stealing American stuff?
Yes. nuclear option, but let them come here an enforce their ownership. See how that works. Also that would make them one of the big employers of illegals, as food processing uses lots of illegal labor.
n
“albanian national” = muslim
Just another islamic terror wannabe radicalized by the FBI and their crack team of informants.
Has the FBI ever caught a terrorist in the US that they DIDN’T string along or create with ‘informants’? I can’t recall a case.
n
“In the post on her now deactivated page, Mankey admitted the dispute: ‘I yelled at him. Called the entire Starbucks to order and yelled at him more about how it’s not okay to hate brown people…I called him more names and told him to call the police.”
What lovely, tolerant people.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6888165/Elderly-Jewish-man-74-abused-called-Nazi-Starbucks-woman.html
Yes. nuclear option, but let them come here an enforce their ownership. See how that works.
We strive to set the example with rule of law and not exective order … well, for the most part.
This is starting to get worrying.
Anyone else notice that FFox 66.0.2 broke video and scrolling?
I now get tearing in video and when I scroll, diagonal tearing across the upper 2/3 of my screen. Only in FF.
n
Speaking of video, this guy in Norway is Shockingly, amazingly, and stunningly talented. Especially if you like metal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtQUJMBH8uE&list=PLEEX8g2XtzsGv61U11HpoWt5JP18NHeve
He does it all himself. Over 269 covers. Some with tens of millions of views. If he earned 1/2 cent for each one, he’d be worth millions.
n
scan thru the titles in the mix, unbelievable range
“when Lefties talk about universal free college, we don’t think that we’re going to get more people on road crews fixing our highways. We think we’re going to get more sociology majors shaming those guys on Titter for working hard. And we don’t want to tax dollars to pay for that.”
word.
n
Although I did design work in commercial, turbojet powered passenger aircraft systems, I did not participate in investigating aircraft failures. Well, there were no failures while I was engaged there. However I did work in the area of expendable launch vehicles, where there were several anomalies, both unexpected performance issues and complete failures, while I was there.
Okay, so here how it goes, we have three categories of people: the yappity-yappers, the governmentals, and the private company actual hands-on employees.
Yappity-yappers: Those that you see on TV or hear on the radio that are not actually involved. Consequently, they do not have any real knowledge, but their whole game is to get on TV or the radio or the newspapers. They do that by making outrageous, non-sensical comments. Realize that mundane comments, valid or not, will not get them the attention that they seek.
Governmentals – two kinds, foreign and USA. The two airlines are not private, capital companies, they are foreign government entities. As such, those involved know very little and cannot accept any responsibility, if due. Consequently, they have to point fingers at others, which are us. Conversely, our governmentals act as if the were from our state department and are willing to accept the blame for USA companies and are reluctant to point at foreign government airlines.
Hands-on employees of the USA, private builders and their suppliers: In contrast to criminal cases where the police and the prosecution do everything possible to incriminate the items of interest, in these cases, they do every thing possible to prove that their components are not at fault and the failure results from some item of another supplier or subcontractor.
Consequently, it is very difficult to determine the true cause when those most complicit point elsewhere and cannot accept the reality.
Yes, in my involvement, I could not connect a component that we made to the failure of the rocket. The supposition there was did a propellant leak of a tank that we made cause a failure the solid motor casing that a supplier made.
Anyone else notice that FFox 66.0.2 broke video and scrolling?
I noticed that I had a problem with some YouTube video from the Firefox in Pop OS last night, but I chalked it up to problems with the Linux flavor on my old MacBook Pro.
I now get tearing in video and when I scroll, diagonal tearing across the upper 2/3 of my screen. Only in FF.
Try turning off the hardware acceleration.
I don’t think the developers are 100% there yet with regard to doing the hardware acceleration properly. Older Nvidia drivers in particular seem to receive short shrift in the debugging process, probably due to lack of access to hardware.
My work laptop, which I’m using now, has FF66.0.2. No problems noted.
But note:
– I don’t have five windows with 27 tabs each.
– I restart FF fairly often, every couple days at most.
– My computer is pretty beefy.
(I need the hefty CPU, fast SSD, and 32G of RAM about 1% of the time for analyzing big data sets. The rest of the time the machine is vastly overpowered for writing code, monitoring the five channels by which work is passed to me, and so on.)
EDIT: I tried several times to get to youtube to test any ol’ video, but I can’t even get to the front page. However, we’re having a bunch of flaky network issues today.
“when Lefties talk about universal free college, we don’t think that we’re going to get more people on road crews fixing our highways. We think we’re going to get more sociology majors shaming those guys on Titter for working hard. And we don’t want to tax dollars to pay for that.”
A “full” employment act for Liberal Arts PhDs, possibly lowering the unemployment rate from 98% to 95%.
In reference to layoffs, I’ve been lucky. I’m closing in on 21 years in IT. One job, the small company was in trouble, and half of our 15 employees were let go. I was lucky and wsn’t let go. The owner brought me in and said he had to make cutbacks, and what sort of pay cut could I take? I said 10% and he agreed. From that point, I was supremely motivated to find another job, and I did within a month. The company folded not too long after. Funny, the owner (Indian) kept his company car leases of a Mercedes S500 and Toyota Land Cruiser through it all….
My other close call was at a later job. I went to work for a car dealer in late 07 to be their IT director. Shortly, after I joined, the dominoes started falling with the economy. He was severely leveraged and in debt. Around my 11 month mark, he says he has to cut my pay by 40%. I said ok, but my time gets cut by the same amount. I also asked if I could have a month until it became official so I could prepare. He agreed. I found another job before the month was out…
As for age of employees, I am 45. I have 7 people who report to me. Only one is younger than me, and he’s mid 30’s. Two of them were here before I came here, but I’ve hired the others. I don’t care one iota about age, only if the job can be done. Of course, I’m in the gov contracting world, so it’s different than the real world.
Will they be able to save the 737 Max? By that I mean will they be able to save enough of the airframe that they’ll be able to retrofit the extant planes and not wind up scrapping them?
I expect so. I would have no problem flying United or Southwest today. OTOH, I would fly neither Bangalore airways nor Nepaliano airways.
All of the 737 MAX planes in the USA are grounded also.
The Chinese now own Smithfield. They’ll divert output overseas if the prices justify the shipping costs.
The US can’t use food embargos as a weapon like it did 40 years ago. There is too much foreign ownership of production infrastructure, and the improvements in communication and transportation make the planet one big market.
I guarantee you that the USA would nationalize food in a New York minute if needful. Look back at the 1930s and 1940s fights over food in the USA. The rationing, the control, the local boards under Washington DC command and control.
Indeed it is.
My first layoff was in such a world. The company I worked for had been supporting the Navy Civilian Personnel System for six years without issue. Clients had no complaints. We even developed a messaging and email system for them to use.
Come time for contract renewal it was awarded to a company in San Antonio for $30 million more than our bid. Contract award stated we bid one too few support people. How that was correct I don’t know as we had supported the contract for six years with the same staffing level.
I found out later why this happened. Jim Densberger was the one that awarded the contract. He had retired from the USAF while I was in the USAF working on the personnel software in San Antonio at Randolph AFB. Came in Monday as a civilian and had the same desk. His retirement from civil service was coming up. He would be getting retirement from USAF for 20 years service and retirement from civil service for 30 years after only working 10 years. Time in the military counts for civil service time.
Six months after the contract was awarded Jim Densberger went to work for the company in San Antonio at a high level position. Contract award was simply for Jim Densberger to have a job when he retired from civil service. 50+ people lost their jobs and it cost the government an additional $30 million dollars. Plus the users lost the instant messaging and email system as that was not a deliverable in the original contract.
The Navy demanded the code. My company said no, not a deliverable and not the Navy’s code. Navy said it was developed on government equipment therefore the Navy own’s the code. My company said the code was on one of the many tapes delivered and if the Navy lost the tapes, or the files, too bad. Prove otherwise. My company no longer had copies of the code. (I did as I had squirreled the code offsite). But I owed the Navy nothing and was not going to tell them.
I need the hefty CPU, fast SSD, and 32G of RAM about 1% of the time for analyzing big data sets. The rest of the time the machine is vastly overpowered for writing code, monitoring the five channels by which work is passed to me, and so on.)
Yet, I’d bet that scrolling in Excel isn’t any faster than than it was 20 years ago.
@jenny
Noticed in your comment yesterday that you are having some issues with your WordPress site.
If you need a hand, let me know – email is rhellewell at gmail.
I do know a bit about WordPress: many years experience, many sites, and a pretty good rep on the StackOverflow WordPress section. Plus the 8 plugins I’ve developed.
Got lots of time to help out – retired (from IT jobs). Working on Book Two of “Light Blink” – first draft almost done. And maintaining all of my web sites (a mix of WordPress and custom-built sites) – been doing web sites since 1998.
That offer to help is good for anyone here if needed.
It’s a Linux box with no WINE and thus no Excel, but your point is taken.
Web pages don’t load any quicker than 20 years ago because of the five megabytes of JavaScript that “needs” to be pulled down for the site to work and they don’t scroll any faster because the dozen different libraries are all checking for events so they can pop up ads, as well as phone home every half second.
It’s a Linux box with no WINE and thus no Excel, but your point is taken.
Web pages don’t load any quicker than 20 years ago because of the five megabytes of JavaScript that “needs” to be pulled down for the site to work and they don’t scroll any faster because the dozen different libraries are all checking for events so they can pop up ads, as well as phone home every half second.
Some of the Linux desktop environment developers are just as guilty of code bloat as Microsoft. I’ve reached the point with my Linux-only laptop that 4GB is just not enough RAM.
Dilbert: Siri versus Alexa
https://dilbert.com/strip/2019-04-05
Oh yeah, that will not go well when Siri and Alexa become self aware.
Oh yeah, that will not go well when Siri and Alexa become self aware.
The season arc of “Star Trek Discovery” concerns an AI which becomes self aware and decides to end all sentient life in the galaxy. Maybe Adams watches.
There are hints that the AI arc will be an origin story of The Borg.
“Amazon Plans to Offer Satellite-Powered Internet”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/367614/amazon-plans-to-offer-satellite-powered-internet
“Amazon’s Project Kuiper wants to serve ‘tens of millions’ of people who lack access to high-speed internet. But it could be years before the satellite-based broadband is actually available.”
“Amazon is entering the satellite-broadband race. It will launch 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit to bring high-speed, affordable internet across the world.”
Have you seen the movie “Wall*E” where the spaceship leaves the Earth and has to bust through the surrounding satellite layer ? Yup, we are heading there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-d8BJ2iljc
Oh yeah, that will not go well when Siri and Alexa become self aware.
The season arc of “Star Trek Discovery” concerns an AI which becomes self aware and decides to end all sentient life in the galaxy.
There are hints that the AI arc will be an origin story of The Borg.
I have passed on STD since I would have to subscribe to yet another internet channel.
@Rick
Thanks – I may take you up on it. I’ll look at the files this weekend and make a best guess. I don’t think I’ll change anything unless I have a high confidence it’s the right solution. I hate trying to help someone after they’ve spent a week making it worse.
I have passed on STD since I would have to subscribe to yet another internet channel.
I don’t have a CBS All Access subscription. There are ways …
The cable bill breached $70 just for the TV portion of the bill so I’ve served notice at our house that the cord cutting is imminent. One cable box is already gone from the living room.
CBS All Access carries ST:Discovery which I torrent. The current season is really good with Captain Pike. They are working in the original take on him.
One is generally more reluctant to talk about passing along STDs.
What a scam. I sold the Dodge two years ago. Today I get a bill from the toll road, somewhere around Georgetown where the toll road meets I-35. I think. SIXTEEN minutes on the phone talking to a pleasant lady.
I told her I filed on-line with DPS when I sold the car two years ago. That this isn’t the first time this has happened. Like talking to a wall.
So…. she pulls up the picture and says “it’s being towed, I see the little pink lights on it”. And then proceeds to look at the other picture and digs up the address of the tow company. I don’t have to pay. Not that I was going to. She transferred the bill to the towing company.
I suppose if the plates on front and back of a vehicle do not match, they do what? Assume a glitch and bill the plate that doesn’t have a toll tag?
Moral of the story is: Take the plates off when you sell a car.
I have all of my car tags since 1975.
In North Carolina you are required to turn in your license plates before you can cancel your vehicle insurance. The penalties are stiff for keeping the plate and having no insurance.
I was, not so obviously, aware of the grounding. Therefore, I will rephrase my previous: If the airplanes were released from grounding tomorrow, April 6, I would ride those of our, USA airlines, but not those of the airlines whose planes have crashed.
Clear enough?
In California, the plates go with the car, unless they are “special.” Of course, there are ways around this. Good luck.
”In North Carolina you are required to turn in your license plates before you can cancel your vehicle insurance. The penalties are stiff for keeping the plate and having no insurance.”
My situations involved getting a new plate, and of course having insurance all along.
I have been known to make a car buyer prove insurance and show tags and registration before handing over the keys.
Best for him to be insured. Best for seller to not still be on the registration or title.
Isn’t there some mechanism for scanning license plates for insurance information?
Soon they will know everything from your tags…
In TN tags stay with the person. When I have sold vehicles to individuals I take the plates off. Now it is the buyer’s problem.
“Trump unveils first section of new ‘anti-climb’ border wall and says ‘our country is full’ as he boasts 2 miles of 30-foot barriers and plans 400 more – after activists float giant diapered ‘baby Trump’ balloon in protest”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6890739/Trump-ramps-attacks-Democrats-ahead-border-visit.html
Ok, that wall does not look climbable. But a grenade or a heavy truck might make mincemeat of it.
I suppose if the plates on front and back of a vehicle do not match, they do what? Assume a glitch and bill the plate that doesn’t have a toll tag?
The whole point of the manual process is to look at the pictures and apply some common sense. Unfortunately, a lot of the work is farmed out overseas.
Unless the vehicles were split by the system, the bill would go to the toll tag.
Unfortunately, a lot of the work is farmed out overseas.
She sounded Texan with a bit of Spanish accent. Like what you hear at the grocery store.
When I sold my late sister’s Dodge, we turned the plates in at the tax collector’s office, as part of the process of filling out the paperwork. He was going to drive it, sans plate, to Mississippi, having all the sale paperwork in the front seat with him.
My wife and I are visiting my mother in Methodist Hospital here in the med center. She had hip replacement surgery last Tuesday and is not doing very well. My 80 year old father is worn out and we just sent him home to my brother’s house.
Mom is not getting up like she is suppose to due to dizziness and nausea. She does not want to eat or drink either. She was telling dad to call the cops earlier to take her home so she is a little loopy. She passed out yesterday and the rn caught her on the way down.
I figure that she has six weeks of hell that she hopefully will not remember. But that hip joint was totally gone. Mobility is everything and she is close to losing hers.
@lynn, that sucks. I hope it’s just due to anesthetic and not something else. I’m groggy as hell and not myself and I’m 30yrs younger than her, when I get up from anesthetic.
n
Dad is worried that she might have had an event but I think that she is exhausted and in severe pain. It is just going to take time.
In NY the plates need to be turned in before the insurance is cancelled. When we moved, I asked my son to do it for me. The end result of that was NY sending me a letter telling me my license was suspended. Good luck with that, because by that time I no longer had a NY license. At least my son still had the plates to turn in…
Well Lynn, at 80 your has a good chance of coming around. My mom broke her’s a month ago and spent 5 days in the hospital, had a replacement and has since been in a skilled nursing facility. At almost 92 and suffering from heart failure things do not look good. They discharged her and she is now home to spend her last days.
To top of my week I got up Thursday and within 30 minutes had intense abdominal pain. I now know all about kidney stones.
Not the best week.
Well Lynn, at 80 your has a good chance of coming around. My mom broke her’s a month ago and spent 5 days in the hospital, had a replacement and has since been in a skilled nursing facility. At almost 92 and suffering from heart failure things do not look good. They discharged her and she is now home to spend her last days.
To top of my week I got up Thursday and within 30 minutes had intense abdominal pain. I now know all about kidney stones.
Not the best week.
Sorry to hear that. But, your mom got to go home. Spending one’s last days at one’s home is preferable over a hospice or skilled nursing center.
BTW, according to my son and Jeff Foxworthy, kidney stones are freaking horrible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SANOaHmE-G8