Sat. June 1, 2019 – and so, another month gone

By on June 1st, 2019 in Random Stuff

71F and 99%RH.  Got a few drops of rain yesterday and some overcast.   It really looked like a storm coming a couple of times, but it never came for me.

Early start today because swim team is having a mock meet to do time trials for the kids and deck official training for the parent volunteers.  I’m a parent, and apparently I was volunteered.

Then a wrap up party for softball, then a party for my now 10 year old… busy long day ahead.

It would be nice if the forecast rain holds off, and it doesn’t get too hot today.

Weird that we still know few details of the ‘long time and current employee’ who murdered all those people in Virginia Beach.  Funny that there isn’t a picture at the top of the story by now.  That he used a ‘suppressed .45 handgun with extended magazines’ is pretty specific.  And REALLY unusual.

I better get moving.  Breakfast isn’t gonna cook itself.

n

43 Comments and discussion on "Sat. June 1, 2019 – and so, another month gone"

  1. Greg Norton says:

    Weird that we still know few details of the ‘long time and current employee’ who murdered all those people in Virginia Beach. Funny that there isn’t a picture at the top of the story by now. That he used a ‘suppressed .45 handgun with extended magazines’ is pretty specific. And REALLY unusual.

    Pick one or more: Non-white/male/straight

    Straight White Male would have been all over the media by now.

  2. Greg Norton says:

    My wife learned yesterday that her impending departure means notifying 3800 patients that they need to find a new doctor.

    A normal GP’s load is ~ 2000.

    This is the second clinic in five years we’ve had to teach about what is adequate compensation for her time in the wake of Obamacare passing. A 25% decrease from the original agreed upon income is not even remotely adequate. The last employer to try this is still looking for a replacement and subjects the patients to nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and (I’ve documented this before) pharmacists as primary care providers.

    The added wrinkle in Texas is how many ADD patients she has here. Jesus, what is in the water? Is it contagious?

    Wait until Medicare For All passes. A lot of people are going to get letters like the one my wife’s employer sent out to her patients this week.

  3. Greg Norton says:

    Well, as Dr. Pournelle used to say, Sooprise! The VA Beach shooter is not what the media wanted. All the Sunday shows have to reschedule the guest lists.

    Next will be the accusations that Fox News and other conservative outlets doctored the mug shot … whenever that appears … to make the suspect look “more black”.

    https://heavy.com/news/2019/05/dewayne-craddock/

  4. CowboySlim says:

    Pick one or more: Non-white/male/straight

    Straight White Male would have been all over the media by now.

    First name DeWayne, not Lars.

  5. Greg Norton says:

    First name DeWayne, not Lars.

    And the victims are a cross section: black, white, men, women, old, young. Random. This just won’t do for advancing the agenda.

    Better luck next mass shooting.

  6. MrAtoz says:

    I’d like to thank DeWayne for letting me enjoy my Whiteness. Mr. Nick/Greg called it. I wonder when some noob will go on Fox and talk about how Blacks kill more than their percentage of the population. That ought to burst some ProgTurd heads. The truth is always ugly.

  7. ~jim says:

    did anyone notice Leon Rebone died?

  8. Greg Norton says:

    did anyone notice Leon Rebone died?

    Yup. Who will be #2 and 3 this weekend?

  9. ~jim says:

    lol, Redbone….

    an ancient Kindle isn`t ideal.

  10. Greg Norton says:

    lol, Redbone….

    A lot of people my age remember the Budweiser commercials, but I also remember him from Saturday Night Live reruns. Anyone big in Chicago or Toronto in the early 70s appeared on SNL the first year, when appearing on the show was considered “risky”.

    It is a little sad that he is mostly remembered for the beer ads if anything. Could be worse, though, the Widow Orbison licensed one of Roy’s last songs to Target a few years ago.

  11. TV says:

    Leon Redbone has died…

    Always fond of Leon’s choice of music, attire and phrasing. I will miss him.

  12. Nick Flandrey says:

    Isn’t redbone some old timey racial nickname for mixed race? Or am I thinking of something else?

    I grew up in chicago and remember him from tv…

    n

  13. Larry McGinn says:

    Leon Redbone was a marvelously talented musician/entertainer. I have several of his albums (vinyl LPs) and I was once privileged to see him in person at the Birchmere in Alexandria VA. It was a wonderful evening. RIP, Mr. Redbone.

  14. JimB says:

    I saw Leon Redbone a couple of times on the Tonight Show. Definitely a character. Several years ago, I was at a community yard sale that we used to attend in Wrightwood, CA, and spotted four of his CDs. I treasure those, not only because of his performances, but also for the talented musicians and excellent production. May he RIP.

  15. Greg Norton says:

    Isn’t redbone some old timey racial nickname for mixed race? Or am I thinking of something else?

    I’m guessing it is a stage name. Redbone was from … Greece? Definitely Mediterranean.

    Lorne Michaels came from Toronto and brought a bunch of and acts down with him to fill that first season of SNL.

  16. ~jim says:

    kenny Rogers?

  17. ~jim says:

    Dolly Parton?

  18. Greg Norton says:

    Dolly Parton?

    Haven’t heard that possibility. She’s been actively expanding her theme park and planning the “9 to 5” sequel.

  19. lynn says:

    Wizard of Id: Frederick is always employee of the month
    https://www.gocomics.com/wizardofid/2019/06/01

    Yeek !

  20. lynn says:

    Spent 24 hours this week working on replacing more old metal halide lights in the warehouse with LED lights. 24 hours because that is how long the boom man lift rental period is. 2pm Wednesday to 2pm Thursday. Got three more lights replaced. Five down, thirteen to go.
    https://www.winsim.com/lynn_replacing_warehouse_top_light.jpg
    and
    https://www.winsim.com/lynn_in_corner_of_warehouse_wiring_new_outside_light.jpg

    I replaced the old dead 1,000 watt metal halide inside light with a 150 watt LED light. I will be using the 200 watt LED lights for the future inside light replacements for more light. The tenants are loving the new lights since eight or nine of them were dead already including all but one of the seven outside lights. And way cheaper to run and no ten minute startup time.

    Note that the office building inside the warehouse is two stories tall with over 1,000 ft2 of office, storage, and meeting space. Most of it is air conditioned with a kitchenette and a shower.

  21. lynn says:

    From @ech yesterday:

    Can anyone tell me what exactly China sells us that we can’t manufacture ourselves, or have made in some other lower wage country?

    China has built up a huge infrastructure of rapid response manufacturing. Some of the other Asian countries and a few in Eastern Europe could, and will, take up some of the slack, but overall it would take years and significant capital investment to replicate what they have.

    Yes, and most of that rapid response manufacturing uses slave labor that they force to work up to 100 hours per week. The days for slave labor are long past. The rest of the world realizes this now and is taking appropriate steps to punish China for their human rights violations.

  22. lynn says:

    “SpaceX Says Its 60 Starlink Satellites Are All Phoning Home (and Fading Out)”
    https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites-phone-home-dimming.html

    “The first 60 Starlink satellites have notched a number of important milestones since their launch to low-Earth orbit last Thursday (May 23), company representatives said.”

    “At this point, all 60 satellites have deployed their solar arrays successfully, generated positive power and communicated with our ground stations,” a SpaceX spokesperson said in an emailed update today (May 31). “Most are already using their onboard propulsion system to reach their operational altitude and have made initial contact using broadband phased-array antennas.””

    Cool ! Maybe we will have high bandwidth low latency satellite internet in a couple of years.

  23. Nick Flandrey says:

    wow, sixty of sixty is really good. I’d have thought they’d lose one or two…

    n

  24. Greg Norton says:

    Cool ! Maybe we will have high bandwidth low latency satellite internet in a couple of years.

    What bandwidth are they using?

  25. lynn says:

    Cool ! Maybe we will have high bandwidth low latency satellite internet in a couple of years.

    What bandwidth are they using?

    The name is Starlink:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellation)

    “the company intended to use the little-used V band of the communications spectrum”

  26. dkreck says:

    Lynn, are you sure all that equipment rental isn’t costing more than a couple of days of hiring an electrician? Add in you time…

  27. Ray Thompson says:

    Updated my computers to the latest version of W10, 1903. Surface Pro laptop did just fine and only took about 10 minutes. My desktop took over an hour and hung at 100%. A restart and everything seems to be OK. Wife’s computer got to 100%, she powered it off being impatient. Big mistake. System would no longer boot and all the recovery options failed. I have never had success with the recovery options so I don’t know why I even bother.

    Had to bare metal her system and load W10 from scratch. My digital license was apparently no longer good, or maybe it had to do with a different version of W10. Needed to scrounge up one my activation keys. I think she had W10 Home and I installed W10 pro. My mistake. But it worked. With Pro the permissions get in the way.

    Then I had to reinstall all the software, configure Outlook, and restore all her files. I use Acronis True Image and it was able to restore all her files, mostly pictures. Found out that during the restore Acronis apparently appends a funny string to the end of the extension, something like “~AB78517”. Scary when the restore is happening as none of the files you think should appear, appear. Only when the restore is done is the file changed to the true name.

    The last backup that was taken was no good and in typical vendor style the error message is worthless and gives no clue as to what is the problem with the backup. I do an incremental for five of the backups, then another full, with subsequent incrementals. Backups only occur once a week. I had to go back to April 21 to find a good backup so she lost a few files, mostly emails. Not a big deal. I keep the five most recent backups so I had a fall back.

  28. RickH says:

    @Ray

    Probably too late, but there is a way to reinstall Win10 and still save you programs/data. It’s somewhere in the googles/bings/ducks. It’s a MS tech note, as I recall.

    Daughter tried the process on her dying laptop. To no avail, though, it was a hard disk failure that was unrecoverable.

    Backups are good…

  29. Ray Thompson says:

    Probably too late, but there is a way to reinstall Win10 and still save you programs/data.

    I tried that option, no dice. I think something was really messed up in the boot code where the system would not boot properly and any attempt to install without losing data could not find Windows. Took twice as long to restore as the wife has multiple copies of the same picture in a dozen folders, repeated for thousands of pictures. Her sense of organization is mystifying at best.

    Not really a big deal. Probably a good time to bare metal the system anyway and get rid of the Dell crud that came with the system. It is about five years old and this is the first bare metal install.

    I have always been a believer in good backups. I run Norton backup and Acronis True Image on both systems. Thus I have two backups (but on the same backup device) that are scheduled weekly. Once a month I copy all the files from her system and my system to an external drive that I keep separate. Really critical files are stored on OneDrive and Dropbox and are copied nightly.

    Acronis is a pretty good program. Allowed me to clone a spinning platter to SSD and does all my backups and restores. Does a full backup every 5th incremental and gets rid of the old backup files. Requires very little attention and just works. I recommend the program.

    For backing up multiple machines I have Backup For Workgroups. A nifty little program that can backup from multiple machines to a single device on one of the machines. Duplicate files are merely pointers to the original file. Allows retention of multiple generations and even deleted files for a period the user specifies.

    When I was working I backed up four servers to a single USB drive connected to one server. The other servers communication with that server and copied the files over the network to the main storage server. Easy to restore individual files, even older versions. Highly recommended if one has multiple machines to backup.

  30. Nick Flandrey says:

    Aesop has his monthly ebola roundup–

    https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2019/06/june-ebola-update.html

    tl:dr – looks like they’re losing control of it over there, expect to see it somewhere/everywhere. If it gets to S or C america, we’re well and truly F’d. Only avoidance is practical. Expect modern medicine to collapse. Society too.

    Again, I can’t fault the conclusions given his assumptions. He’s much closer to the front lines than anyone else I know.

    n

  31. lynn says:

    Lynn, are you sure all that equipment rental isn’t costing more than a couple of days of hiring an electrician? Add in you time…

    The one quote that I got was $700 each for the four outside corner lights (a total of $2,800). The other guy I tried to get a quote from wanted me to just get a boom man lift for a week for him plus his time so I never got a clear number from him. He and I did rewire my office building about 2 or 3 years ago so I could get the electric heat on the north side working.

    I bought the 150 watt LED light fixtures for $125 each at Big River. I have rented the boom man lift twice, once at $372 and the last time at $300. Plus I bought $200 of stainless nuts and bolts. A total of $1,372 plus 130 miles on my truck. And I have a boatload of stainless nuts and bolts left. And I got a fifth light fixture installed as a part of those two boom lift rentals.

    Nope, I am not factoring in my time as I am enjoying performing the physical work. Even with my screwups. Everything in life is a learning experience. Especially the ones that you survive.

  32. lynn says:

    When I was working I backed up four servers to a single USB drive connected to one server. The other servers communication with that server and copied the files over the network to the main storage server. Easy to restore individual files, even older versions. Highly recommended if one has multiple machines to backup.

    I run three online backups at the office (internal drives each night using robocopy to mirror the client drives). Plus one backup to a rotating usb drive of seven each Friday night.

  33. Nick Flandrey says:

    wrapping up my long day.

    I’m clearly not fully recovered from my previous heat injury. I was hoping that enough time had gone by that I wouldn’t be so sensitive but even in the shade and wearing my cool vest, today was a misery.

    Escape room birthday bash went off well. 11 ten year old girls excited out of their minds make a LOT of noise in a confined space. They were pretty quick on the puzzles and we ALMOST made it out of the scenario on time. Fun times.

    Now I need a shower and a long night of sleep.

    I think I’ll post on auto for tomorrow morning, and hope for no more ebola news. I’m convinced, it’s time to get serious about having the ability to stay home for a couple of months.

    The shooter in VA had a suppressor? hmm, then it wasn’t a spur of the moment event, as Denninger points out at market-ticker.org I’ll believe it when I see it. And maybe not even then. Others have pointed out, if you want one, time isn’t gonna get any better than tomorrow to get started on getting one.

    and now, off to bed.

    n

  34. lynn says:

    https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2019/06/june-ebola-update.html

    tl:dr – looks like they’re losing control of it over there, expect to see it somewhere/everywhere. If it gets to S or C america, we’re well and truly F’d. Only avoidance is practical. Expect modern medicine to collapse. Society too.

    Dude, that scared me. So does this:

    “And we repeat, as the virus doesn’t kill overnight, the correct death ratio number, we pound home, is not the WHO/Wikistupidia math-retarded posted lie of 65% of dead vs. infected, it’s those dead now vs. number infected 21 days ago, which gives a consistent and far more reliable lethality percentage around 75%.”

    “USAMRIID and CDC refer to that level of lethality as a “slate-wiper”; it erases populations.”

  35. lynn says:

    I was hoping that enough time had gone by that I wouldn’t be so sensitive but even in the shade and wearing my cool vest, today was a misery.

    I could have used a cool vest this week in and around the warehouse. I was pouring off the sweat. You know, I was also testing myself to see if I could take the heat and work load, especially after the two heart attacks (2009 and 2013 ?) and heart surgery last year. But, I did take plenty of breaks in air conditioned space and drink lots of water.

  36. Nick Flandrey says:

    We’ll see if I feel out of it and hung over all day tomorrow. I had a moment of dizzy at about 11 this morning, and decided to sit down. I did get out of my deck position and will be either doing the job after sunset, or not at all. I’m really better used running facility issues during meets anyway.

    My vest was dry by 1130. I think I will order a couple of spares just in case.

    n

  37. lynn says:

    “Bienvenido a Reality, Cabrón”
    https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2019/05/bienvenido-reality-cabron.html

    Oh my, now that is a meme. There is a picture there of Lucille, and the caption “play ball with Mr. Trump or he shoves the bat up your posterior orifice”.

    “(BAJA SH*THOLIA) President Trump on Thursday evening announced that a 5% tariff will be imposed on all Mexican imports beginning June 10th and will gradually increase until the illegal immigration stops.”

    This is a great illustration of how serious this stuff is. Trump and his supporters (me !) are tired of this nonsense. Many of us feel like the Mexican government is play footsie with the USA with illegal immigrants. I would not play footsie wearing size 5 ballerina shoes against size 12 steel toed workboots.

  38. lynn says:

    “Quoted For Truth”
    https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2019/05/quoted-for-truth.html

    “And with one flowchart, he undid the last 40 years of Guns&Ammo, Guns, Gun Digest, twenty-seven lesser rags, two FBI weapons selection tests, and the last three military attempts to find a new standard service pistol…”

    See the flowchart, especially the last item.

  39. Greg Norton says:

    Not really a big deal. Probably a good time to bare metal the system anyway and get rid of the Dell crud that came with the system. It is about five years old and this is the first bare metal install.

    My recent vintage ThinkPad never ran right until I did a clean install of Windows 10 Pro.

    Time Machine backups are one of the reasons that our personal “mission critical” laptops have been Macs. However, now that the Apple machines are designed to be essentially disposable, I’ll have to rethink that policy.

  40. Greg Norton says:

    https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2019/06/june-ebola-update.html

    tl:dr – looks like they’re losing control of it over there, expect to see it somewhere/everywhere. If it gets to S or C america, we’re well and truly F’d. Only avoidance is practical. Expect modern medicine to collapse. Society too.

    Of bugs to worry about crossing the border, I’d put Ebola pretty far down the list. Antibiotic resistant staph and TB are a lot more common and easily spread. Ebola has a really short incubation period and requires contact with blood to spread.

    Except for where we’ve mucked about too much recently (cough … Venezuela … cough), civilization has a much better grip in Central and South America than Africa. If Eblola gets into the country, it will most likely be through JFK … or IAC! Some clueless health worker will bring it back unaware.

  41. Greg Norton says:

    The subject of Florida reactors came up the other day. Everyone in that corner of FL will be happy to see this plant gone, especially customers of Duke Energy.

    https://www.tampabay.com/business/duke-energy-florida-asks-to-speed-up-crystal-river-nuclear-decommissioning-20190601/

  42. nick flandrey says:

    Well, up and moving. Feel a bit slow today, but not terrible. Get some food and coffee in me and see how that helps.

    n

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