Thur. Aug. 1, 2019 – oh damn, school starts in a couple of weeks..

By on August 1st, 2019 in Random Stuff

Supposed to rain today, I guess we’ll see. Hot humid and sunny yesterday, cooler in the evening. House stayed hot though.

Didn’t watch the second debate. Heard about 6 minutes in 30 second bits. Healthcare, evil corps, poor unfortunates, blah blah blah. “We’re doing what orangeman wants! Stop!” Whatever. Republic is dead, we’re just dancing around in the skin.

I’ve been exchanging email with the school coordinator for the volunteering I do with them. Looks like I’ll be doing 2 days a month instead of one, and 2 different programs this year. Starting WAY too soon.

This little lappy is one I put together as a possible chromebook for my daughter. It never worked with chromeOS so I put win7 on it. She got a current model chromebook for christmas (convertable slate, major manufacturer.) It sat on my shelf until I grabbed it for this trip. It gets good battery life, is only a BIT too small for my hands, and is SLOW AS MOLASSES.

I’ve been chipping away at WHY it’s so slow. Previously I’d stopped some process the googles recommended stopping, that will occasionally do something stupid like logging changes in a log file to that log file, ad infinitum. That helped. Shutting down MS update got my CPU cycles back in line. Killing file indexer (normally one of the first things I do, don’t know how I missed that) helped. And yet, browsing was PAINFULLY slow. Turns out it was AVG and Safebrowsing that was killing that. Got rid of SafeBrowsing, then got rid of AVG. If this is my machine I don’t need either. Added AdblockPlus and uBlockOrigin. Web pages finally load about like I expect.

It will never have enough onboard ram, limit is 2gig and it has that. I’ll look at adding a USB drive internally and turning on whatever win7 used to make that stick of memory usable for speeding up the system. I read some online articles about that in the dim recesses of time, when this machine would have been new. I put an SSD in it when I rebuilt it, so that’s already done. Any further changes have to be quick and easy, as this is not a daily driver or even a high priority machine. I have 2 other lappys set up for work, so this is basically just a stock bare machine for taking on trips or out of the house on non-critical stuff. Or I end up using it for ham radio, or giving it away. In any case, not worth much time, or attention, but would be nice to improve it on the cheap.

Now, off to see what we’ll be doing today. I’m pretty sure I’ll find a way to learn something.

n

38 Comments and discussion on "Thur. Aug. 1, 2019 – oh damn, school starts in a couple of weeks.."

  1. Greg Norton says:

    It will never have enough onboard ram, limit is 2gig and it has that.

    Intel forced obsolescence. I had to ditch a perfectly fine (in terms of performance) Atom board in my home server because of the arbitrary 2 GB limit. 2010 — not very old.

    The netbook/lightweight desktop craze from a decade ago has resulted in a lot of unusable hardware floating around as surplus since the memory constraints were insane even when the machines were new.

    Try booting an iso of 32 bit Linux Mint Xfce 19.1 and see how far you get before giving up in frustration.

  2. Nick Flandrey says:

    IIRC it was a devils bargain between the manfs who were not selling much gear at the time, and MS who wanted to move everyone to a more resource hungry os than win98/winxp. Ie. sell your cheap hardware, but don’t put xp on it. (and nobody will be happy, then we BOTH can upsell them)

    If you stop most of the website bump and flash, and try not to multitask, it’s not a bad little machine. The screen is actually very nice. The battery life is awesome for the day. The keyboard is kidsize but has enough key travel that you can actually type on it if you just cramp your fingers, like keeping your elbows in while eating on a plane. Most of the problems come from windows task switching, or the need for a page file. WTF did we need a pagefile with 2G of ram? That’s more than giant machines had previous to that. It’s the same size and weight as the bluetooth keyboard and tablet combo, with better browser compatibility and we’re in the same place all week, so I’m not carrying it around.

    n

  3. dkreck says:

    If you stop most of the website bump and flash,

    Speaking of, I’m mostly using Chrome browser and Ad Block Plus but many sites are insisting you turn off the ad block. Most I just leave but sometimes I cave because I really want to read it. SFGate and dailycaller are two examples that do this but both are often intolerable with adds.
    Yesterday I brought up DC on firefox with abp and noscript. Well without scripts running it was unable to detect if an adblocker was running. No pics on the front page which is a plus too and they do come up on the individual articles.
    So much better.

  4. Greg Norton says:

    IIRC it was a devils bargain between the manfs who were not selling much gear at the time, and MS who wanted to move everyone to a more resource hungry os than win98/winxp. Ie. sell your cheap hardware, but don’t put xp on it. (and nobody will be happy, then we BOTH can upsell them)

    After OLPC made magazine covers, execs got real unhappy about lugging 5-6 lb laptops around to “take care of email” while kids in Africa had 2 lb hardware capable of the same thing, and the manufacturers obliged with the stopgap machines which should have been sufficient until Kaby Lake hit and truly enabled size/weight shrinks starting around 2005.

    Unfortunately, 2 GB is not sufficient to surf pr0n or do online shopping with highly interactive sites, both true exec requirements that no one wants to admit since no one is supposed to do that with their “work” laptops.

  5. Greg Norton says:

    Yesterday I brought up DC on firefox with abp and noscript. Well without scripts running it was unable to detect if an adblocker was running. No pics on the front page which is a plus too and they do come up on the individual articles.
    So much better.

    We’re rapidly reaching the point where pages won’t work without JavaScript enabled. Even HTML 5 is too limited for most people.

    Just wait until the combination of Emscripten and WebAssembly starts seeing more widespread use to improve interactivity.

  6. lynn says:

    “FBCSO: Man fatally shot ex-girlfriend’s family members, himself near Rosenberg”
    http://www.fox26houston.com/home/fatal-shooting-leaves-2-dead-1-injured-in-fort-bend-county-fbcso-says

    Well, my neck of the woods don’t look so good now.

    And if you need to off your relatives, off yourself first. You are going to do it anyway.

  7. Nick Flandrey says:

    At home I run no script and have to enable it for sites in order for them to work. Some just get a blank page. some warning that JavaScript needs to be enabled.

    Some only load three scripts and you think hey that’s easy enough to enable . Then they load 40 more.

    N

  8. Nick Flandrey says:

    About to get on a boat for an Audubon cruise.

    Should be fun.

  9. lynn says:

    From @nick yesterday:

    Daughter 1 has been getting weirder about food lately. I’m going to have to start looking for root causes.

    One explanation is that Junior High girls are vicious. They find another girl who is a little bit self conscious and start telling them that they are fat, stupid, bad hair, etc, etc, etc. Girls are undergoing so many body changes at that point that the lies become self reinforcing real quick. My wife home-schooled our daughter during junior high (middle school) because of this.

  10. lynn says:

    BC: snake hips
    https://www.gocomics.com/bc/2019/08/01

    Mine goes to the belly.

  11. lynn says:

    “Andrew Yang on Climate: Humanity Is Doomed and We Need to Move to Higher Ground”
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/andrew-yang-on-climate-humanity-is-doomed-and-we-need-to-move-to-higher-ground

    “The outsider 2020 candidate says it’s “too late” to worry about preventing climate change and we should instead focus efforts on preparing people for disaster.”

    We are all going to die.

  12. Dave says:

    Around here school starts tomorrow. Unless you’re a teach in which case it started today

  13. ayj says:

    gentleman

    some of you have garage estate sales, have you seen this? I am looking for
    Orcam MyEye 1.0 version 8 system for blind & seriously vision impaired

    this is for my mother, who has maculopathy

    thanks

  14. Greg Norton says:

    “The outsider 2020 candidate says it’s “too late” to worry about preventing climate change and we should instead focus efforts on preparing people for disaster.”

    We are all going to die.

    In his morning podcast today, in his segment featuring debate analysis, I heard Ted O’Baxter (Bill O’Reilly) state that the idiot Castro brother proposed giving citizenship to every illegal who does not have a criminal background.

    Is this true? I haven’t seen that analysis or even a direct quote anywhere else.

    I can believe it coming from the scion of LaRaza, but I’d like another source besides O’Baxter.

  15. ITGuy1998 says:

    School starts here on Monday. This morning, we stopped to get my son some shoes after an early Dr. appt. He picked out a pair of Nike’s (my preferred brand too). I thought for a moment, and asked him if he would pick out another brand. After explaining to him about Kapernitwit, he said sure. Will Nike suffer a bit from us not buying those shoes? Of course not. But, if everyone did it, then maybe…

  16. MrAtoz says:

    Maybe Fidel Jr. said it on the side or hot mic. I haven’t heard anything.

    I still believe Sleepy Plugs will get the nomination. The Progs haven’t dug deep enough in the Dumbo structure to get Crazy Eyes or any of the nut roots from last night as President in 2020/2024.

    I wouldn’t mind too much if Plugs became President. He will slide to the middle and might even get some good stuff done. He knows single payer will only work if everybody is taxed.

    I wonder how Congress will change in their next election cycle. One can only hope there will be and extra bar maid in 2020.

  17. MrAtoz says:

    LOL! The Daily Mail is all over the Google Orgy in Sicily. Celebs just can’t pass up a free orgy. Climate Change my ass. Naomi Campbell is my go to for climate science. Private jets, giant yachts, luxury accommodations, meals, etc.

    Google 2020! “A private jet in every garage!”

  18. MrAtoz says:

    I still believe Sleepy Plugs will get the nomination. The Progs haven’t dug deep enough in the Dumbo structure to get Crazy Eyes or any of the nut roots from last night as President in 2020/2024.

    Or not. Even Obola crony Axelrod is sticking it to Plugs. A few more shots and Plugs might stroke out. Or shoot himself in the back of the head. Multiple times.

  19. Greg Norton says:

    Looking around for confirmation of O’Baxter’s statement, I saw this:

    https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/455702-michael-moore-urges-michelle-obama-to-run-against-trump

    U. of Chicago … Dean? Did I miss something. I thought Moochelle’s only job after law school was a patronage gig at a city hospital.

    Update: Ok, the hospital gig was related to U. of Chicago, but she wasn’t a Dean.

  20. CowboySlim says:

    And if you need to off your relatives, off yourself first. You are going to do it anyway.

    Yes, I approve of self-inflicted, retroactive, birth control.

  21. lynn says:

    LOL! The Daily Mail is all over the Google Orgy in Sicily. Celebs just can’t pass up a free orgy. Climate Change my ass. Naomi Campbell is my go to for climate science. Private jets, giant yachts, luxury accommodations, meals, etc.

    Google 2020! “A private jet in every garage!”

    “The $20million climate change party: How Camp Google racked up an 800-tonne carbon footprint flying ‘hypocritical’ celebrities to environmental talking shop on 114 private jets to watch Coldplay and hang out on mega-yachts”
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7311015/Google-splashes-20million-Italian-climate-change-party.html

  22. lynn says:

    “Rep. Elijah Cummings’ Baltimore Home Burglarized, Police Say”
    https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2019/08/01/break-in-reported-at-rep-elijah-cummings-house/

    Yup, looks like he is infested.

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

  23. Greg Norton says:

    “Rep. Elijah Cummings’ Baltimore Home Burglarized, Police Say”

    Yup, looks like he is infested.

    My liberal friends who *live in Maryland* call Baltimore “The Pit Of Despair”.

  24. Nick Flandrey says:

    @ayj, I often see vision systems for people with issues. I will look at your link when I get home. Im sure that I’ve seen something like it. At the moment I only have a radio for hearing books read out loud that i’m sure only works in the US, and a sort of copy machine that uses special paper fo make copies with a raised texture.

  25. Nick Flandrey says:

    In recent auctions, I’ve seen braille printers, and book readers.

    I haven’t bought anything because my aunt with vision problems died.

    N

  26. lynn says:

    Maybe Fidel Jr. said it on the side or hot mic. I haven’t heard anything.

    I still believe Sleepy Plugs will get the nomination. The Progs haven’t dug deep enough in the Dumbo structure to get Crazy Eyes or any of the nut roots from last night as President in 2020/2024.

    I wouldn’t mind too much if Plugs became President. He will slide to the middle and might even get some good stuff done. He knows single payer will only work if everybody is taxed.

    I wonder how Congress will change in their next election cycle. One can only hope there will be and extra bar maid in 2020.

    The columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr. has totally sold out for Julian Castro. To the point that one wonders …
    https://www.expressnews.com/opinion/commentary/article/America-s-dialogue-on-race-has-become-a-14202257.php

    I am fairly sure that Plugs will be the dumbocrats 2020 nominee. I also am fairly sure that Trump will carry 40+ states in the ultimate poll in the USA known as a federal election in 2020.

    The bar maid is rocking an favorable rating of 22% in her district. Normally, that would be the kiss of death for any swamp creature. But, I suspect that she will be re-elected.
    https://www.businessinsider.com/democratic-group-leaked-poll-unfavorable-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-2019-7

  27. Greg Norton says:

    The bar maid is rocking an favorable rating of 22% in her district. Normally, that would be the kiss of death for any swamp creature. But, I suspect that she will be re-elected.

    The cocktail waitress may re-elected once but NY will lose at least two seats after the Census., and she will have to negotiate with the party to keep her seat in the redistricting heading into 2022.

    She’s actually in more trouble without the citizenship question on the Census. TX and CA stand to gain extra seats at NY’s expense without that question on the form.

  28. Greg Norton says:

    I am fairly sure that Plugs will be the dumbocrats 2020 nominee. I also am fairly sure that Trump will carry 40+ states in the ultimate poll in the USA known as a federal election in 2020.

    I don’t think the nominee is in the race yet.

    Veep? That’s easy. Robert Francis in an attempt to carry Texas without being a threat to the nominee.

  29. lynn says:

    I am fairly sure that Plugs will be the dumbocrats 2020 nominee. I also am fairly sure that Trump will carry 40+ states in the ultimate poll in the USA known as a federal election in 2020.

    I don’t think the nominee is in the race yet.

    Veep? That’s easy. Robert Francis in an attempt to carry Texas without being a threat to the nominee.

    “Michael Moore urges Michelle Obama to run against Trump”
    https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/455702-michael-moore-urges-michelle-obama-to-run-against-trump

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

  30. Greg Norton says:

    “Michael Moore urges Michelle Obama to run against Trump”

    I linked that above.

    Her running would certainly tie Trump’s hands. I still believe Joan Rivers was on to something about Moochelle being trans, and Rivers paid the ultimate price.

    Rivers was one of the smartest women who ever worked in TV/movies. Her husband’s ambition cost her the “Tonight Show”, but there are many layers to that story. I don’t think she was kidding about Moochelle.

    However, if Moochelle 2020 was in the works, Jeri Ryan wouldn’t be back on TV much less in her iconic role which couldn’t be recast easily.

    (Maybe Seven of Nine gets bumped off early in “Picard”, but the fans would flip.)

    It is a shame that Roseanne wasn’t more restrained in her language going after Valerie Jarrett. That witch is the real power behind the Obamas, and she needed to be taken down in the realm of public opinon.

    Now, Jarrett is a sympathetic figure, above criticism.

  31. Nick Flandrey says:

    We saw the helicopters and activity this afternoon while we were on the harbor boat learning about the sea life, and letting the kids handle it. No idea what it was about.

    Another Kennedy dead.

    Had no idea there was even a new generation of hyphenated Kennedys.

    n

  32. Nick Flandrey says:

    I thought for a minute we were at peak trans insanity when I saw this somewhat encouraging report–

    “Mario Lopez returns to host Extra after skipping an appearance amid controversy over his comments on transgender children – as #IStandWithMario trends on Twitter

    Mario Lopez returned Thursday after skipping Extra Wednesday amid backlash
    No one in Mario Lopez’s camp knew how they would spin his June remarks about transgender children on the Candace Owens podcast, a source said Wednesday
    He had suggested it was ‘dangerous’ for parents of transgender children to support their offspring’s transition and received a public backlash
    The Extra host’s people ‘told him to make a public apology, stat!’, an insider said
    A source added Lopez is now ‘more than aware of how bad this could be for him’
    Comedian Terrance K Willams started #IStandWithMario and many chimed in
    Owens has refused to apologize, called liberals bullies and seemingly compared the issue to child abuse in Thursday tweets
    Donald Trump Jr, Piers Morgan and other conservatives came to Lopez’s defense
    Extra brought in GLAAD director and an expert on trans youth development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, as Lopez was inexplicably absent from TV ”

    —- then I saw this:

    “Boy, nine, makes his drag queen debut
    after first experimenting with makeup and heels at TWO-years-old

    Vincent Garcia, from California, made drag debut at Los Angeles Pride in June
    He had become inspired to follow in the footsteps of RuPaul’s Drag Race stars
    Mother Elizabeth encourages parents to allow children to express themselves”
    Says she’s proud of her ‘amazing strong’ son who knows ‘ exactly who he is'”

    Cleansing fire.

    n

  33. Greg Norton says:

    Vincent Garcia, from California, made drag debut at Los Angeles Pride in June
    He had become inspired to follow in the footsteps of RuPaul’s Drag Race stars
    Mother Elizabeth encourages parents to allow children to express themselves”
    Says she’s proud of her ‘amazing strong’ son who knows ‘ exactly who he is’”

    Cleansing fire.

    Watch the current crop of popular anime shows some time. I half joke that the contestants on Ru Paul’s Drag Race are a lot more masculine than any of the male characters on the modern Japanese cartoons.

  34. Greg Norton says:

    Had no idea there was even a new generation of hyphenated Kennedys.

    Old Joe’s bootlegging fortune is pretty much gone at this point, but the grandkids and great grandkids married well.

    The general public wants that Camelot story.

  35. Nick Flandrey says:

    Half the general public couldn’t tell you what Camelot is or meant. Like Elvis or the Beetles, time is running out for the Kennedys.

    We are creatures of habit. Just today, FIL said the Dow went up 300, then back down. 300 used to be a big move, now it’s just noise in the signal. But LOTS of us remember when 300 meant something.

    Same with Hummel figurines, Elvis, the Beatles, and a host of popular culture things. On the boat today I made a joke that one of the shelled creatures brought to the surface for our amusement was named “Lawrence” because it was a whelk……. The old guy I said it to got it, but I bet less than 5% of the other passengers would have. Within 20 years everyone that would get it will be gone, certainly within 40… and elvis will be like Glenn Miller.

    n

  36. Greg Norton says:

    Within 20 years everyone that would get it will be gone, certainly within 40… and elvis will be like Glenn Miller.

    Maybe not Elvis with Priscilla and Lisa Marie wringing out as much from the estate as possible while Riley Keough and the other grandkids wait for their turn.

    Lisa Marie is my age. Riley, the oldest grandchild is 30 and has fame in her own right as an actress. I figure Elvis has another 50 years in him, maybe more.

    Other acts aren’t so … er … fortunate. I had to explain to the young’n’s at work the travesty of what the Widow Orbison did to ol’ Roy by selling the signature song of his posthumous comeback to Tar-jay.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbUM_2Vn32I

  37. ayj says:

    thanks Nick

  38. Ray Thompson says:

    I am starting to get really ticked off at some of the services that are run in the cloud.

    Specifically I am naming ARLO. My security cameras are that brand. I have a couple of videos from one of the cameras that I need to see. There was activity last night around the pool and I want to see that activity. However, I am unable to log into my Arlo account to view the videos. Credentials are not recognized.

    What is worse is that support is saying it is due to my AV software. Hmmm, never been a problem before. Disabled AV, still does not work. Cannot log in from my iPhone or iPad. Support still says it is my issue. Went to change the password. Nope. Tried to use the same password and their system says I cannot use it because it matches the existing password. Thus the password is correct.

    Jerks in support still say it is an issue with my system. Too lazy to actually check and are just reading from a script. The last line in the script probably says to to go back to step 8 in the script, the one just before having the client reboot all their systems.

    I really need a service that I can access remotely. Running cables for power and signal is not an option due to the needed locations for the cameras.

Comments are closed.