81F and 96%RH this am. This is the time of year we set the thermostat lower than we’d like, and have it colder in the house in the morning. Over the course of the day, the AC can’t quite keep up, even with the cold start, and by late afternoon, it’s a few degrees hotter than we’d like. Oversizing the AC system can help with this, and there are ways to make the oversized system fairly efficient. Additional air sealing and insulation helps too. We haven’t done any of those things. It’s just a short period of time, and the cheapest solution is to do nothing…
@Brad said this yesterday– “After the gun confiscations, it’ll be knives next. Just like the UK …Taking away one of the basic tools of civilization. ” He nailed it. It goes even further though. The process of ‘civilization’ was literally the process of living in cities. It’s the process of developing rule of law, so that people can believe that if someone wrongs them, they don’t have to do something about it themselves, the city/the law/the people who govern will address the issue. Specialization, improvements in agriculture, and other factors contributed, but learning how to live right next to someone from outside your clan was an important step.
And they are taking that away as fast as they can- killing civilization. You don’t even need equality before the law, you just need to know what the law is, and HOW the law will be applied. The stupid bastards are breaking that by making it impossible to know or follow all the laws, and by wildly inconsistent application of the law. They’ve been doing it for decades, but we are now reaping the whirlwind.
n
RE: Overworking the AC
We have a rental that has an undersized AC. We were quoted $5000+ to upgrade. My son went on-line and did some research. He found a system that sprays a mist on the compressor coils whenever the unit is activated. It was about $150 so we tried it out. Amazingly enough it worked. It cut compressor usage from 100% to about 85% in the height of summer and made the house noticeably cooler. My only complaint was that the components were flimsy and I expect it to fail after a year or two. But it easily paid for itself in the first couple of months. When we move to the Bogey house, I will look for a similar unit for our compressor down there.
This phone is nuts. First a 718 Mb update. Then a couple in the 71 to 73 Mb range. When it stated on a 950 Mb update, I went to bed.
That installed this morning. Plus a couple more in the 70 to 74 Mb range. I think I’ve lost count.
Oops! Another update is on the way. 2007.3 Mb. Now it’s going to Android 8. Oreo. I may not be at the Verizon store when they open this morning.
Well, might as well break it right away if updates will break it.
The water spray on the compressor coils? Might want to check water hardness.
May not matter.
This has not been a good week for family health.
MIL who was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer last month, started chemo yesterday and had a heart attack in the process. She survived, but now they are re-evaluating her ability at 84 to survive chemo.
And my daughter-in-law wasn’t feeling well when she woke yesterday but went into work anyway. Her co-workers immediately noticed her slurred speech and facial issues and rushed her to hospital. She had suffered a TIA, mini-stroke, and is now home resting and recovering. My wife had a couple of TIA incidents around her first heart attack a couple of decades ago. They resulted in memory loss. There are holes in her memory you could drive a semi through. We will be discussing things we have done and she will turn to me and say “I have no memory of that”. It’s kind of scary. At first I started to doubt my own recollection until I found that this is a side effect of TIA.
@harold, that sucks. At least they recognized a problem and got her help.
I’ll light a candle…
n
81F and 96%RH this am. This is the time of year we set the thermostat lower than we’d like, and have it colder in the house in the morning. Over the course of the day, the AC can’t quite keep up, even with the cold start, and by late afternoon, it’s a few degrees hotter than we’d like. Oversizing the AC system can help with this, and there are ways to make the oversized system fairly efficient. Additional air sealing and insulation helps too. We haven’t done any of those things. It’s just a short period of time, and the cheapest solution is to do nothing…
Oversizing usually results in the dehumidification not being adequate and @Lynn can better speak to the way the curves look when trying to reduce temperature beyond a certain point. without removing humidity (I made a ‘C’ in Thermo and considered myself lucky). A good contractor will put in the right sized system and tweak for comfort with a decent programmable thermostat, remote sensors, and duct baffles.
Is everyone in your house on the same page with regard to opening windows between April and October? That is usually the biggest source of humidity in the house in places like Houston or Tampa this time of year.
*Everybody* has to be on the same page, even if it is a family or marital issue to open the discussion. Science is science.
Growing up outside Tampa, my father used to be a bully about the issue of popping open the windows in his bedroom at night. He grew up in GA without AC and couldn’t sleep without the white noise. Of course, we had humidity/cooling issues in the house and $250 power bills in the 80s.
They hate America so they’re killing it by every means possible.
It’s not quite the case that a high-trust society is a sine qua non of civilization, but it’s close. And a high-trust society is the only way to progress as rapidly as we have. Whether you’re talking about science and technology, economic institutions, or the concept of human rights, the US made more progress in a couple of centuries than China or the Middle East did in their vaunted six millennia of civilization.
And the “progressives” are bored and realize they’re useless, so they want to destroy it.
And the “progressives” are bored and realize they’re useless, so they want to destroy it.
A lot of Millennials are still dependent on parental cashflow and thus don’t understand the concept of earning a living without a subsidy.
Heck, I know a lot of people my age still dependent on checks from the folks for their lifestyle, even with six figure household incomes.
As the Boomers retire and burn off what is left of the last real household wealth they inherited from the WWII generation, everyone on the dole is going to start looking for a new benefactor, regardless of cost to society.
The thing is: I understand why people panic about guns. It’s not the guns, of course. It’s something social/cultural: the increasing divisiveness, fanned by the media, plus the search for clicks that splashes every drop of blood (from anywhere in the world) across the whole Internet. But guns are the convenient scapegoat.
This week, Swiss evening news is spending about 10 minutes from every broadcast visiting the different “happiest countries” and talking to people about why life there is good. This sticks out, because it is incredibly rare: No bloodshed, no ramping up of tensions – just “why is life good”. Usually, we have the same fare as anywhere else: crimes, political tensions, etc. Positive journalism, what a concept – we need more of this…
Reminds me of Paul Harvey, rest his soul.
I have been on the phone with Comcast for several calls totaling almost 5 hours. I was livid and ready to throw all their equipment in the trash. Finally a service call was scheduled to have a tech check the line to the house as may have a noise filter that is causing problems. That was scheduled for tomorrow.
In the meantime I thought I would do all the usual stuff, change cables, put a gig switch in between the modem and the router to make certain the ports were connected at gig speeds. Checked firmware levels, etc.
Then I connected my computer to the modem directly. Boom, 280 meg down and 20 up, what I was supposed to be getting. So back to the router.
Replaced another cable from the router to the desktop, replaced the cable with a shorter cable to the modem. Still slow on my computer. Checked wife’s computer, same result. Thus router is the issue, a Netgear R7000 with is supposed to support gig speeds.
Nothing in the router was unusual. Recycled the router and the modem. Same problem. Never suspected the router as an issue as when I changed my plans my speed dropped from 180 down to about 115 down. Thus I know the router is good.
So back to the drawing board. A web search reveals little except to install DD-WRT which I am not going to do as the chance for bricking the router is significant.
Back to all the settings in the router. Boom, found the answer. Access Control is turned, why I don’t know. Apparently this causes an extremely slowdown in the router traffic, as in an almost unusable slowdown for fast connections. Turned that off and I am not getting 280 down and 20 up, which is the plan I have with Comcast.
Access control is only for controlling devices on my network and being able to deny certain devices. Not real useful in my opinion.
So I hang my head in shame. The drop in speed confused me. Comcast was not at fault, it was the router, my equipment that was at fault. An obscure setting that radically affects the performance of the router. I don’t know why connecting a different modem made the speeds drop.
Living in the UK, we found the natives were literally terrified of guns and couldn’t understand why anyone would ever even touch one. They accepted regular property crime as normal and warned us to expect our car to be broken into or stolen and our house burgled. Then we moved to Hong Kong and the Chinese had a very different view. They din’t care about guns one way or the other but wouldn’t accept ANY property crime. After that we moved to New Zealand and were surprised to find guns an accepted part of society and very little crime outside gang violence in specific areas. The Boy Scouts had shooting competitions and sound suppressors were legal. I find it bizarre to see how quickly their government followed the desires of the Christchurch shooter who said they would use his carnage as an excuse to ban guns and they quickly did. Sensible legislation would have been to prevent crazy Australians easy access to firearms in New Zealand. But they don’t have a history of self defense enshrined in their founding documents.
Then I connected my computer to the modem directly. Boom, 280 meg down and 20 up, what I was supposed to be getting. So back to the router.
I never connect a Windows machine directly to a cable/DSL modem. Bad things can happen if the security patches are not current, and, often, even if the OS is up to date.
At the Death Star, we had a direct Internet feed from Tampa’s node, serving us and Time-Warner/Brighthouse. From time to time, we would throw unpatched Windows systems on that connection just to see what would happen — it wasn’t pretty.
Harold, sympathy to you and your family. I hope your family’s health improves dramatically, and soon.
“But they don’t have a history of self defense enshrined in their founding documents. ”
–They don’t have a history of violent and successful revolt, nor the benefit of some of the smartest guys in a hundred years, all alive and near each other at the same time.
It’s the violent revolt that is key though without the intellectual chops, they could have easily seized power for themselves, and denied the right to arms to everyone going forward. That’s what everyone else did.
n
Get ‘um while they’re young…
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-09/6th-grader-dragged-out-class-saying-gender-confused-boy-boy
Two wins for the nuts, convincing a 6th grader to “transition” and making object lessons out of the sane ones. If only there was an abusive sexual element, they’d have the hat trick.
n
Which brings me to the question I don’t see being asked, kinda like no one looked at why crazy old ladies have so many cats…
What if all this trans BS has a biological or environmental cause? What if something REALLY IS causing this (historically) large percentage of gender dysphoria?
n
Excellent points that just aren’t taught any longer.
We must recall that the first violent clash that began the revolution was brought about by a gun (and ammunition) confiscation program. The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War where civilians banded together to stop a government gun grab.
Ray, I feel your pain. No advice from me, but I have to comment: why is networking so difficult?
I have had no end of trouble with my DSL, and most of it is human caused. My line is supposed to be tagged as DSL, and yet the pair occasionally gets switched for “other” reasons, and the poor performance starts over. Rinse and repeat for more than a decade. The incumbent inherited poor documentation from Verizon, which inherited it from GTE. Nobody cares. The current techs can fix it, but I always have to start from scratch.
Recently, my carrier insisted on replacing my gateway router. I had resisted this, because at least the techs were honest: mine looked OK, but they preferred the interface on the newer hardware. I pointed out that this approach was like changing a tire to correct a poorly running engine. I finally gave in, mostly because the old hardware had a poor firewall, causing me to supply my own router, which I can control. I wasn’t looking forward to taking the time to set up the new box for no good reason.
There is a lesson here. The new box seemed to cure my problems with connectivity dropout. The poor SNR on the line was unaffected, but now I had a stable connection at rated speeds. What?? Well, for a week or so. Now I have some trouble, but it is still much better than the old box. Hmm. Still getting familiar with the new interface, but it looks like a winner.
You mentioned DD-WRT. I have a Buffalo router that is specifically designed for this. It came with their “home” proprietary OS, with an option to download and install the “professional” DD-WRT. The default OS was very straightforward, but DD-WRT was very unfamiliar at first. I actually went back to the default, because I could understand it. After it had some problems, I again tried DD-WRT, and took time (lots) to understand its more complicated setup. Since then, it has been perfectly reliable. And, yes, I would not put DD-WRT on just any router. I would put it on one that is on their list of tested hardware, and then only if I didn’t worry about bricking one. Again, why does this have to be so difficult?!
Routers are ~$5 at most thrift stores and many yard sales. They are so common I don’t bother picking them up anymore. I’m talking about name brand, gig speed, and wifi routers too. You can often find cable modems for $5, and all kinds of direcTV hardware practically given away.
Point being, you can play on hardware you got cheaply without worry of bricking it….
n
Routers are ~$5 at most thrift stores and many yard sales. They are so common I don’t bother picking them up anymore. I’m talking about name brand, gig speed, and wifi routers too. You can often find cable modems for $5, and all kinds of direcTV hardware practically given away.
Point being, you can play on hardware you got cheaply without worry of bricking it….
Linksys WRT54G-series routers have excellent DD-WRT support and are generally available cheap, even new. WRT54GL is the preferred model, but all will load some version of the third party firmware.
The big downside is 100 Mbps Ethernet and ‘G’ WiFi.
One caveat with DD-WRT-capable routers is that the power level is one setting that gets unlocked, and a router dumped at Goodwill or into a yard sale box may have a burned out WiFi radio.
My Linux only laptop has ‘N’ Wifi suppot in theory, but practice is something else entirely. I run a WRT54GL with DD-WRT installed to support that laptop and the ‘B’ hardware I have left.
yikes
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7341515/Manhunt-underway-Houston-driver-shot-killed-two-people-AR-15-freeway-crash.html
“Police sources told ABC 13 that the deceased duo’s silver Nissan uncovered a large trash bag containing marijuana.
‘Road rage? An accident? Narcotics? We don’t know yet,’ Assistant Chief Dobbins told reporters. ”
Kinda broad conclusions for being based on schools in Cali…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7341281/One-EIGHT-teen-girls-pressured-having-boyfriends-children.html
“the researchers interviewed girls across eight ‘school-based health centres’ in California between 2012 and 2013.”
“Unlike previous research, the black participants were no more likely to report abuse than their white counterparts.
The researchers want all adolescents and young women to be offered information on reproductive coercion.”
— huh, there are still white kids in Cali’s school system?
–wonder how “hispanic” or spanish speaking breaks out in those numbers
–wonder what the demographics of those Cali schools look like?
n
I don’t like to do the direct either. In this case it was necessary to start eliminating devices from the issue.
Nope, don’t trust they have not been infected or have some other problems. I need something with 5G to get the speeds on my wireless devices, especially streaming 4K. The router I currently have should be good for a long time as it will support the fastest speed I will need for the foreseeable future.
I don’t like to do the direct either. In this case it was necessary to start eliminating devices from the issue.
At least become familiar with Linux and boot the machine into a Live distribution then trying a direct connection.
Fedora Workstation has Firefox and a firewall enabled by default
I figure for 10 minutes the chances of a drive-by infection are fairly minimal. I also run a couple of security software options. The attack would need to be fairly obscure and recent.
To add to the mystery I checked my speed, about 295 down and 22 up. Better than what I am paying for. This was with access control turned off, what I originally did to get the faster connection. So out of curiosity I turned access control back on. No difference in speed. Did the tests twice with access control turned on or off. Same result.
So my original assertion that access control is the culprit seems to be incorrect. I am in the habit of only changing one thing at a time when trying solve such issues. When I had the slow speeds access control was turned on. Turned it off, much better speeds, as in 100% better. Thus I thought it was the problem. Maybe changing the setting cleared a cobweb somewhere in the router, a coding bug feature.
Swan Eaters: Winnie’s back !
https://www.gocomics.com/swan-eaters/2019/08/09
Hopefully he will find the kids.
“Meet the neglected 43-year-old stepchild of the U.S. military-industrial complex”
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-08-02/antarctica-polar-star-icebreaker
Nothing but the best for our service folks.
We only have one ??? ice breaker ?
Yes, my granddaughter is a senior in Newport Harbor High in the NMUSD. Not sure which college she will start next year.
http://web.nmusd.us/
Her two year older brother starts sophomore year in Civil Eng’g at USC this month. He got in on his own abilities; I did not have to slide $2,000,000 in Singer’s charity to slip him in the side door.
“Hispanic” is now PC incorrect. The left demands that they be called Latino (male), Latina (female) or Latinx (other).
Their elementary and the named above high school to which mine attended are on the east Side of Costa Mesa, primarily white and with many coming from million dollar homes.
What we used refer to as the “other side of the tracks” (today it’s the other side of the I55), or the west side of Costa Mesa, but same school district there is overwhelmingly Mexican (also nonPC). When the parents come in for meetings, interpreters are needed. These schools are referred to as “failing schools” by the bureaucracy, it is nonPC to refer to the children as “failing”. I doubt if 1% go on to college from west side schools.
Geolocation coordinates provided upon request.
“AT&T employees took bribes to plant malware on the company’s network”
https://www.zdnet.com/article/at-t-employees-took-bribes-to-plant-malware-on-the-companys-network/
“DOJ charges Pakistani man with bribing AT&T employees more than $1 million to install malware on the company’s network, unlock more than 2 million devices.”
I don’t care how unhappy you are with your employer, this was very bad.
I didn’t have an opportunity like that when I worked for AT&T 63 years ago. Back then it was about soldering wires, not sending malware down them.
“How the President Can Highlight Smears on Him as Smears on All of Us”
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/08/08/when-they-attack-trump-theyre-attacking-all-of-us/
“RUSH: I think, folks — and I don’t mean this to be criticism. But I think Trump needs to keep in mind it’s not just him that the media is slandering and libeling. It’s everybody that supports him. Everybody that voted for him, everybody who donates to him, everybody who expresses anything positive about him is being treated this way as well.”
As usual, Rush is right. I feel slandered and libeled by the left in the USA.
“RUSH: How many white supremacists do you know, Pat? Literal white supremacists, not just racists. How many white supremacists have you met in your life?”
None. Yet, I feel that half of the population thinks that I am a white supremacist.
We are heading to a civil war. The coasts against the middle. Not good. The signal will be the seizing of all privately owned guns in the USA.
We only have one ??? ice breaker ?
I remember reading about a deal with Canada for icebreaker services back when we lived in the Northwest.
I’d worry less about that depending on that ship than I would relying on a new pork project out of a Mississippi ship yard.
Boy it’s hot. 110F in my driveway. That’s pretty hot. Feels like 123F…
I’ve been running around all afternoon. Spent an hour working outside this morning. That was ok in the shade, but got progressively worse.
Crazy hot.
n
Leaving for SA on Monday. The temperatures are not going to be pleasant. Good thing the Highlander has good A/C, front and back, ceiling vents in back.
Why have there been more mass shootings? (N.B. written by a libertarian)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/09/how-fight-mass-shootings-first-lets-define-problem/?fbclid=IwAR2t-t267P4rvcfsfseD2KVlhZM682_hdylMLtbuZUJGrIuoaFg5ML8TVZE
(Yes, there is a paywall, but you can get around it if you already have hit your free article limit.)
The signal will be the seizing of all privately owned guns in the USA.
Good luck with that.
Just of the folks I know, that I have a rough estimate of “how many”, and then say there are 100 million folks with gubs. For discussion, let’s go low with 6 each… to make the math easier. That’s 600 million gubs.
Plus there are another 24o million folks in this country… say a pistol and a rifle each. Just to average out the folks with nothing and the folks with a lot more than six.
Plus untold amounts of ammo.
I don’t see how the guns can be confiscated.
If they can’t deport criminal illegal aliens, how can they seize the guns?
Well, one at a time is how they do it, and it doesn’t matter if you have one or one hundred. It’s not the number of guns it’s the number of gun owners willing to fight back.
If they don’t kill anyone then it will be very hard for the defenders to ‘go active’. I’m not willing to be shot on my doorstep. I’ll give up all the registered guns that I still own. And I’ll be sure to have one to give up. What happens later? Who knows.
n
There are lots of practical aspects, given the number of cops available and the number of households, etc. They’ll criminalize possession first, telling people to turn them in. Then they’ll do an amnesty. Then the tip line will open and there will be rewards for snitches. Only after getting as many as they can that way will they start kicking doors. After all, anyone who still has a gun at that point has committed multiple felonies and deserves what they get…
My prediction is that if it comes to that, confiscation by one-seys as a concerted ongoing pattern under such laws, there will be ad hoc assassinations of any uniform, anywhere, anytime. There are uglier tactics, too. Not volunteering! Just predicting.
There are lots of practical aspects, given the number of cops available and the number of households, etc.
Most major cities have problems with pension obligations for their highly trained first responders but, unlike the Federal Government, cannot print the money to write the checks. The Feds can print money but lack sufficient adequately trained personnel to conduct the raids, with use of the military prohibited for domestic matters. Do the math.
They just have to make sure that the raids use extra-regional personnel. Raids in WA State use Atlanta cops and vice versa. Local cops know nothing about the raids in their city outside of a courtesy notice from the Feds.
Not that I think it will go that far, of course. Guns won’t be allowed past the front gate of the camps, and the Wifi and streaming services will be free. Disney+ for everybody!
Poetic justice.
“Toxic Culture and Red Flags”
https://www.thediplomad.com/2019/08/toxic-culture-and-red-flags.html
“I have written before about progressive infatuation with “gun control” lists and “mental health” (December 9, 2015). What do you think will happen with such a process? Whom do you think will control it? How long before conservatives, and others out of political favor get a “red flag”? Shall we have the same kind of people who run Google, YouTube, and Twitter control it? How about the sort who run progressive-controlled city councils? What possibly could go wrong? How long before we have the sort of fraud we see in the MeToo movement and the racial hate hoax plague spread to “gun control”? Due process, anybody? Who, by the way, are these “mental health experts” who will determine whether somebody deserves his second amendment rights? Should we have them for our other rights? Are these the same experts, for example, who for centuries told us that homosexuality is a “personality disorder” or the ones who now insist we must not only accept it but praise it, embrace it, promote it? Mental health, of course, is settled science of the highest and most reliable order . . . right up there with the Piltdown Man and man-made global cooling, warming, change, or whatever.”
My prediction is that if it comes to that, confiscation by one-seys as a concerted ongoing pattern under such laws, there will be ad hoc assassinations of any uniform, anywhere, anytime. There are uglier tactics, too. Not volunteering! Just predicting.
A reasonable fictionable account of such a disaster should they decide to collect the guns.
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/what-i-saw-at-the-coup/
Rule 308.
“Poetic justice.”
–I saw that, and I feel bad for his family, who loved him no matter his views. For him, nothing.
n
And if he was a poseur, just virtue signalling, then he’s F’d twice as hard.
n
And if he was a poseur, just virtue signalling, then he’s F’d twice as hard.
Colorado. Definite possibility.
“DOJ charges Pakistani man with bribing AT&T employees more than $1 million to install malware on the company’s network, unlock more than 2 million devices.”
I don’t care how unhappy you are with your employer, this was very bad.
A union customer service job in that center would have a salary plus commission. WA is a closed shop state. Usually, that kind of discovery is kept quiet, but I believe the wireless contract is up in 2020. Someone leaked that deliberately.
One of the Chinese cousins works for T-Mobile’s center down the road. Compensation is lousy so the antics are much worse in that building.
Almost all of these are from the big vendors (Netgear, Asus, DLink, etc…) and almost all of them have unpatched security holes. Those vendors generally do a lousy job of providing patches, just issue a new model with the latest golly-gee-wiz feature or more “speed”, often with the same security defect. I recommend visiting http://www.routersecurity.org as a good site for information regarding routers. I am using the recommended Peplink router with no problems.
Thanks for the routersecurity site. Interesting as a refresher course if nothing else.