Cold, but weather station looks locked up. Dang.
Headed to school with the kids to do my science lab. No time for jibber jabber.
n
Wed. Nov. 13, 2019 – on my way to shape the youth of America…
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So what’s wrong here?
https://www.dailywire.com/news/english-singer-threatens-canceling-halftime-thanksgiving-nfl-show-unless-salvation-army-makes-pledge-or-donation-to-lgbt-community
Well I think we all know.
I’ll start off by whining. My wrist hurts. Yesterday I woke up and it was sore. By the end of the day it was some real pain if I moved it certain ways (especially turning palm upward). Hand and fingers are fine. I don’t have any recollection of bumping, banging, or twisting it. I bought a brace on the way home and will see what this day brings.
Did I just cross some stress threshold into carpal tunnel land? Is this what getting old is going to be about?
88 degrees in Grenada. Humidity about the same.
The good news is, this disqualifies you from being a Democrat/Progressive/Socialist/Communist/whatever they’re called these days.
So what’s wrong here?
The Salvation Army is a religious organization.
Hasn’t Warren or Bernie floated the trial balloon of cancelling the tax exempt status of any religious organization who won’t perform gay marriages.
I’ve seen that somewhere from one of the candidates. It wouldn’t surprise me next year.
Got one of my Cabela shirts on.
” Is this what getting old is going to be about? ”
–yes. random aches and pains. sometimes I feel like I have 2 inch long needles stuck thru my kneecaps. Longways. No idea why.
——————
back from my science volunteering. All went well, the activities filled the time allotted. The kids had fun, and the parent volunteers were impressed. Good day.
I ended up not doing the “all things fall the same speed due to gravity” demonstration. Added some other schtick with throwing things and watching gravity pull them down. 4 of 5 classes went very well, one was a bit short and not as well run. Mea culpa. It’s hard to keep my energy level up for all the classes.
Tomorrow I’m just the helper, and we’ll see how that unit goes. Energy content of food, determined by burning. Not a favorite of the school, because it stinks.
—- soon I’m headed back out doing errands.
n
For all that it’s the old standby, that’s a stupid measure, when it comes to determining nutrition for humans.
– Get a handful of straw or dried grass clippings. Burn and determine caloric content. Then have someone eat straw or grass for a week or two and tell us how well they’re doing.
– Get a handful of dried dog poop. Burn and determine caloric content. Then have someone (preferably an administrator) eat only dog poop for a week or two and tell us how well they’re doing.
Just flambé something as the last experiment. It won’t determine the energy content of the something but it covers the burning part and you end up with a nice odour and the edible something. Make it to show a botched premise in performing an experiment. 🙂
I’ll start off by whining. My wrist hurts. Yesterday I woke up and it was sore. By the end of the day it was some real pain if I moved it certain ways (especially turning palm upward). Hand and fingers are fine. I don’t have any recollection of bumping, banging, or twisting it. I bought a brace on the way home and will see what this day brings.
Did I just cross some stress threshold into carpal tunnel land? Is this what getting old is going to be about?
Maybe. I have the same problem occasionally with my wrists. I now carry a wrist bandage in the truck when I drive a long ways and one on my computer desks at home and the office. I have no idea why it helps, it just helps over 2 to 7 days time.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003XA0NOC/?tag=ttgnet-20
And yes, you are getting older. I have been around the sun 59 times now and everything hurts when I get up now. And Friday I get the privilege of having a two inch diameter mass on my left leg biopsied with a 4 mm needle. He thinks that it is a encapsulated infection and not cancer. Yes, he used the C word, that was not cool. I have been taking cipro and the mass has gone down in size, I think and hope.
“Electric cars are changing the cost of driving”
https://qz.com/1737145/the-economics-of-driving-seven-teslas-for-2-5-million-miles/
“Few have driven a Tesla to the point at which the vehicle really starts to show its age. But Tesloop, a shuttle service in Southern California composed of Teslas, was ticking the odometers of its cars well past 300,000 miles with no signs of slowing.”
“The company’s fleet of seven vehicles—a mix of Model Xs, Model 3s and a Model S—are now among the highest-mileage Teslas in the world. They zip almost daily between Los Angeles, San Diego, and destinations in between. Each of Tesloop’s cars are regularly racking up about 17,000 miles per month (roughly eight times the average for corporate fleet mileage). Many need to fully recharge at least twice each day.”
He thinks that it is a encapsulated infection and not cancer. Yes, he used the C word, that was not cool. I have been taking cipro and the mass has gone down in size, I think and hope.
I have residuals of an encapsulated infection in one hand from something I picked up over a year ago at our test site due to lack of running water. My wife has seen a lot of E. Coli as of late here in Central Texas.
I regretted not filing the workers comp claim when I got the bill for the $800 copay on the MRI to make sure it wasn’t cancer. Someone dropped a dime on the company with OSHA because the test site now has a hand washing station.
Another employee indicated that we were in violation of Austin code for our bathroom facilities per capita at our regular office in town. I’m not sure how that will get rectified since there is talk about doubling us up in our cubes.
Let me be the first to mention that Friday the 13th falls on a Wednesday this month…
And….there is some upcoming news about new books from Jerry Pournelle (and friends). It will be posted on Jerry’s site as soon as I get approval from Alex. I’ll mention it here, also.
I’m not sure how that will get rectified since there is talk about doubling us up in our cubes.
I have not seen a cubicle that could handle two people very comfortably. I hope that you like your new bunkie.
Or maybe ya’ll are going to hot swap. A warm chair in the winter would not be horrible.
Did ya’ll finish your move out of downtown Austin ? Surely that $45/day parking would drive you out.
“10 Million People Now Have Disney+, Even If They Couldn’t All Get It to Work”
https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/disney-gains-10-million-in-24-hours.html
“When you wish upon a star — and do a tie-in deal with Verizon — a lot of people will sign up for your streaming service. And that’s what has happened with Disney+: The Mouse House’s new direct-to-consumer video platform already has 10 million subscribers, just 24 hours after launching, the company announced on Wednesday. It’s an audacious and very positive start, and probably helps explain why so many folks encountered trouble getting it to work yesterday. There’s one big asterisk with the Wednesday number, however: A good chunk of those 10 million subscribers likely aren’t paying for Disney+ — at least not yet.”
10,000,000 * $7/month * 12 months/year = $840,000,000/year
That is chump change for Disney. I wonder where they are going with the streaming service ?
It was Beto. It didn’t help his poll numbers.
Did ya’ll finish your move out of downtown Austin ? Surely that $45/day parking would drive you out.
When we were downtown, the company covered parking to the tune of $4 million a year if the number I heard was accurate.
Even for Austin, that’s high, but we had a couple of hundred people, 24/7 guaranteed access 365 days a year, including game days, SxSW, and ACL. Who knows. At a tenth of that number, parking would be expensive.
Zero interest in Disney+. Heck, I have Sling Orange and Blue along with Amazon Prime and what do we watch? The news and Wheel of Fortune. Then it’s to the over the air sub-channels for StarTrek, All in the Family, Sanford and Son, and various old shows.
Sling? Nascar. College football. Joe Kendra. That’s about it.
Amazon? I haven’t looked there since last March.
“I am railing: Sir Rod Stewart reveals his epic model railway city”
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-50403561
OK, that is cool ! And he takes it on tour with him to work on it.
I have not seen a cubicle that could handle two people very comfortably. I hope that you like your new bunkie.
Whenever I’ve worked at places in the past, once talk of doubling up starts, someone drops a dime on the company and OSHA gets a phone call.
At the Death Star, I had a two person office, a holdover from when the division was IBM, not much bigger than enough space for two decent desks and rolling chairs. No one complained, however, since it was an *office* with a *door*.
Ah…. one thing that always seems to be ignored is you can get married with no church involvement.
I know folks that got “gay married” just for taxes and making wills and the like easier. Too soon to see how it’s going to work out.
edit: If your local church that you attend regularly refuses to marry you and your boyfriend, hey, maybe yer a dumbass and have been going to the wrong church. Just a thought.
It’s like the Christian Bakery thing. The Bakery takes offense and refuses to make a cake shaped like a dick but some entitled idiot sues. Why not find a different baker? Or, horrors, bake the cake yourself.
That is chump change for Disney. I wonder where they are going with the streaming service ?
Disney Channel on steroids is my guess — promote the films and theme parks.
How complete is the back catalog? Kurt Russel classics? “Even Stevens”?
“Midnight Madness”, the secret shame of the Disney corporation?
I’ve seen the first episode of “The Mandalorian”. Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau got it right, but the show isn’t for everyone. If you know the names, you will get exactly what that combination implies — “Clone Wars” mixed with a little Marvel adult-oriented violence/humor.
I have been faced with a problem at my church with the video setup. We currently feed 5 screens, two large screens with laser projectors for the sanctuary, both driven off one aux buss on the switcher. We have two stage confidence monitors used by the choir that are driven off another aux buss on the switcher. A final monitor is attached to the balcony for the music director and preacher driven off another aux buss on the switcher.
Switching this from the lyrics computer to the program feed involves three selections, difficult to do quickly. I developed macros in the switcher that will switch all three with a couple of button presses, one to get to the macro, the next to execute the macro. This can also be done on the computer connected to the switcher with a couple of mouse clicks.
The problem is the director is busy with other tasks and forgets to make the switch until prompted by the person operating the lyrics computer. He is too damned slow to use the mouse on the computer that is next to him and do the switching. Sometimes another person is available to use the computer but they don’t always do the switching in a timely manner.
I have found a device called “Stream Deck” that I can get for about $70.00. It has six buttons (large models are available) that can be programmed for various functions. The buttons can contain custom displays and images. Slick setup. I found some software called “Companion” that integrates into the Stream Deck and allows custom configuration of the button functions that extend well beyond what Stream Deck normally does. There is a module that will control my ATEM switcher.
In experimenting I have found that a button press can execute multiple functions, as in switching all three auxiliary busses on the switcher with one press. A button can also be configured to execute the macros on the switcher to do the switching.
This will allow me to place the device by the lyrics computer and the operator of that computer can just push one of the buttons to switch between the lyrics or the broadcast program. This should solve the problem by putting the responsibility back to the lyrics operator, where the function was initially when a manual buffered switch was being used.
Off tangent.
My pellet stove has always been noisy. Ok, anything with blowers is going to noisy.
But it had a rattle. A well placed popcicle stick would mostly stop the noise.
Last month I removed the side panel and then the noisy exhaust blower. I don’t know. Nothing I could reach was loose. It’s a sealed motor, bastards, in that it’s not bolted together, it has the twist tabs. I gave everything I saw a twist to tighten and nothing moved.
Re-installed the blower, oh, differently. It’s held in with six screws and I turned it a third of a turn.
It doesn’t rattle anymore. Win. A random win.
So, the pellet feed and fan speed are separate. One through Nine. We run the pellet feed at one. Save fuel. Blower at two or three just for the noise.
I have a magnetic thermometer on the side of the stove. It shows 300 or a bit more. I kicked the blower up to seven and the thermometer shows 280F. Noise is just a bit more but I’m getting more heat from the stove.
Gotta be smarter than what you are working with. I’m not ashamed to say I’m sometimes a slow learner. 🙂
Next step is to kick up the pellet feed a bit. I don’t know but maybe 280F is not quite hot enough to keep the creosote down. The earth stove smoldering at 250F would coat the chimney with fluffy flakes of condensed smoke.
Well. As long as I don’t burn down the house it’s all good.
“Stream Deck”
Life is good, eh?
@ray, I haven’t used it, but some of the youtubers I watch use it to control switching for their live streams, and if they have a multicamera setup for their recording. It looks like it continues to evolve and is well supported by third parties.
If it turns out it doesn’t work, then I’d look at a product from Extron, that will let you program a string of commands for each button, and send them over serial. Your switcher should have a serial interface. Been a while since I looked, but maybe the Extron panel does UDP or TCP too by now….
n
Ray, you may recall that a few years ago you told of the trick of leaving fart bombs in furniture cushions. When I read it I found it amusing but never gave serious thought to doing it. My daughter, on the other hand…
When I described the trick to her she laughed and laughed, as would be expected of any normal kid under the age of ten. Or under sixteen. Or fifty. Anyway, she found it hilarious and told her friends about it and they all agreed that the plan was the product of an evil genius. And she put the plan into effect, at first by accident but when she saw the amazing results she started doing it by intent. And she’s still doing it, to prank enemies when she knows they’ll be sitting down next or for other reasons.
Well done!
Nope, not that I am aware. No serial port on the switcher (I don’t think). Network interface only. Some type of protocol that I have not been able to discover, nor really want. I don’t want to do the grunt work.
Yep. I experimented with software and the emulator on the computer that is connected to the switcher network. (I run two networks in the studio, switcher is on a private, no internet connection network, streaming and graphics on another network.). The Stream Deck with the Companion seems to work. Assigning the tasks to a button and checking the switcher and the necessary switching changes are made.
I am still struggling with the icons that I need to assign to the buttons. I need to actually hook up a Stream Deck to the switching computer . The box will arrive, just the 6 button model, will arrive next week.
Or perverted weirdo. It is a thin line.
At the Death Star, I had a two person office, a holdover from when the division was IBM, not much bigger than enough space for two decent desks and rolling chairs. No one complained, however, since it was an *office* with a *door*.
The problem with a two person office is that you always know who farted. Me or “not me”.
Four person offices are awesome for farting. The accusations can go for minutes !
Nine person offices are just too many for adequate fart sharing. The corners usually miss the action and have to be alerted by the center inhabitants.
I experienced all of these situations at TXU Electric. At the end of the day, the single person office with a door wins over all.
“Life, in Dog Years”
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/life-in-dog-years?utm_source=pocket-newtab
“My father always pampered his pets. So when he fell ill and moved in with us, it was no surprise that his corgi came to rule our home. What I didn’t expect was for Trilby to care for me after Dad was gone.”
@Jenny, if you’ve got 15 minutes of down time, here you go.
Confucious say: “Never fart in elevator until certain no one get on at your floor”.
Next step is to kick up the pellet feed a bit. I don’t know but maybe 280F is not quite hot enough to keep the creosote down. The earth stove smoldering at 250F would coat the chimney with fluffy flakes of condensed smoke.
Well. As long as I don’t burn down the house it’s all good.
When I was a power plant engineer, our stack temperatures would slip down to 220 F or so at the middle of the night when we turned the units down. We always had a bit of sulfur (H2S) in our natural gas fuel. At that temperature, the stack gas was below the dew point at 220 F and a little bit of water and sulfur dioxide would form. Which would naturally convert to sulfuric acid.
Sometime during each year, we would take the units offline for a couple of weeks to a couple of months to rip them apart and find out was broke. We always opened the air preheaters which used corrugated sheet metal baskets in rotation from the hot outlet side to the cold inlet side and around. The first rows were always tissue paper thin due to the weak sulfuric acid. If the unit spent a lot of time down then several rows of the baskets would be totally gone.
There is probably no sulfur in those compressed wood pellets. One hopes.
Nope, not that I am aware. No serial port on the switcher (I don’t think). Network interface only. Some type of protocol that I have not been able to discover, nor really want. I don’t want to do the grunt work.
If you are feeling experimental and the connection is Ethernet, sniff the packets with Wireshark and a *real* 100 Mbps hub.
I’m always amazed at what Wireshark will decode.
@lynn
Re: “Life, in Dog Years”
I’m not crying. You’re crying.
That was beautiful. Thank you. And yes, I blubbered.
Our “fart bomb” in college was in your Winter hat. Never leave your beanie laying around. Those heavy duty Winter hats hold stench for 20 minutes.