Cooler, still damp.
We got a little bit of misty rain early yesterday, but then it was just a bright overcast for the rest of the day.
I did my volunteer science class in the morning, ham meetup in the afternoon, and went and picked up auction lots that were mostly PPEs and cleaners. Traffic was insanely bad getting back across town.
Today I have a pretty similar schedule without the nice lunch.
Corvid 19 continues to spread. China has brought in industrial cremation furnaces “for livestock.” That ain’t good, no matter how you look at it.
The cruise ship evacuees continue to get sick here, anyone want to make book on them getting sick wherever they’ve dispersed to now that over 500 have been release in Japan?
Keep stacking.
N
Um, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8023149/Two-passengers-die-coronavirus-doomed-cruise-ship-Diamond-Princess.html
n
I loathe notifications and alerts, but IEEE is an exception. Get one from them ~10 days or so. Today’s had this which I think y’all might find amusing.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/a-slide-rule-for-real-programmers
Mayor Nirenberg is providing cover, but the fact remains that patients have left quarantine at Lackland for treatment in San Antonio. I’ve heard quarantined cruise ship passengers on the San Antonio talk station calling in to complain about their conditions at the base.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/nirenberg-pushing-for-change-to-have-coronavirus-evacuees-stay-at-jbsa-lackland-for-testing-treatment/ar-BB10aG17
I loathe notifications and alerts, but IEEE is an exception. Get one from them ~10 days or so. Today’s had this which I think y’all might find amusing.
I dropped IEEE membership not long after I graduated from my engineering program, and, despite being unemployed, they asked for a $300 membership renewal. 1992?
After that, they looked the other way during the beginnings of offshoring in the 90s, and I don’t believe they look out for the best interests of their members anymore, especially in the US.
My wife feels the same way about the AMA. What a joke organization.
I’ve got several of the original, linear slide rules, one of which I received as a gift several years ago. I do not need a circular one.
@Nick — Gas Pump Pockey Full Employment Act — coming soon to IL?!?
Even Oregon had the sense to lift the mandate in the rural counties. It was always a pain when we went out to the boonies sections of the state … except near the Native American reservations — they were exempt from the mandate.
https://www.nj.com/news/2020/02/it-might-not-just-be-new-jersey-anymore-illinois-may-outlaw-pumping-your-own-gas.html
Car Trouble: Monday I was driving my 2017 Hyundai Sonata and hit a patch of rough pavement. Suddenly the cruise control dropped out and the car refused to accelerate. Still driving, I discovered that once the RPM hit 2000 acceleration stopped, no matter how I pressed the gas it refused to go above 2000. I was able to get home but was freaking out. I scheduled Friday service with the “nearest” (65 miles) Hyundai dealership. MIL said I should take it to her mechanic. Since he was only 20 miles away I figured I din’t have anything to loose. I pulled up at his place which looked like a wrecking yard with 30 or more cars and trucks in various states of assembly. When I pulled in the lot, Mickey ambled over from the Ford pickup he was looking at. I described the issue to him, he grabbed his diagnostic tablet and plugged into my ODB port. In 10 minutes of research he said the car is saying the NO2 sensor is broken but after examination he claimed it looked good. So he simply rebooted the car computer and 5 minutes later there were no error codes and the car ran just like always. He posited that the jolt caused an incorrect fault report to the computer which them controlled the throttle. When I asked what I owed him he looked at his watch and said since it was less than 30 minutes and didn’t require any real work it was free. I canceled the Hyundai service which would have cost me $85 just to show up. With computers, a simple reboot will often fix the problem.
Reboot fixed my Expy on my trip to Chicago, after my oil change and filter change messed it up.
n
Did that sort of thing all the time when dealing with the early Burroughs computers and the spinning disks. Much effort was placed into locating data on the disk such that when the data was needed it was very close to the track head (head per track system, nothing moved except the platter). Woe unto those who erred by having the start of the data just past the read head when needed thus requiring a complete rotation of the platter.
This became particularly important when dealing with banking information and the reading/sorting of checks using the routing tables. Missing a segment of data could cause a reject of several items thus requiring reprocessing of the batch.
We were not blessed with a slide ruler, just pencils and paper, timing instructions, and a lot of trial and error.
This became less relevant with increased speed of the magnetic spinning storage devices, higher recording densities, and faster CPU’s. The struggles of the ’60’s were real and annoying.
When I pulled in the lot, Mickey ambled over from the Ford pickup he was looking at. I described the issue to him, he grabbed his diagnostic tablet and plugged into my ODB port.
Get an OBD scanner. A basic one is cheap.
An OBD scanner and Google have saved me a lot of money over the years.
I dropped IEEE membership not long after I graduated from my engineering program, and, despite being unemployed, they asked for a $300 membership renewal. 1992?
Was an ACM member for ~35 years. Dropped the membership about a decade ago when I could no longer ignore how SJW they had become.
Was an ACM member for ~35 years. Dropped the membership about a decade ago when I could no longer ignore how SJW they had become.
All of the engineering and professional societies think that the CO2 taxes from the fake science known as global warming will allow the federals to fund them into infinity. Therefore, they are supporting all of the SJW causes so they can get the money when the time comes and they are checked for political correctness. It is sad, very sad, to see them prostituting themselves.
I am a Life Member of IEEE, which simply means that I am old and have been a member for too many years. With the exception of one publication that I purchase from them, my membership cost is now $0. I was keeping them just for the discounted LIfe Insurance, which I have carried across several employers. At this point, I am probably not eligible for any new life insurance (medical conditions and age). In a few years, I will probably drop the coverage which has become very expensive anyway.
Wow… From Sarah Towery at BC Sheep Company in Wichita Falls, Texas:
https://www.facebook.com/sarah.fung.10/posts/3045447672142276
“Dear Mr Bloomberg,
I am not an anybody..a middle of the country farm girl with no college education..but your comments about farming not taking as much “gray matter” as what you do made me want to address this serious misconception you and many in our society seem to have.
Farming is not simply planting a seed or feeding an animal and poof, you’re done.
It takes record keeping. I have spreadsheet after spreadsheet of expenses, profits, losses. We track weights of lambs and pounds of lambs weaned per ewe.
It takes math. Measuring feed, milk replacer, medications. A mis-measurement anywhere can be devastating.
It takes observation. Spotting an animal that’s acting “off” before it’s so sick it may not live.
It takes planning..when to plant, when to breed, when weathers coming in and hay will need to be put out.
It takes long days in the cold and the heat. We can’t “work from the house” when it’s Snowy out..water troughs need to be busted open, animals need to be fed, to checked on. When it’s 100 degrees a broken fence won’t wait.
It takes flexibility. It never fails you’ll be headed out to a nice dinner and you’ll find a sick ewe or a ewe in labor. Your night will be spent in the barn..sometimes in 20 degree weather, helping that ewe.
It takes a huge heart. Our home has heard the rat a tat tat of bottle lambs running thru the house. The sound is music to my ears, after seeing a newborn rejected or hurt to bouncing and happy.
It takes mental toughness..emergencies happen and it takes a calm cool collected mindset to make it thru
It takes tears. I’ve worked on a ewe in distress for an hour only to deliver a dead lamb..and then to loose the ewe.
It takes love. I love with my whole heart farming and raising sheep. I love helping to feed this country and I love this job no matter what anyone who has never set foot on a farm has to say.
It takes being an eternal optimist. That the rain will fall, the sun will shine, that next years crop will be better.
Mr Bloomberg your comments echo the general problem with many in this nation that have lost touch with their agricultural roots and what it means to this country. I invite you to spend a day at an actual working farm to see what our lives entail.
Sincerely,
Sarah Towery
American Shepherdess & Patriot”
Was an ACM member for ~35 years. Dropped the membership about a decade ago when I could no longer ignore how SJW they had become.
At my grad program in Vantucky, the CS department didn’t even have traditional ACM. We had the specialized ACM-W, essentially a CS professional society for women only, in the form of a local chapter run by a co-ed who flunked out of CS and proudly listed her psych disorders on her web page.
UPDATE: Flunk out of CS at a mid-grade state school, graduate Psych (at least it wasn’t “Sosh”), and get a PhD from UC Irvine in “Informatics”. Whatever the h*ll that is.
Count me among those who had IEEE and ACM memberships but let them drop because of no longer wishing to be associated with them.
re farming: To make a living as a farmer in today’s world, you need all the data and math that Sarah Towery listed. You can run a farm without it … for a few years, until you’re broke. Not advised.
More generally, Doomturd is displaying a combination of ignorance and arrogance: I don’t know anything about that, but how hard can it be? Here, he’s scaling up the vegetable garden his aunt raised to a 300-acre wheat ranch or a 6000-hen poultry operation and not realizing or not acknowledging that he doesn’t even know what questions to ask. I notice this tendency most in college-
educated-indoctrinated young people who think that they’re automatically smarter and more knowledgeable than those idiot plumbers or auto repairmen. The young geniuses can’t replace a washer themselves, mind you, but how hard can it be if that idiot can do it all day long?re Informatics: it’s the computer science, data science, and general tech equivalent of a social sciences degree. It allows the degree holder to pretend to be a business person to the tech people and pretend to be a tech person to the business people. So far as I can tell no actual knowledge, understanding, or indeed baseline intelligence is required to get this degree.
I have looked at Orby. To get local channels you need an antenna. Which leaves me where I am, and the Austin stations on the far end of Lake Travis.
I need to trim a tree and raise the antenna. I don’t want to have guy wires but I might.
Another Tyler Durden byline listing the more interesting Bloomberg quotes. I forgot about Randy Andy and Koo Stark. I’m sure most of the rest of the world did too until Scold Warren brought up the line in the debate last night.
This is not Prince Andrew’s year. He’s a hugger, though.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/bloomberg-calls-queen-horsey-faced-lesbian-outrageous-never-seen-quote-book
I am a Life Member of IEEE, which simply means that I am old and have been a member for too many years. With the exception of one publication that I purchase from them, my membership cost is now $0. I was keeping them just for the discounted LIfe Insurance, which I have carried across several employers. At this point, I am probably not eligible for any new life insurance (medical conditions and age). In a few years, I will probably drop the coverage which has become very expensive anyway.
I have been a member of ASME ( https://www.asme.org/ ) for 38+ years. I pay the $150/year grudgingly because I have my life insurance through them. I have enough life insurance to pay off my commercial mortgage and my current home mortgage. At least I do today, I do not know about tomorrow. If I let this life insurance go then I cannot buy life insurance anymore except the high dollar stuff on vehicle purchases, etc. With two heart attacks and heart surgery (successful !), they just do not want to talk to you anymore. Plus I will be 60 in a couple of months and the life insurance people scatter like cockroaches when you tell them that.
With the purchase of the new used home last September, I have my debt back up in the very low seven figures. Protecting my wife is the foremost thing in my mind should I not wake up some morning.
I need to trim a tree and raise the antenna. I don’t want to have guy wires but I might.
Yeah, Orby will get you a few of the cable stations. The locals are from an antenna hanging off your satellite antenna.
If you put in guy wires, be sure to mark them well. I nailed a telephone pole guy wire in 1981 on my offroad motorcycle. I jumped over a small hill, well to the side of the telephone pole, and saw the guy wire when I was in the air about three ft off the ground. I hit the guy wire, bounced off it, and woke up with the bike laying on top of me, still running, by the gasoline dripping in my face. I still have the scars from the metal cable strands in my arm and chest.
The Farmers and Ranchers I personally know MUST know organic and inorganic chemistry, Meteorology, welding, mechanical engineering, math, computers, computer science, and genetics. Modern farms run on IT, spreadsheets and specialized applications. Large farm equipment require GPS and programming to determine optimum plowing, seeding, sowing patterns. They also provide in-cab WiFi and video to let the farmer manage the rest of the farm from his tractor. I have a brother who graduated from University of Colorado with an animal husbandry degree and went to work at the premiere Ranch in Wyoming performing DNA sequencing and artificial insemination to breed the best cattle and sheep. Any idiot can write in Visual Basic (and most who do are idiots after seeing the code) but IT guys simply can’t hack farming. It’s too hard and demanding of a wide range of physical and mental skills.
I am 68 and not as strong or active as I once was. My wife is 65 and, as I have detailed here previously, in bad health with a number of serious issues. If the SHTF in any serious way she will not survive. She requires constant power for her oxygen concentrator and refrigeration for her insulin. She requires access to a dialysis center 3 times a week because her kidneys have failed. If SHTF and we are quarantined, unable to visit dialysis, she will die in a couple of weeks. If we loose power for over 24 hours she will loose her O2 and be severely at risk. Without her insulin she would have less than a month to live. These wonders of modern medicine have a price. They preserve life but require our modern infrastructure we take for granted. Every week I see many people in my wifes situation at the dialysis center. SHTF, even a few weeks, is a death sentence to them.
@harold, that is grim. Hopefully you have at least a couple of things to extend and smooth any outage, like an inverter. That would run the O2 concentrator off your car battery or a deep cycle marine battery. Or a big UPS. I’ve got several of the Colman 12v “cool boxes” that are really 12 v refrigerators. They hold about 8 cans of soda, but keep it ice cold. They are meant to keep your soda cold while driving in your car. That would provide backup for the insulin fridge.
The dialysis is the deal breaker, but of course you’ve already acknowledged that.
Some things just purely suck.
n
Speaking of life insurance, a friend of mine passed away last Sunday. He was 67, leaves a 62 year old wife, three daughters, and six grandkids. He was fighting advanced esophageal cancer by having the surgery to remove the lower half of his esophagus and move his stomach up. His risk if the cancer coming back in two years was 50%. The surgery went well at MD Anderson Cancer Center last week but he had an undetected heart attack during it or after. He never got out of ICU. They even transported him to the cardiac icu at Methodist next door to fix his heart problems but, too much damage was done.
Anyway, he told my wife a couple of weeks ago that he had very busily been setting things up just in case that he passed away. The surgery was dangerous with his heart condition. The surgeon at MDACC originally told him to go away and then got his mind changed by his surgical team. I am fairly sure that the surgeon is kicking himself now for overriding his gut. But, he got most, if not all, of his will and everything up to date. Looks like he made a good decision to do so.
Moral of the story, keep your paperwork up to date. Your loved ones will love you even more for that.
I am 68 and not as strong or active as I once was. My wife is 65 and, as I have detailed here previously, in bad health with a number of serious issues. If the SHTF in any serious way she will not survive.
My impression is that most people did not live past 60 before antibiotics and blood pressure meds. Those two drug types have extended life immensely.
And dialysis sucks. I have done the opposite twice, given platelets back in the 1990s when the machine was connected to both arms and took up to three hours. Nowadays I would wear a catheter or a diaper so I did not spend the last 30 minutes in agony. And wet.
Hey, the website is running fast today ! Awesome !
Congrats Rick !
Corvid 19 continues to spread. China has brought in industrial cremation furnaces “for livestock.” That ain’t good, no matter how you look at it.
My sons’s conspiracy theory that the WuFlu is targeted to Asian males is looking more and more solid every day.
Mortality seems to double with every decade of age starting at 40. By 80 it has 16? % mortality…
sucks for them
n
My class went well this morning, despite having only about half the number of helper monkeys that were needed.
Got a haircut. Sold some stuff.
Rotated some (small amount) of food from my secondary location back to home.
Trying to get caught up on the news. The wuflu seems to be taking off in South Korea. and the crackdown is getting more violent in china. People are starting to get really hungry too as the authorities have now locked people officially into their homes for the duration.
NOT GOOD things.
n
Trying to get caught up on the news. The wuflu seems to be taking off in South Korea. and the crackdown is getting more violent in china. People are starting to get really hungry too as the authorities have now locked people officially into their homes for the duration.
So more people may die from starvation than the wuflu ? Not good !
Iran has 5 cases with 2 deaths. That’s 20%. Wonder what’s going on there.
Also more ‘falling down dead while walking along’ video out of china at Harry Chen’s twitter, that I linked previously. SOMETHING is making chinese drop dead. It cannot be normal that people just fall down dead and NO ONE reacts to help them.
n
Getting windy and chilly here in Houston, big gusts, 48F.
Also more ‘falling down dead while walking along’ video out of china at Harry Chen’s twitter, that I linked previously. SOMETHING is making chinese drop dead. It cannot be normal that people just fall down dead and NO ONE reacts to help them.
I saw a story that curing the Corona virus weakens the heart. That may have been Zerohedge, however, so take it with the grain of salt.
Over at Sarah Hoyt’s blog: Breaking Out a guest post by Helen Miller, RN
Peter put up this very interesting post, you might want to consider it.
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2020/02/coronavirus-preparing-for-economic.html
There is stuff in there I didn’t know and never considered.
n
Peter put up this very interesting post, you might want to consider it.
I’d say Home Depot and Lowes did it to themselves, but people wanted those $79 Hunter fans so the chains put the boot to the manufacturers.
The last *real* Hunter fan I bought cost $200+, new, more than 15 years ago.
I’d say Home Depot and Lowes did it to themselves, but people wanted those $79 Hunter fans so the chains put the boot to the manufacturers.
The last *real* Hunter fan I bought cost $200+, new, more than 15 years ago.
I bought a Hunter fan a couple of months ago at Home Depot for $180. But it was one of the five blade 60 inch fans. Bigger is better, hruh, hruh.
BTW, the ceiling fans in the new used house use remotes to set their speeds and control their lights. There are no remotes in the house so they only run at full speed with the light on. Lucky me …
BTW, the ceiling fans in the new used house use remotes to set their speeds and control their lights. There are no remotes in the house so they only run at full speed with the light on. Lucky me …
If you can’t get a new remote, the receiver module is usually an easy replacement and typically jammed into the base of the fan near the ceiling. Hopefully, it isn’t integrated into the fan unit.
Or you can just pull the receiver, twist the wires together, and control the fan the old fashioned way with a pull cord.
This ad started running in the Austin market tonight thanks to Hegar’s California money. Cornyn shouldn’t discount the challenge since she’s already looking past the primary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GClKZVl9hDI