Hot and damp, possibly sunny.
Yesterday was a dog’s breakfast. Depending on where you were in Houston you either got no rain or were dumped on. I got dumped on.
Got my errands done later than I’d have liked, and then went to my client’s house. And the tale of woe continues. More issues with connectivity both on the internal network and externally to the internet.
The AT&T tech was NOT good. He failed to save the account credentials to the DSL modem (which he replaced, as the other one got hit by lightning.) He also used the wrong account and failed to test it with the client’s devices. Seems that AT&T DSL will accept almost anything for account name and password, and tell you it connected to the internet. You can even use the built in tools to ping or traceroute, and they work. But if you launch a browser, you get an AT&T “fix the problems with your connection page” and a wizard that bombs out because of java errors when using Ipads. Iphones and laptops work, but not ipads. Much time was spent trying different combinations of account and password, until finally I got two to match. Before I could do that though, the wizard broke another way. I’d changed the default local lan IP address and gateway for the router to match our internal xxx.xxx.10.xxx scheme. The wizard NEEDS you to have not changed any settings in the box for it to complete. SO MUCH SUCK.
After finally getting the DSL box configured, ports forwarded, rules created, we could finally get out to the internet, but some of the local lan stuff didn’t work… specifically our ipads couldn’t talk to our AV control system. After thinking it was a config issue, and wasting a bunch of time looking at that, I looked at the switch.
Some blinkenlights, not enough blinkenlights. Turns out, the lightning strike on AT&T’s line came in through the copper, smoked the DSL power wart (which shut down the UPS it was plugged into) but not the actual modem, and also smoked the port on the network switch it was connected to. I moved it to another port and got that back up but still no connection to some local hardware. MORE troubleshooting and I discover more dead ports on the network switch. Swap it out for an old HP switch I brought ‘just in case’ and viola, we’re back up. Score one for ‘hoarding’ gear.
Now I’m wondering what gear might have gotten a ‘tickle’ through the network switch and will be failing over the next year…
Moral of the story, lightning strikes have weird consequences. Everything connected to the piece that got hit should be considered suspect. And, AT&T DSL support sucks dead bunnies.
I got home very late, but with a working system behind me. Dinner was more saute’d frozen shrimp, and some instant rice. My wife made it for the kids and I had a plate waiting.
Oh, I took the trash out and realized I’ve got a bunch of rotten potatoes stored. That is going to be my gruesome task today, after swim team practice… cleaning out that mess. Then see if the above ground pool has all the necessary parts, and get sidetracked building same…
But hey, we got an extra Friday this month.
Keep your awareness up, and avoid crowds.
And keep stacking.
n
You are OLD !
Yet, you are younger than me. Yes, I’ll be 60 in a couple of weeks. I feel it too.
I’m sure management is in violation of the law at this point, but making a problem of it would effectively be the end of my career.
Moral of the story, lightning strikes have weird consequences. Everything connected to the piece that got hit should be considered suspect. And, AT&T DSL support sucks dead bunnies.
Nothing can be done about a direct strike. Even a whole house surge protector is useless in that situation. Your client needs to talk to their homeowners’ insurance to make sure they’re clear with legal issues down the road. Yeah, a claim, potentially, and I know that can mean the end of the policy in hurricane-prone areas –I never filed a single claim with Snoopy and they dropped me in FL
Lightning strikes have a mitigation process IIRC, but at least it is a known protocol. When we left FL, the insurance companies still hadn’t worked out mitigation for the Chinese drywall outgassing — even razing to the foundation and digging up the foundation was questionable if it would get all of the conamination.
DSL in Texas falls under special state-wide broadband regulation the phone and cable companies got passed since we’ve been here. I haven’t looked into the rules completely, but DSL or fiber supplanting copper to a house is like getting a whole different phone company.
The AT&T copper tech who came to our rental here to establish initial service gave me one inside jack as “a favor” even though the DSL side of the company had service there before us with all the jacks working. The cordless base station was fine, but having the fax machine in our breakfast nook was a bit of a pain, no matter how temporary. Our slumlord -er- landlord wasn’t going to shell out the cash to straighten out the inside lines; I was lucky to have TV coax running to the right places because I could do that myself.
We lucked out at our permanent house in that the phone service had been left as copper but unused for a decade while the owners had Time Warner for phone with cordless handsets. We only had to wait three months (!) for a new copper line to get run to the house.
James Lileks reports from Minneapolis.
Minneapolis meltdown spreads
Armed Citizens Stand Guard Against Looters In Minneapolis
Minneapolis needs more “rooftop Koreans.”
Watched an interview with the lawyer for George Floyd’s family, Benjamin Crump. What a worthless piece of racist fecal matter. His comments were inflammatory and would blasted by the media if his skin was a different color.
He called the officers murderers. May be true, but not until ruled by a court of law. Until then they alleged murderers. He painted a picture of George Floyd as a man that could do no wrong and God worshipped the ground upon which Floyd walked. Of course CBS added video of the wailing family, almost passing out, lot of drama.
Yes, the officers were in the wrong, in my opinion, and should be charged, tried in a court of law. You don’t treat someone, anyone, like that for a minor offense. The officer with the knee has had many other issues and I suspect he is a rogue cop that never should have been allowed to remain on the force. The punishment is determined by the courts, not a mob looking for revenge, or a lawyer looking to incite more violence.
For CBS to bring a known, and confirmed, racist inflammatory lawyer, who then makes statements that should be grounds for dismissal from the bar, is pandering to the event. CBS is looking more and more like a video tabloid. Like most news organizations driven by ratings rather than truth.
Ben Crump is a racist jerk. Nothing more. Looking for a huge payday from the city for which he will collect 40%. The more Ben Crump can stir the pot the more money he makes. He lives on racism and thus must keep racism alive. The city will pay dearly for the rogue cop. Ben Crump knows this and is using the payout, and racism, to his advantage.
I’m so old that I remember when lawyers got 15% and when they asked for 20% their clients objected.
Re: lightning strikes.
Yep, it takes unpredictable paths. Several years ago, we had a very close strike. It killed two smoke detectors (I replaced all of them just to be safe), two of three garage door openers, a Nintendo Wii power supply (but no other electronics on that ups), and a weather radio. Oh, it also blew out one bulb of an outside floodlight. Literally. I found the build on the ground.
What *is* about rotten potatoes that makes them so nasty? The smell, of course; and then there’s that black slime, and finally those disgusting little flies!
A few years ago I started scrubbing my potatoes in a mild bleach solution, straight from the grocery store, letting them dry thoroughly and then stowing them away. Seems to have helped. Plus, I don’t need to scrub them when I go to cook.
I read Sharpless is on the way to MN. Can Jackwagon be far behind.
I worked a lot with AT&T in $PREVIOUSJOB … the network is mostly great, the wholesale sales people are mostly great (our team was). The billing is incomprehensible, probably on purpose. First layer of tech support assumes you’re an idiot and can’t be convinced otherwise.
Their techs had a trick that drove us crazy. They would show up on-site to fix a data circuit, and tell the receptionist they are there to “fix your phone problem”. The receptionist, whose phone is working, would say that there’s no problem, so the tech closes the ticket as a successful repair.
“so the tech closes the ticket as a successful repair. ”
-that’s just evil
n
Burning down the precinct house is a little bit further than usual….
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/minneapolis-burning-buildings-torched-stores-looted-protests-over-george-floyd-intensify
n
I’m usually more engaged with reports of civil unrest and rioting, but for some reason this time I can’t muster the energy.
I just don’t care, other than in a vague ‘here we go again’ sort of way.
I’m already armed, I live somewhere about as safe as it gets in a major metro area, and we’re not really out and about.
Avoid crowds.
n
I’m usually more engaged with reports of civil unrest and rioting, but for some reason this time I can’t muster the energy.
I just don’t care, other than in a vague ‘here we go again’ sort of way.
Minneapolis. Minnesota. The state where Perkins Coie perfected their “car trunk” ballot tricks putting Stuart Smalley into his Senate seat. I find it hard to be sympathetic.
It’s the new normal.
Well, I think there’s more at play here than the whole George Floyd clusterfuck. You have a demographic of people with a huge chip on their shoulder from a variety of socioeconomic factors that they (whether they should or not) blame on everyone else. I won’t even attempt to get into all of that. Top that off with the fact that they, like the rest of us, have been penned up for the last 2.5 months. Floyd was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Well no hot water this morning. No leak and no luck relighting. Have an existing home warranty as we bought this house last August. My last experience with a home warranty was pretty dismal 30 years ago on the last houe. $75 to make a call. Beats me doing it.
Fixed it for you…
Well no hot water this morning. No leak and no luck relighting. Have an existing home warranty as we bouth this house last August. My last experience with a home warranty was pretty dismal (30 years ago on the last houe). $75 to make a call. Beats me doing it.
I used the home warranty a couple of times at our current house with lousy results. The plumber put a hairline crack into our toilet which caused mystery water spots in our master closet for years, and the electrician dispatched to fix our front porch light took it down off of the wall and told me “Go get a new one from Home Depot.”
Later, when I took the light for rewiring to a specialty repair place down in Austin and told them what the home warranty electrician said, the response from the shop owner was, “The glass alone on your old light is $400 if we had to replace it. The fixture is easily a grand. They don’t have these at Home Depot.”
The problem is we all buy into the realestate peoples’ gimick of the home warranty. I never heard of anyone saying it paid off for them. Salesmen! Most have no compunction about lying to your face.
The plumbing company just called. Strike one. Monday between 11-3. Just checked online. Strike two. Seeing more complaints than praise and much of the praise looks phoney to me.
My past experience with them was like Greg’s. Can’t be fixed, buy a new one. No, replacement isn’t covered.
From Ray, yesterday:
Not exactly, but: “……, get the salary desired.”
Yes, our tax dollars at waste!
The problem is we all buy into the realestate peoples’ gimick of the home warranty. I never heard of anyone saying it paid off for them. Salesmen! Most have no compunction about lying to your face.
The real estate people selling American Home Shield out of Tampa used to take home a 50% spiff for getting that into the contract. Dunno what it is now.
I used the home warranty a couple of times at our current house with lousy results. The plumber put a hairline crack into our toilet which caused mystery water spots in our master closet for years, and the electrician dispatched to fix our front porch light took it down off of the wall and told me “Go get a new one from Home Depot.”
The water supply line to my house broke four feet outside the foundation back in January or so. The home warranty people, “if it is outside the foundation then we do not cover it”. Jerks. My plumber fixed it for $200.
I’m usually more engaged with reports of civil unrest and rioting, but for some reason this time I can’t muster the energy.
I just don’t care, other than in a vague ‘here we go again’ sort of way.
I’m already armed, I live somewhere about as safe as it gets in a major metro area, and we’re not really out and about.
Avoid crowds.
I am glad that we are now living outside the Grand Parkway in Houston.
But, Houston does not riot. Yet.
https://summit.news/2020/05/29/rioter-were-gonna-start-coming-to-the-suburbs/
And this is a shame:
https://summit.news/2020/05/29/black-business-owner-who-invested-life-savings-into-looted-bar-i-dont-know-what-im-gonna-do/
Animals, just animals. And I see as many whites in the videos as I see minorities. Of course maybe they are Hispanics.
Later, when I took the light for rewiring to a specialty repair place down in Austin and told them what the home warranty electrician said, the response from the shop owner was, “The glass alone on your old light is $400 if we had to replace it. The fixture is easily a grand. They don’t have these at Home Depot.”
Custom fixture and doors have gotten incredibly expensive. Not many craftsmen left who know how to build that stuff. Hopefully that specialty repair place that you found will stay in business.
Swim team practice is done for the day. Beautiful day. Parents distancing, no masks but then it’s outdoors and sunny, so even I don’t feel the need.
Kids, well, no distancing there.
n
Custom fixture and doors have gotten incredibly expensive. Not many craftsmen left who know how to build that stuff. Hopefully that specialty repair place that you found will stay in business.
Yeah, the lighting place isn’t going anywhere. If you look at a map of Austin, the big gap of freeways on the west side of the metro centered on Bee Cave represents several decades of NIMBY practiced by an extreme amount of wealth and power. One half of the Buc-ee’s partnership lives out there along with a bunch of celebrities, early tech cash, and old Texas money. Someone has to make the lights work.
When I had to dispose of my old desk blotter glass which was cracked in our move, I was directed out to Bee Cave to a disposal facility which usually handles big LCD/plasma screen displays. I was the only one in line with a plain piece of glass. Everyone else was unloading a giant TV.
Animals, just animals. And I see as many whites in the videos as I see minorities. Of course maybe they are Hispanics.
Hispanic-Hispanics or White-Hispanics like George Zimmerman?
Those photos of MN look pretty grim. Looks like a lot more than usual.
n
Got the warranty when we bought our house 32 years ago. Within a week I noticed the heat pump was not working, strip heat only. Called the warranty company. They sent a repair person. He looked and said the Freon was gone due to leak. Said it was an existing condition and therefore not covered. Charged me $50.00. I put up enough flack that the real estate agent paid the $50.00. Me, I had to get a new system in the amount of $3,500.00.
I stand corrected. Lot of grant money available to get a result desired by the grant.
One thing about the kids and swim team, keep in mind that they are basically bathing in bleach water….
n
And pee.
I just don’t care, other than in a vague ‘here we go again’ sort of way.
It’s the new normal.
It is the new normal heading to crazytown on the express train.
I see serious issues coming down the road, not just jobs and financial stability.
Those photos of MN look pretty grim. Looks like a lot more than usual.
Very few people in the blue collar class have jobs now. Especially the people who were borderline before the crazy.
Dilbert: CEO does math
https://dilbert.com/strip/2020-05-29
The latest CDC calculation is 0.26%.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-does-the-cdc-think-the-covid-19-fatality-rate-is-so-low-and-why-wont-it-tell-anyone/
And nobody knows what the asymptomatic infection rate is. The CDC is estimating 35%. I’ve seen numbers as high as 90%.
“Malone: Good Gal with Gun Stops Suspected Terrorist Threat”
https://gunowners.org/malone-good-gal-with-gun-stops-suspected-terrorist-threat/
“Springfield, VA — Gun Owners of America (GOA) Texas Director Rachel Malone released the following statement after a sailor used her handgun to stop a suspected terrorist at the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi, TX.”
“It is despicable when evil people such as this suspected terrorist attempt to carry out evil plans to take innocent life. I am thankful that the sailor at the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station was prepared to defend the base and that she took quick and decisive action to stop the threat. The sailor used her handgun to shoot back and thwart a potential terror attack. Because she was armed and trained, she undoubtedly saved many lives. I wish her a full and speedy recovery.”
““This result is consistent with FBI reports which show that when an attacker is confronted by an armed bystander, casualties during the mass killing are either prevented or mitigated 94 percent of the time.””
“With this data in mind, Gun Owners of America continues to urge all military bases to lift bans on handgun carry so all military personnel can carry for self-defense and be prepared to save lives.”
I had been wondering what the resolution of this was.
Not what I remember, but family left Mpls in 1948.
It may be different in Houston or other places on the water, but in Midland, swim & dive teams were the best sport for a kid that we ever dreamed of. Since football is king there, hundreds of kids go out for football, the competition is murderous, and most who make the team never get to play. Our youngest was too small for football anyway, so he joined the dive team. There were maybe a dozen kids on it, they supported each other and everyone was able to contribute. They could get up to speed quickly even if they didn’t have a pool at home. One of his teammates looked like a lineman – and he had deliberately transferred out of football because he wanted a sport he could enjoy. The team did well, got all the good things they are supposed to get out of team sports, and experienced very few of the drawbacks.
Very few people in the blue collar class have jobs now. Especially the people who were borderline before the crazy.
What does Rent-a-mob pay? Hourly? Per diem?
Finally watched the video of the Christchurch mosque shooting. Didn’t care a year or so ago and looked for it now only because Nick (?) said it was censored from BitChute. BitChute does have it, but I had to scroll down a ways to find it.
It didn’t shock or disturb me. I’ve seen worse, and not through a lo-res gopro. I was bothered more by the amateurishness of the shooter. From another perspective, where the hell were the cops?
When I was at the Pentagon, Hispanics were classified as White or Black since “Hispanic” is an ethnicity. It’s still the same.
Of course, Hispanics say: VIVA LA RAZA!
Dennis Miller quote from yesterday’s show (not for the faint of heart):
“Biden is more brain dead than JFK was when he reached the far side of Dealy Plaza.”
When I was at the Pentagon, Hispanics were classified as White or Black since “Hispanic” is an ethnicity. It’s still the same.
Of course, Hispanics say: VIVA LA RAZA!
I’m having fun with the media classification of George Zimmerman as a “white hispanic” as part of the effort to make Trayvon Martin into a martyr over the last eight years.
Well I didn’t take my own advice and I almost got caught up in a riot. so much fun. I was coming north on I 45 through downtown Houston. the traffic slowed to a stop and about 40 squad cars passed me on the right shoulder. I looked off to the side and what do I see but marchers in the street and then a little further along lined up along the freeway ready to cross the guard rail and block the freeway. of course in Houston, they have to cross a police line of squad cars and officers before they could get on the freeway. right now I’m sitting waiting for my Takeaway food at a Greek restaurant that we like . Everywhere I look there are EMS and fire staged, ready to jump on the freeway and go somewhere. I’m at the intersection of two freeways.
I almost moved my giant can of bear spray from my expedition to my pick up truck today so that I would have it with me but then I decided not to. Not the best choice I could’ve made I think, I am still armed.
N
Magic Leap circling the drain.
https://daringfireball.net/2020/05/abovitz_magic_leap_translation
“Firm Seeks Class Action Suit Over WD’s SMR Hard Drives”
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wd-class-action-lawsuit-smr-hard-drive
“Hattis & Lukacs, a class-action firm, has begun soliciting plaintiffs for a potential class-action lawsuit against hard drive maker Western Digital (WD) for not disclosing that several of its hard drives use slower, SMR technology.”
“We recently reported that Western Digital (WD) was shipping hard drives with SMR technology, a technology that boosts capacity but results in slower hard drives, without listing that fact in marketing materials and product specifications. Further scrutiny found that Toshiba and Seagate also engage in the practice, which obviously leaves the door open for litigation against those companies, too.”
“Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) involves overlapping recording tracks on a hard drive to boost capacity and reduce manufacturing costs, but it results in reduced performance in several types of workloads. For instance, ServeTheHome posted an article yesterday that outlined the performance compared to standard Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) drives, finding much slower speeds in several tasks.”
I had no idea.
Things are getting sporty in Atlanta.
“SpaceX loses another Starship prototype in massive explosion”
https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/29/21274931/spacex-starship-prototype-rocket-explosion-static-fire-test
“Another Starship bites the dust”
SpaceX is making a new Starship and blowing up a few on the way there.
Hat tip to:
http://drudgereport.com/
SpaceX loses another Starship prototype in rapid disassembly.
Fixed it for you.
“George Floyd family enlists Dr. Michael Baden to perform second autopsy”
https://www.foxnews.com/us/george-floyd-family-enlists-dr-michael-baden-to-perform-second-autopsy
“Police had arrested Floyd and were trying to put him in a squad car when he stiffened up and fell to the ground, saying he was claustrophobic, according to the complaint.”
“An official autopsy revealed nothing to support strangulation as the cause of death, concluding that the combined effects of being restrained, potential intoxicants in Floyd’s system and his underlying health issues, including heart disease, likely contributed to his death.”
Here we go again. Looks like George F. died of a heart attack due to his morbidities and potential intoxicants, not strangulation.
There are so many links I’d post but just start here…
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/
He made his blogging bones on the Ferguson riots. OH, and turn on your ad blocker!
n
Several direct attacks on individual police. Spicy time may be starting.
Pretty much right on schedule… and the EBT cards are still working.
Finally.
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/white-house-plans-empower-fcc-regulate-american-social-media-giants
You can’t have your cake and eat it too, you are either a common carrier, or you are a publisher. Choose.
n
Pretty much right on schedule… and the EBT cards are still working.
Papa Murphy’s has a new deep dish pizza which is actually pretty tasty. They take EBT.
A pizza stone or unglazed quarry tile is highly recommended even though it will take longer to heat up the oven.
“Firm Seeks Class Action Suit Over WD’s SMR Hard Drives”
The last WD Black I put into my primary desktop sounds terrible shutting down.
That reminds me it is time to swap it out.
Here we go again. Looks like George F. died of a heart attack due to his morbidities and potential intoxicants, not strangulation.
Doesn’t matter. Hands up, don’t shoot.
The rent-a-mobs and professionally printed signs have been paid for. They’re getting used this weekend.
Howard Dean. They’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel for Dem leadership in Floridia. This is how far the party has fallen in what is, ironically, an increasingly purple state.
Kinda expect better from Gwen Graham, however, but she’ll need the party apparatus … or whats left of it … to make another run at the Governor’s Mansion in two years.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/05/29/theres-a-new-theory-about-florida-coronavirus-and-pneumonia-deaths-read-this-first/
The thing I drove past in Houston was a lot sportier than I thought Houston would get. Nice video of the female who thought she could remain in the street after the cops told everyone to get out of the street…
Love the skate rats diving in, taking a shot, then darting away. Anyone else notice the similarities to small pack animals taking down a bigger animal? The mob spreads the risk of bad retaliation by rotating members in and out.
Check out the original tweets, and the comments. I’m LOLing myself at the “delete this” and “blur out the faces” comments. “You’re putting them at risk”…. Um, no. Their actions put them at risk. And the LOL, where I can’t believe anyone could be involved in policing the comments on twitter to support the rioters, but still be completely ignorant of how the real world works- that part of town is part of the “smart cities” initiative. I bet that there are 20 cameras or more focused on the area around the cop car. They all feed back to the Fusion Center, where they’re watching the tweets and other social media posts in real time, archiving all the video, running video analytics that make it possible to ‘show me all the video of the male in the yellow hat for the last two hours’ and generally creating terabytes of tagged and correlated video of the “protesters”… they don’t need any social media video…
I’m sure they’re also logging the bluetooth id of every phone, all the phone ESNs, every license plate, any toll tags, copying the geotag data off of every posted photo, and generally building dossiers and cases against anyone they want to pursue in the future.
We’ve already discussed how they can identify individuals by their shoes and the distressing and other features of their jeans.
Anyone who does something interesting, they’ll track them back to however they entered the area, and get the license plate…
Poor little pretend wannabees.
n
The thing I drove past in Houston was a lot sportier than I thought Houston would get.
My son lives a mile outside 610. Yes, in the war zone. I begged him to be careful tonight. He has a 200+ unit section 8 apartment complex about 400 ft away from his house. I am sure that nobody in there is getting sporty.
He does have a Houston cop and two firefighters living on his street. They bought their houses at the same time he did and have a lot of pride in their blue collar neighborhood. They “police” the apartment complex when necessary.