Hot and humid.
Less hot yesterday by the end of the day, but furnace hot for most of it. Just standing outdoors was enough to soak my shirt with sweat.
We spent the morning at swim practice, hit the school for the free lunch for the kids (mini pizzas), and then I was free to work on stuff around the house. Cleaned the pool. Did some garden work. Picked up the yard. Cleaned and put a couple of things away. Hid from the heat until I felt normal again, then back outside sorting inventory to take to this week’s auction. Which is what I’ll be doing later today, dropping off several bins of stuff. Ran some errands for my wife.
Boy howdy it was hot.
The news is full of idiots. COVID parties. FFS.
Meanwhile all the nation state stuff is still happening. Players are still moving the pieces on the board. What haven’t we heard anything about lately?* I’m reasonably sure that the distraction is made to order for some of the players. Elephants dancing. Nervous mice.
One of the newsletters I get lists “Line of Duty” deaths for fire/police and it was a bit of a shock to see 2 of the 20 were in Houston. One was an HPD helo pilot that went down (possibly to hostile fire) in north Houston, and the other was a deputy that got blue on blued during a call in Fort Bend. They are counting COVID deaths as LOD, and they are roughly equal to the gunshot deaths for the last couple of months. It’s been a heavier than normal couple of months too.
The celebration of Independence Day is coming up. Bob used it as a convenient marker for his switch to Linux, which was never quite complete. I don’t have any personal observances, but I think our founding fathers** would be horrified and angry beyond belief at what we’ve done with their new country. This used to be the one purely enjoyable, unabashedly celebratory holiday of the summer. But the taint of irony has cast a pall on even that day.
Take what joy you can. We are currently living in the good old days.
Keep your eyes open. Keep stacking.
nick
*GWOT, scourge of islam, global financial crisis, etc
**not zers, or trans anything, nor co-parenting, but FATHERS.
Same for my son’s college as the newsletter comes to my house. A waste of trees in my opinion.
339 cases in Knox county and they mandate masks for everyone, everywhere. 0.06 infection rate and the place loses it’s mind. No mask, get fined and/or 30 days in jail. A jail system where they have released people early to avoid the spread in jail.
The fact that the health department, staffed by people that were not elected, never swore an oath to uphold the law, no judicial oversight, no legislative process, can make laws that can impose fines and jail time. It is very disturbing that four or five people of questionable motives can impose so much on others.
The celebration of Independence Day is coming up. Bob used it as a convenient marker for his switch to Linux, which was never quite complete.
IIRC, Stamps.com was the problem with completely ditching Windows.
I use all three major platforms — Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Each has upsides and downsides.
As with my phone experiments, I’ve learned it is possible to have a completely corporate free experience, but that can leave a lot to be desired.
That said, I’m currently typing on a 4GB Dell which is completely useless for Windows 10 but acceptable running Fedora 32 or Linux Mint 20.
Hi folks, Catching up my reading. I’ve been shelling black eyed peas. Canned 7 quarts last night and about to put another 7 quarts in the canner. When I pressure can, I find I get better seals if I let the canner decompress naturally and allow the jars to cool down before removing the lid. So that means at most I can only can 14 quarts a day.
But I love shelling peas. It is one of the most soothing tasks in the world. I am transported back to sitting in clover in the back yard, helping my grandmother shell peas. It’s such a pleasant task that it is well worth the effort of picking them in the hot sun. And we eat them all year long.
These are from my dad’s garden. His garden is about 20x more productive than mine. Part of it is the varieties he chooses to grow (although my tomatoes have out-produced his usually … and for the same reason). He has a green thumb, but he also has a different garden space than I do – his is on sand, mine is clay. And, he has manure fertilizer. He cleans out the chicken coop and spreads it on the garden and tills it in, and when he has the horses in the corral, he has their manure. He has cattle as well although they are rarely pinned. I have many friends with animals but none will share their manure!
@Lynn, do ya’ll ever spent Independence night at Magnolia Beach or across the water to watch the fireworks? The most magnificent displays we’ve ever seen. Everyone brings their fireworks down there so for a full mile, from dark until midnight, the rockets shoot up and explode.
Here’s a switch. Of course, Mexico doesn’t want the boozeheads running down there.
https://www.fox7austin.com/news/mexican-state-eyes-closing-us-border-as-covid-19-cases-rise-in-arizona
Sometimes I have to remember that we’re living in the future.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8485121/Beloved-Twitch-streamer-Byron-Reckful-Bernstein-31-dies-suicide.html
n
I find it interesting that miscreants flee the country and then return. The Maxwell woman is the very type who talk about leaving the country if X wins.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/nyregion/ghislaine-maxwell-arrest-jeffrey-epstein.html
Hey All, I’ve posted an update on Barbara’s condition over at her site.
TL:DR
She’s improving, is moving a bit, has some of the medical stuff out of her, but still some left, treatment seems to be working, is still in hospital but hoping to move to rehab soon.
n
Hey All, I’ve posted an update on Barbara’s condition over at her site.
Thanks for the update.
@Barbara: Get well soon!
The Present Moment Has Set Blacks Back a Half-Century :
If the Fed have something on GristleWell, she has two options:
1. Stay silent to avoid assignation by the Cankles Crowd and take her lumps.
2. If she really has *something* like video, plead for complete immunity and protection (see #1 above).
All the cameras in Epsteins cribs and the Feds have nothing. Maybe there are no videos or GristleWell has them.
Does anyone remember a link or article that detailed the stages of a Venezuela type collapse? Google gives some useful stuff, but they are ‘higher level’ than what I’m looking for. Higher level but succinct http://www.targetofopportunity.com/5_stages.htm
Particularly, I remember one of the symptoms being that X is available, but not in your preferred brand/size/style but you buy it anyway. This is happening to me with TP, and meat…
n
If the Fed have something on GristleWell, she has two options:
1. Stay silent to avoid assignation by the Cankles Crowd and take her lumps.
…
From WordNet:
1. assignation, tryst — (a secret rendezvous (especially between lovers))
Typo, or Freudian slip? (Just teasing; I know what you meant to type! 😉 )
Particularly, I remember one of the symptoms being that X is available, but not in your preferred brand/size/style but you buy it anyway. This is happening to me with TP, and meat…
The Publix (FL HEB) stores where we are this week in North Florida don’t seem to have a problem with meat selection, but the TP, paper towels, and cleaning spray shelves are stripped bare.
I suspect people are just reflexively grabbing TP and paper towels whenever they see them. Formula 409 is a big arbitrage favorite according to my wife.
Heh. When we were growing up, we didn’t have a car but once in a while my mother would borrow one from somebody, and I recall more than once her driving backward down one way streets. Even knowng that, after we grew up and she had a car of her own, it was disconcerting when my children went to spend a couple weeks with her, and after they came home they asked one day “is it true that if you are on a one way street you can just drive in reverse and that is ok?”. :-\ *crossed eyes emoji here*
@Nick: Re flour not keeping in storage: some flour is brominated or bleached, and it does not seem to store as well as unbleached flour. If you look at the ingredients on the package, it might give you a clue what is causing the off-taste in it so you can avoid that kind in the future. As much as I try to buy Texas brands, I never buy White Wings flour because of this. I can’t find a picture of the back of the package to show, and their website has the ingredients page “under construction”, but IIRC, I think it is brominated (which has a bleaching action).
Less hot yesterday by the end of the day, but furnace hot for most of it. Just standing outdoors was enough to soak my shirt with sweat.
I worked outside until 10 pm last night at the old house with long spells in air conditioning. One of the things that I did was to move my firewood stash from the old house to the office complex where I put it all in a place where trucks have been illegally turning around on my property. I doubt that it will stop them but I am going to build that area up since they are tearing up my asphalt roads by going sideways across them.
When I put in the new asphalt topping in 2018, I had to sign away the warranty because of the trucks continuously driving on my property. I really need some tank traps for the area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_obstacles
Fort Bend County had 1,800 new cases of SARS-COV-2 reported in June for a population of 820,000+. Mostly young people. One of the local paper reporters got a mild case of it, she is 25 and a diabetic since age 4.
LOL I must have been thinking BJ Klinton and GristleWell. Assignation and assisination apply.
I’ve received three goobermint alerts from THE STATE OF TEXAS on my iPhone. “Wear a mask in public or suffer a $250 fine.” Once I get my residency I’ve already decided to vote for whoever challenges Abbott. Talk about cowardice. He doesn’t want to be the Gov who COVID’d his State to death. Be a dictator, close businesses, crush innovation and see what happens.
It looks like the Redskins are about to crumble and change their name. I’m so glad I gave up on pro sports decades ago. Krazy Kabuki.
In case you didn’t read it, the d-list group The Dixie Chicks changed their name to The Chicks. So brave, so woke. Lady Antebellum changed their name to Lady A, already used by some other group, fcuked up in their rush to wokeness.
The boy’s birthday is in a couple days, and the only thing he mentioned wanting is a set of apple AirPods. I ordered a set last night for pickup today. I went to the store at my allotted time. The store is in an outdoor mall. Rent a cops redirect you to a nearby tent where another rent a cop takes your temperature, asks if you have been exposed to Covid in the last two weeks (how should I know?), do I have a cough or sore throat, and have I been to any hotspots recently.
If I didn’t have to have them today, I’d have left. I did make them answer the same questions – every single person I interacted with (total of 4). They seemed annoyed.
I’ll play along with the mask kabuki and taking my temperature, but I’m drawing the line at asking medical questions. There is no place I need to spend my money that badly.
Total fraud, MrAtoz and I can ride from Kayenta, Az. to Mexican Hat, Ut. on 183 and stop at some of the roadside jewelry stands. Let’s compare the color of my neck to those of the jewelry vendors.
How about the name of that Utah town, should it be changed to Gringo Hat?
If any of those authentic native Americans are wearing sneakers or laced boots, confiscate them because cultural appropriation is not allowed. Ditto if they have any electronics, a pickup truck, or fitted underwear.
Funny but true: Not only are the libtards bitching about the eeeevil whites appropriating authentic peoples’ culture, they’re bitching about eeeeevil whites stealing the inventions and scientific discoveries of non-white cultures. I’m not sure what inventions they’re referring to, except maybe the pointed stick; I’m pretty sure the Carnot cycle, the transistor, and the germ theory of disease came from white men who grew up in white cultures. Anyway, bottom line, white theft of non-white inventions is bad. When some libtard was asked about the use of whites’ inventions by non-whites, there was hemming and hawing and the denial that whites invented anything because it was all based on stolen ideas and anyway I need my smartphone. (What I read was a series of questions and answers. I don’t remember if it was a transcript of an interview with one of the left’s “intellectual leaders”, a transcript of some thug-on-the-street interview, or what.)
I think they invented the rock. You know, so they can kill each other.
So the SO has been looking for a new PC and as such I’m looking for opinions on a few questions that will help to point me in one direction versus another. Usage is 80% browsing the net (lots of open tabs) and 20% working simple spreadsheets in Excel.
1. SSD over HDD – is the faster speed a reasonable trade-off against potentially a shorter lifespan?
2. Win10 Home vs. Professional – any reason(s) to aim for Pro over Home?
3. RAM – 8GB, 16, 32, more?
Thanks.
SSD, definitely. No moving parts, less power consumption quiet. Lifespan will be many years, probably more than a spinning piece of metal. It is the writes that wear the SSD down, not the reads. SSD’s support a LOT of writes.
WIN10 Home is more than good enough. Pro adds encrypted boot disc which can be a pain if you want to boot in safe mode. Pro will connect to a domain, Home will not. For home use, Home is plenty good enough.
8 gig is good enough. I have that on my Surface laptop and run Lightroom and Photoshop. Not at blazing speed, but good enough when desktop is not available. And I think most of the speed constraints are the number of cores, not the memory.
Once I get my residency I’ve already decided to vote for whoever challenges Abbott. Talk about cowardice.
Go back and look at Abbott’s last two Dem opponents. Take a *good* look at their stories. Can you imagine voting for either one?
If Cornyn falls, a credible Dem might step up with CA money, but that’s a big if.
Abbott speaks Spanish fluently — unlike the Castro brothers … cough — and plays to the religous right base with the anti-abortion crusades. He can’t be tagged as a racist, and has been through four vetting processes running for Attorney General and Governor. Good luck finding a credible opponent.
I’ll bet Lupe is still looking for that gun …
Personal preferences/vote:
1) SSD for C drive, 1TB+ for D drive. Booting windows (and apps) from SSD is very fast. SSD should be at least 256GB for Windows and various programs. Although you can install programs on D though. Having D for all data makes backups easier.
2) Win10 home vs Pro ? Probably Pro. No special reason for me. Just like 64bit stuff.
3) RAM? At least 16MB. Win10 on 8MB is OK with one (maybe two) programs running, but then lots of memory swapping will happen. Use http://www.crucial.com to buy memory. And I got this tool kit which is quite handy for taking apart laptops and more: https://amzn.to/3faJMjb – $22. Nice tool set.
Getting a laptop with SSD + hard drive will be more expensive, though. But, since I am on the laptop all day long (and into the evenings), it was worth the extra expense for me.
2. Win10 Home vs. Professional – any reason(s) to aim for Pro over Home?
Laptop for even occasional road use? Go with Pro. I’ve encountered public WiFi situations using Cisco gear with odd authentication mechanisms that choked Home on my kids’ laptops.
Get the 64 bit version at this point, whichever you choose. The compiler vendors are waking up to the possibilities presented by x86_64 in terms of extra registers and instructions in part thanks to Microsoft and Sony now using AMD APU cores at the heart of their game consoles.
Just wasted 30 minutes of my life watching Hamilton on the Disney Stream. Maybe I have no class but I saw nothing special. Music was Rap for a big part. Dancing was good, story was rambling. Apparently others liked it to attempt to show they aren’t racists. Which is completely the wrong reason to rate a show. Performers were definitely talented.
Or maybe I am a knuckle dragging Neanderthal.
@ray, my wife is currently wrestling with the cable octopus under my AV cabinet to get the apple tv hooked back up, specifically so she can watch hamilton on D+.
Funny coincidence.
n
From which did the bicycle mechanics of Dayton, Ohio steal the airplane design?
She may like it, a lot of people did. It was just not to my taste. Let me know what she thinks. She is probably more cultured than me.
@Lynn, do ya’ll ever spent Independence night at Magnolia Beach or across the water to watch the fireworks? The most magnificent displays we’ve ever seen. Everyone brings their fireworks down there so for a full mile, from dark until midnight, the rockets shoot up and explode.
Just once. We cannot travel as a family anymore due to our disabled daughter so I do not leave on major holidays anymore.
BTW, I early voted yesterday in the local Muslim grocery store that used to be a Randalls (local chain). Entering the store was surreal as I had been in the Randalls many times before. No, I do not want a copy of the Koran on audiotape.
The Tank Commander speaks.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/07/03/opinion/dukakis-has-some-advice-biden-dont-take-those-polls-seriously/
The article fails to mention that Dukakis’ cousin, Olympia, received the Best Supporting Actress Oscar that spring for “Moonstruck”. The flick hitting HBO that Summer was huge publicity for the campaign.
“Hey, Joe, this is Bill. Look, buddy, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I’m going to hit the trail in support of the nominee. The bad news …”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/clinton-coronavirus-crisis-november
The wife, son and I drove over to El Campo, Texas today (60 miles) and met my parents for a late lunch in the Rotary Club park pavilion. Outside. Dad brought about five lbs of bbq and fixings. Great company, great food, great conversation, bloody hot !
Did I mention it was hot ? 97 F. Not much breeze.
Over The Hedge: fixing the humans quarantine
https://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge/2020/07/03
This will end badly.
Once I get my residency I’ve already decided to vote for whoever challenges Abbott. Talk about cowardice.
Go back and look at Abbott’s last two Dem opponents. Take a *good* look at their stories. Can you imagine voting for either one?
Oh yeah, ol’ running shoes. Free Abortions For All ™ ! Wendy Davis is a real piece of work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Davis_(politician)
I will give Abbott credit for a major item. He has resisted the calls to shut down the state again. Masks are minor compared to that. Shutting down the bars is a bad thing though.
I will give Abbott credit for a major item. He has resisted the calls to shut down the state again. Masks are minor compared to that. Shutting down the bars is a bad thing though.
6th Street in Austin was out of control. As soon as the bars were allowed to open at 25% capacity, most downtown were at 100%+. Abbott had no choice since his own previous order to reopen overrode all city and county orders.
Oh yeah, ol’ running shoes. Free Abortions For All ™ ! Wendy Davis is a real piece of work.
IIRC, Wendy Davis is running for Congress in a district somewhere around Austin. I swear I remember her name on a runoff ballot.
It isn’t our district, but my wife is thinking about going to vote in the Dem runoff anyway in order to vote against the other Subcontinent candidate in the race to unseat our walking corpse Congresscritter.
2. Win10 Home vs. Professional – any reason(s) to aim for Pro over Home?
Laptop for even occasional road use? Go with Pro. I’ve encountered public WiFi situations using Cisco gear with odd authentication mechanisms that choked Home on my kids’ laptops.
Get the 64 bit version at this point, whichever you choose. The compiler vendors are waking up to the possibilities presented by x86_64 in terms of extra registers and instructions in part thanks to Microsoft and Sony now using AMD APU cores at the heart of their game consoles.
Get at least a 512 GB SSD drive and 16 GB of ram also. Most of my customers are getting 32 GB of ram now in their laptops.
And I have about a dozen SSD drives running in various machines now. One of them is over five years old.
I will give Abbott credit for a major item. He has resisted the calls to shut down the state again. Masks are minor compared to that. Shutting down the bars is a bad thing though.
6th Street in Austin was out of control. As soon as the bars were allowed to open at 25% capacity, most downtown were at 100%+. Abbott had no choice since his own previous order to reopen overrode all city and county orders.
I was wondering myself how the bars would control their patron count. I doubt any of them tried.
The bars and clubs here are being restricted again – not shut down, but restricted on their capacity. As you describe, they just “went for it” – full capacity – and the result is thousands of people in quarantine.
At least one idiot who knew he had Covid, and had been instructed to stay home, went club-hopping. He is likely to be prosecuted. If he sent, say, 100 people into quarantine for 2 weeks, he should be liable for 100×2 = 200 weeks of people’s salaries.
“6th Street in Austin was out of control. As soon as the bars were allowed to open at 25% capacity, most downtown were at 100%+. Abbott had no choice since his own previous order to reopen overrode all city and county orders.”
I was wondering myself how the bars would control their patron count. I doubt any of them tried.
Please. Austin. The city had to revive the concept of the drunk tank to keep the party under control on weekends. Any weekend — it doesn’t matter.
There are too many boozeheads and too much corporate money at stake for things to slide by with the old nod-and-a-wink anymore, as Abbott learned last month. Austin has a reputation to uphold, similar to what Florida has dealt with for 40 years of people showing up expecting “Margaritaville”.
One Austin bar owner was quoted by the local TV news that a 30 day shutdown penalty for capacity and masking was going to cost him $500,000 in lost revenue. This was a *small* bar on 6th.
The Governor’s office in Texas has a lot of symbolism and very little real power beyond the “bully pulpit”. The Legislature and/or the Lt. Governor could pull the plug on the bar closings at any point if they so desired, but they’ll let Abbott take the heat. Unfortunately, he’ll probably use the political capital for more abortion restrictions next Spring.
BTW, I early voted yesterday in the local Muslim grocery store that used to be a Randalls (local chain). Entering the store was surreal as I had been in the Randalls many times before. No, I do not want a copy of the Koran on audiotape.
Randall’s is a Safeway/Albertson’s chain, run from California.
The only difference between Randall’s and a Safeway on the West Coast is the name above the door. Even my Safeway club card from Vantucky works.
The HEB near my house is finally trying to ditch its 90s Albertson’s vibe from the building’s previous occupant. I think they’re attempting to move the store up from a mid-grade HEB to high end without tearing down the building and starting over.