Hot and humid. Sunny. Hot. Really hot. HOUSTON hot. 🙂
Yesterday stayed hot all day. It was 85f at midnight, but the garage was still in the high 90s, even with the door open and fans going.
I did get a bunch of stuff done, but it was plodding, and small victories only.
I got some of my recent bulk food purchases put up in buckets with O2 absorbers, and ready to go to my secondary storage. I gave the freezer a couple more treatments with the disinfectant and deodorizer. I might have to give it more. I might try Scrubbing Bubbles tub cleaner next. The smell is faint, but still present.
Got some more stuff loaded to get out of the house and sold. Got tons more yet to do.
Back in the early days of the Blogosphere, someone observed that the majority of bloggers could be classified as either “linkers” or “thinkers”. It was rare that you got both. Ol’ Remus and his Woodpile Report were that rare combination of links you might want to think about, and thoughtful commentary. He has apparently passed on suddenly from cancer, only recently diagnosed. He never mentioned anything about it on his page, and frequently wrote about his plans to get through the next phase of this period we’re living in. I don’t know anything about the man, except through his writing, but I will miss his gentle and thoughtful observation and commentary. He joins the list of the ‘old guard’- Jerry Pournelle, RBT, Steven Den Beste, and others. Funny to think that blogging and this internet thing are old enough that the originals are passing from old age and infirmity. No one gets out alive.
Today, I’m plodding along. Small steps, but keep moving forward. Maybe I’ll get some more work done and be closer to my goals. I’m sure I’ll be closer to some of them. And that is going to have to be good enough for today.
Keep stacking, keep making forward progress.
nick
Spiderham, Spiderham! Does whatever a spider can.
I hope the Daily Mail keeps with their pattern of following up on stories some months or years later. We need to learn how this worked out.
A question for the hive mind: Who is making the best motherboards for ordinary working computers? I’ve decided to build a new machine, and am looking for a solid business class set up. I’m not doing intense video work, or gaming. I’ve been using an ASUS, and it sure looks like they are exclusively making gamer oriented mobos.
It is really hard to beat ASUS quality … or at least it used to be. That said, my last two PC builds used an ASRock AB350M Pro4, one in my home server and one in my kids PC.
The board evidently has a history of quality problems, but I keep the BIOS up to date on both systems and haven’t experienced any issues.
With my home server, I didn’t want a restriction on memory similar to what motivated me to yank the Atom board which ran the machine well for 4-5 years until Linux with X really started needing 4GB RAM. The ASRock can accept up to 64 GB RAM, but I currently run 8.
My kids PC is a Minecraft toy and a backup motherboard for the home server so I don’t have to throw away an investment in RAM if I ever need that 64 GB.
We’ll see about longevity. My primary desktop board is an ASUS Core2 board which has run a Q6600 CPU for 12 years without an issue. I’m loathe to upgrade because the system has 16 GB RAM I installed before starting my first pass at grad school.
Make sure the motherboard cpu socket and your intended cpu match ! I am still an Intel guy but am thinking about AMD lately. To me, Intels tend to run little cooler than AMDs which means less cpu fan speed to me (quieter).
I run my home server in our guest room, and cool/quiet were concerns putting the machine together. I used a 35W TDP A9600E AMD APU and played around with the motherboard settings until I found the “cool and quiet” fan mode. The end result is satisfactory, but I’d love to push it further.
The chip is the same core TSMC fabs for Microsoft and Sony in their current gen game machines. AMD doesn’t sell it retail anymore, however, and the closest current offering is the Athlon 3000G.
Unlike Intel, AMD doesn’t cripple their chipsets with unreasonable memory limitations, and the AM4 socket boards have been huge for hobbyists wanting to experiment with overclocking and CPU swap outs.
True, and a real good point I keep a LOT of spices of all kinds. But so many people do not know how to cook, don’t understand substitutions, and are accustomed to the flavors of restaurant food – which sauce mixes mimick. People were truly upset , they hungered for those comforts. Until they learn (which can take years – esp with no one there to teach them), to combat “food fatigue“, sauce mixes can’t be beat. I make almost everything from scratch (including my own ketchup), but I use “Brown Gravy Mix” almost weekly – it turns a burger into “Hamburger Steak”, add sour cream and it’s Beef Stroganoff, add a little soy sauce and a pinch of sugar and it is Egg Foo Yung sauce. Packaged Hollandaise means we have perfect sauce for Christmas or for Eggs Benedict without risking a wasted egg if it curdled. As to the rest, Nick really captured it all:
The news about Ol’ Remus is a heartbreak. He is with his lady wife, now, and all his loved ones who’d gone West before him. May God comfort all those who love him. 🙁
Not a good year for Texas law enforcement–
Nor NYFC, but that is their own fault–
n
I’m glad I’m no longer in the corporate workplace. You guys in tech have been seeing this for years now, and it’s spreading–
–I’ve mentioned my alumni newsletter before for the kind of cr@p they choose to emphasize, which is the cr@p my school chooses.
n
BTW, this was featured in my inbox, if you’re looking for ammo, these guys have some. Can’t vouch for them or the price.
https://www.ammunitiondepot.com/ammunition
but they have stock.
There is an easy fix for this, stop going to freakin movies.
10% to 20% fewer child deaths, partly from fewer accidents, thanks to the school closings:
Observed Decrease in U.S. Child Mortality During the COVID-19 Lockdown of 2020
“partly from fewer accidents, thanks to the school closings:”
–I wonder what the stats looked like when kids went to school vs working on the farm… bet they went down.
Lots of unexpected effects, 3rd and 4th order or beyond. Probably why models don’t work.
n
“There is an easy fix for this, stop going to freakin movies. ”
–I was a YOUNG white guy working in Hollyweird. I got out of the entertainment industry over a decade and a half ago. It’s only gotten weirder since then.
n
added– I got out of Hollywood over 20 years ago, it was still a meritocracy, tempered by personal relationships and nepotism.
Ammunion Depot is one of my regular go-to places for ammo. I’ve never had any problems with them.
Hollywood’s identity crisis: Actors, writers and producers warn of ‘reverse racism’ in the film industry which has created a ‘toxic’ climate for anyone who is a white, middle-age man
There is an easy fix for this, stop going to freakin movies.
An audience seeing the movies in theaters doesn’t matter as much anymore as the audience seeing the material on the studios’ own streaming services such as Disney+, HBO Max, and whatever NBC/Universal has in the works.
Theaters probably won’t survive this year as anything beyond curiosities providing another venue to watch a film that premieres on streaming the same night. Alamo Drafthouse and similar venues provide a value argument, but AMC doesn’t.
And if you haven’t cut the cable cord, you have no one but yourself to blame for CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and, especially, ESPN — typically a $15+ “sports programming” surcharge on your bill.
Basic cable stopped making money from advertising decades ago.
I’m one of those. Daily Pundit debuted in December of 2001 and has been in operation ever since.
Somewhere around that time I named the Blogosphere:
It was a much smaller place back then. I went to blogger get-together dinner in San Francisco that included about half of the name conservative bloggers of the time. I sat across from a guy named Nick Denton, who was telling us all about his crazy plan to move to NYC and get rich with a blog empire he was going to call Gawker Media.
I’ve seen several of what I call the “OG Bloggers” either pass on or drop out. Of all of them, I think I miss Den Beste the most, even though we had a falling out before he died.
World keeps on changing. It is what it is.
It was a much smaller place back then. I went to blogger get-together dinner in San Francisco that included about half of the name conservative bloggers of the time. I sat across from a guy named Nick Denton, who was telling us all about his crazy plan to move to NYC and get rich with a blog empire he was going to call Gawker Media.
Back in the early 90s on Genie or Delphi, I remember J. Michael Straczynski promoting his unproduced pilot script for “Babylon 5”. One night, he even laid out the entire arc of the five season series, which he stuck to, for the most part, until Claudia Christian was fired.
One of my primary motivations for cutting the cord years ago. Also the $140+ cable bill.
My only streaming service is prime, and that’s still primarily for the shipping. I’ll join others for a month at a time when there is something new worth watching, which isn’t very often…
@Bill, I’m surprised your proposal only got 3 pingbacks and no actual comments, or is that an effect of the archiving?
n
–quoted for truth
We cut the cord as soon as we could get high speed internet without it (ATT Fiber to the home.)
Kids watch netflix. I watch youtube. Wife reads. I’ve got several hundred DVDs and Blurays, and several terabytes of rips that came on a hard drive I bought at a yard sale.
I’ve got thousands of hours I’ve never watched.
Add the stockpile of unplayed games for several consoles and pc, and the PLAYED games that hold up to replay, and really we don’t need ANY new media other than books and magazines (yes, I still like those.)
n
BTW, 94F and overcast
Activated charcoal absorbs odors, and ordinary charcoal briquets are effective. I used to store my dorm refrigerator for the summer with charcoal briquets on newspaper on the shelves.
After you’re done cleaning the freezer put charcoal briquets on pans on the top and bottom shelves. Fill the middle shelf first, then pull the pans out and place food underneath as you continue to stock. Take the pans out when you when you need the space. If they’re in there for a week or more, you should have every bit of objectionable odor absorbed.
It’s the archiving. There have been a lot of archives, and half-rotted DB backups, and so on.
At the time it was quite controversial and provoked a lot of comment, especially after a NYT columnist credited me with “coining” the word.
There was an even older group of bloggers who predated the blogs that sprang up in the wake of 9/11, (which were mostly conservative). Those guy were tech-liberals, and called us “Warbloggers.” Doc Searls, Anil Dash, and others belonged to that elder group.
They weren’t amused that somebody like me seemed to have named their playpen for them, and so they found one of their crew who had, two years previously, used the term in a string of what he considered laughable names for the world of blogging.
So I didn’t coin the term, but I did name the Blogosphere. Without that post, it would not have been called that.
I have never lived anyplace where cable was AVAILABLE. Does that make me a charter member of cord cutters?
Starlink: Hurry!
My only streaming service is prime, and that’s still primarily for the shipping. I’ll join others for a month at a time when there is something new worth watching, which isn’t very often…
Amazon produces its own content, but not on the scale of Disney. And they lack the back catalog of Warner Bros. (HBO Now) or NBC/Universal.
Plus I have to give Amazon credit for dumping “Doctor Who” when the series went “woke” and cr*pped all over Bezos & co. last season in one script. I cr*p on Amazon too, but I’m not wholly dependent on them for a paycheck.
Doc Searls– there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.
n
(and another, back blogging and thankfully not passed, Kim Du Toit. I’m also supposing that Emperor Misha is still doing his thing over at rotty world, although I stopped reading a long time ago)
I contribute to Hollyweird’s demise by torrenting.
Only innertubes at the new/old house in SA. The condo in Vegas comes with cable/innertube.
One of my favorite *goings out* is a good movie on the big screen. I will miss that.
“but AMC doesn’t.”
IMAX and ‘event’ movies will always draw fans for the shared experience. The demise of the movie theatre has been like fusion, always just around the corner….
n
added—https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8513993/Star-Wars-Empire-Strikes-tops-domestic-weekend-box-office-thanks-drive-movie-theaters.html
And this is exactly why he didn’t wear one…
n
@drwilliams,
thanks, I’ll give that a try next if this last round didn’t do it. This time I sprayed at a ‘reverse angle’ to try to get the back and underside of all the grill and shelf parts. I must have been missing some parts because the Mold Armor is pretty effective.
n
Don’t tell my wife. She will start storing storing charcoal in my favorite recliner.
Hooray, found some parts that I forgot buying while moving stuff in the garage. Also found some radio stuff that I finally remembered buying. Moved that into the house.
It’s like Christmas morning, only over 100F with RH of 60%.
n
Just an observation. Buying 80% lowers in case you later can’t, without buying the jig and tooling, is a pretty massive oversight.
The jig is usually almost as much as a complete factory pistol, or AR lower, but … those 80% lowers are almost worthless without it.
And now they’re pretty well sold out everywhere.
n
IMAX and ‘event’ movies will always draw fans for the shared experience. The demise of the movie theatre has been like fusion, always just around the corner….
The big multiplex in Pflugerville was half Subcontinent films on Sat/Sun, and that packed them in on the weekends pre-virus.
The “dollar” theaters around us also did well in Jan/Feb.
Make sure the motherboard cpu socket and your intended cpu match ! I am still an Intel guy but am thinking about AMD lately. To me, Intels tend to run little cooler than AMDs which means less cpu fan speed to me (quieter).
I forgot to mention that anything from AMD’s CPU line going back several generations is not going to run Windows 7 thanks to an arrangement with Microsoft.
Windows 10 only. I think that includes anything with the AM4 socket.
I run Linux on my AMD box so it doesn’t matter.
Over The Hedge: swimming pool
https://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge/2020/07/12
How rude !
Dilbert: Wally Took Notes
https://dilbert.com/strip/2020-07-12
Wally is occasionally my hero.
109F in the sun in my driveway.
wow. I am making some progress though.
n
“Dilbert: Wally Took Notes”
Wally is occasionally my hero.
Detailed notes on paper make people nervous.
I keep a paper notebook, but it is mostly time tracking anymore. We have a time sheet in Workday.com and a ticketing system in Jira in which we have to account for 32 of our 40 hours every week.
Big “all hands” meeting in the morning. The parent corporation in Austria is laying off a bunch of people, but the US is profitable. They’re probably going to tell us that we aren’t going back to our offices in Austin for a couple more months.
I leave the official notes to the Project Manager.
I will do my own notes. We also use Jira to keep track of time on various tasks. Tempo is used to build a timesheet from the Jira tasks. All time must be accounted for, even overheard such as meetings, vacation, holiday, sick, etc. And 40 hours is considered the minimum for salaried employees.
When I started working professionally in May 1974, I was employed by a consulting company, so we always did time sheets (on paper back then!) in 1/4 hour increments. When I moved to my next job, there were no time sheets at first. Later they were introduced but did not make anything better. The same was true at my next two jobs. Only my first job was with a consulting company and I could see the need to track time for billing purposes. All my positions since then have been non-consulting and time sheets (IMO) have just been a way to track employees.
Currently 107F here in the California high desert.
But it’s a dry heat, Sarge – 9% RH.
With a 20mph wind.
Speaking of…
There’s this…
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-boss-wants-to-know-what-youre-up-to-this-weekend-11590678062?shareToken=st06840ac3026e480aabb0a5142f07b978&mod=ffj
One of my favorite *goings out* is a good movie on the big screen. I will miss that.
Me too. I really enjoy driving over to Victoria, meeting my 81 year old dad, and watching a movie on the big screen. I would be surprised if movie theaters ever reopen. We are going to be dealing with SARS-COV-2 for the rest of our lives.
I forgot to mention that anything from AMD’s CPU line going back several generations is not going to run Windows 7 thanks to an arrangement with Microsoft.
Windows 10 only. I think that includes anything with the AM4 socket.
I run Linux on my AMD box so it doesn’t matter.
It is probably about time for business users to move to Windows 10. I don’t want to spend the time or the disasters but a lot of my customers are now running Windows 10.
They’re probably going to tell us that we aren’t going back to our offices in Austin for a couple more months.
My buddy’s wife in Austin who works for a very very very large corporation (Fortune 100) just got told that they are not going back to their office until January at best.
Our company was considering trying to implement a policy that required an employee to notify them of any personal travel. Local trips in town excluded. I’m guessing the lawyers finally stepped in and squashed it. At least I hope that’s what happened. Nevertheless, if big corp wants to pay me my hourly rate 24 hours a day, then I will gladly inform them of all my activity. Until then, bugger off.
It is well past any reasonable expectation of instability so that line should be scratched. There was also the financial burden of running a limited supported version of the product (Win7). I am not even sure if it is still supported with a special fee for business.
Spent the day at Walt Disney World. Capacity is severely limited. Only lines I saw were for the Dwarf mine train and Peter Pan and those were maybe 10 minutes max. Many shops were closed. Disney is taking precautions very seriously. Our gondola for Small World was disinfected before we rode. The heat and childhood exhaustion led us to leave before dark. I will say that lunch at Be Our Guest restaurant was the best food I’ve ever had in Disney and on my top 10 list. VERY good but very expensive.
Tomorrow is a down day then Animal Kingdom on Tuesday.
@Harold – glad to hear it was a good experience today. And a 10 minute wait for Peter Pan? I guess that really only happens during a pandemic!
I had to introduce my engineering manager (actually one of the best guys in the company as a person and manager, and skilled engineer) to the idea of a “time budget” and why that is different from a “schedule” or a “time sheet”.
How many hours a day/week/month does the employee have to give to the company?
How will you budget those hours? Until I showed that I was consistently doing 80+ hours a week and still falling behind, with signed off time tracking, and showing my budget for the tasks I was assigned, they just didn’t get it. 40 hours a week on the customer site. Travel to and from. Reports, drawing reviews, conference calls, support for other customers, expense reporting, and ongoing technical training were just SOME of the assigned tasks.
I had to show them my time budget, and that there was not enough time available to assign to the tasks.
The other thing they never did was create a schedule by working backwards from the delivery date. If you don’t do that, you either get a fantasy schedule, or you end up missing delivery. (the third choice, assign enough resources to get it done was not always available for resource related issues, and was NEVER available for internal budget reasons.)
n
Thanks for the report Harold, Be Our Guest is the castle princess experience?
The castle lunch was really good in MK. Tusker House in AK is one of my favorites (buffet, with african dishes), as is Jiko at AKL (very nice, table service). The Frozen character lunch and/or dinner in Norway is REALLY good but surprisingly not all that kid friendly food wise.
My sibling loves Flying Fish on the Boardwalk, and I’ve never had a bad meal there.
As for the cost, you know going in that it won’t be cheap, but I think that no one does hospitality like Disney, and I’ve never felt like I didn’t get good value for the money. That said, there are smarter and dumber ways to spend your money while there…
n
It is probably about time for business users to move to Windows 10. I don’t want to spend the time or the disasters but a lot of my customers are now running Windows 10.
New hardware won’t run Windows 7, and that has been the case going back at least four years on Intel. Windows 7 can be hacked, but I haven’t checked if that “fix” still works.
EBay is no longer an option either. IIRC the surplus vendors were given free copies of Windows 10 to replace Windows 7 licenses on any machine they refurbish and sell.
The castle thing is Cinderella’s Table, now closed because of virus fear. Be Our Guest is in the back of the park in the Beasts castle. The interior is stunning recreation of the ballroom. The Beast made an appearance and delighted little Addie.
That illustrates one of the huge differences between the real world and government contracting. When we go on travel (TDY), every single minute is billable. I get paid to drive to the airport, fly, drive to the hotel, etc. Compare that to the private sector where, if you are lucky, travel time is baked into the overall job cost. But everyone knows the company will screw the employee every chance it gets to make sure it maintains profitability.
Had a thought whilst sweltering in the Florida Sunshine in a mask. I’ve never seen confirmed reports of virus infection outdoors in daytime. The reports from Florida I’ve seen are all from people going to bars or clubs at night. In my useless opinion, the chances of contracting the virus outdoors I on a sunny day are on a part with being hit by lightning in the same conditions. We have run into a few tourists with virus derangement syndrome who refuse to share elevators with other masked guests and disinfect literally everything in sight.
Yep. I take them, using my own paper and my own pen. They’re my notes, not property of the client. It not infrequently causes butthurt. I will note that not once has my having written down what was said in a meeting helped even a little if there was a dispute in which some manager claimed a month later that, e.g., I’d agreed to some impossible deadline. It’s occasionally helped when a client threatened not to pay an invoice; I’d turn copies of the notes over to the contracting company’s lawyers and the bill got paid, but I’d get bitched at by the account manager for not being more “cooperative”. Sorry, nope. I’m not being the fall guy because someone else lied or screwed up.
What’s a little spyware between friends? Microsoft is your friend, right?
Yep. I don’t understand how people, especially managers, can not understand this. I suppose it’s a combination of engineers being pushed into management because that’s the only upward career path and not being given any training as a manager, and schools of business not teaching anything worthwhile. For what it’s worth, the Army taught these and more topics; they were covered in the correspondence courses for Officer Advanced Course, and probably elsewhere.
@EdH: I have been to Helendale and also had beer at the White Orange Cafe, but will not be back there for a while.
CowboySlim, have you been in Austin, in the Chili Parlor Bar, drinking Mad Dog margaritas?
As for the cost, you know going in that it won’t be cheap, but I think that no one does hospitality like Disney, and I’ve never felt like I didn’t get good value for the money. That said, there are smarter and dumber ways to spend your money while there…
Dumber? What? Goodings at Crossroads closed.
One upside of the virus. Their lease allowed them to stay until 2021. Though, I shudder to think about the RV “camp” mentioned in the article.
https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2020/05/12/last-remaining-goodings-store-closes-with-other-retailers-in-crossroads-plaza-outside-walt-disney-world
Goodings was a class operation when the store opened, but competing with Publix (high end) and WalMart (low end) is tough in Florida. I’ll refrain from saying “End of an era” since the era really was over 20 years ago.
Always find Publix to stock up if you have a car. Disney has done a good job keeping them at a distance, but the chain dominates Florida, building stores as close to Disney as zoning and Mouse lobbyists allow.
It is probably about time for business users to move to Windows 10.
What’s a little spyware between friends? Microsoft is your friend, right?
I suspect that Windows 10 is now stable enough to develop software on. It was not when I tried a few beta versions back in 2015 or so. In fact, Windows 10 is much more strict about code pages (read only) and data pages (read / write) than Windows 7 is.
We’ve been getting several mysterious crashes on Windows 8, 8.1, and 10. I want to move our development to it now once I convert myself and verify that our tools will work on Windows 10. Otherwise we will need to maintain a Windows 7 machine or three.
Over half of my users (SWAG) are now running Windows 8, 8.1. or 10. We need to be there with them. But we will still continue to support Windows XP for a couple of years since there are a couple of users still running that and Windows Server 2003.
We’ve been getting several mysterious crashes on Windows 8, 8.1, and 10. I want to move our development to it now once I convert myself and verify that our tools will work on Windows 10. Otherwise we will need to maintain a Windows 7 machine or three.
Mixing UUIDs on MSVCRT DLLs is an absolute no-no. Checking version numbers is not enough. Scrutinize every single library your code links against. That was the price we paid for C++03 in Visual Studio.
Mixing UUIDs on MSVCRT DLLs is an absolute no-no. Checking version numbers is not enough. Scrutinize every single library your code links against. That was the price we paid for C++03 in Visual Studio.
For our Windows user interface and our Excel transfer technology, we use Visual C++ 2015 which has the versioning thing figured out fairly well.
For our calculation engine, we are still using the old (1995) Open Watcom F77, C, and C++ compiler. Works ok but we are ready to move on to a new Fortran compiler to get the simultaneous double precision (64 bit) array processing code that our F77 compiler does not have. And 64 bit integers also.
“Study links abnormally high blood sugar with higher risk of death in COVID-19 patients not previously diagnosed with diabetes”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/07/11/study-links-abnormally-high-blood-sugar-with-higher-risk-of-death-in-covid-19-patients-not-previously-diagnosed-with-diabetes/
My son has been maintaining this for quite a while now. Apparently the high blood sugar fires up the SARS-COV-2.
“2020 Election – Worst-Case for Gun Owners”
https://www.gunsandammo.com/editorial/2020-election-worstcase-gun-owners/378450
“What if Democrats take over? Here’s the worst-case for gun owners if anti-gun liberals win the 2020 elections.”
“Let’s assume for a moment that the polls are correct and Democrats run the table. In January 2021, the 117th U.S. Congress will convene with Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) as the Senate Majority Leader and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) remains in charge of the House. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who authored the 1994 semiauto ban as a senator, would be president. That’s right, middle America would be governed by coastal anti-gun politicians.”
Ok, that is fairly grim for gun owners. The proposed legislation mentioned in the article would make 40 to 50 million USA citizens criminals.
Ok, that is fairly grim for gun owners. The proposed legislation mentioned in the article would make 40 to 50 million USA citizens criminals.
Despair is a sin. They had a Dem President, House Speaker, and a fillibuster-proof Senate majority in 2009, and Obamacare still required reconciliation to pass. Sure, Uncle Ted assumed room temperature, giving way to the underwear model, but the Dems had eight solid months of unimpeded power to do anything they wished.
Once they regain power then they start thinking about how to keep the power. Unfortunately, the Republicans in 2010 had the same thought process.
Scroll down a bit and compare Mexico’s curve with Italy… anyone see Mexico slowing down any time soon? Bet that wazzizzname El Presidente wishes he hadn’t taunted Trump about how much better MX was dealing with the virus than the US….
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/release-money-us-covid-19-cases-top-60k-4th-straight-day-massive-protests-shake-israel
n
Sam’s Club run today as my one trip out of the house for the weekend. Meat mostly in stock, no limits, so I bought chicken thighs and sirloins ($5.40/lb!), topping off our freezer space.
Canned green beans in non-restaurant size cans continue to be unobtainium, and a vacant space in the refrigerator space sat where the snack bar Members Choice hot dogs are usually stocked — first time I’ve *ever* seen that since this mess started.
Campbell’s Tomato Soup is one of our canned good staples, and that hasn’t been available since March. I’ll have to quietly pick up 2-3 cans whenever we’re in HEB.
I’ll go to the “low rent” Sam’s later this week. That one is always riskier since it is within Round Rock city limits, not Austin, with fewer restrictions, but the store stocks slightly different items for that area’s demographic.
I used to shop several different stores in different areas as they all stocked unique items.
I LIKE doing the shopping for the family.
n
Canned green beans in non-restaurant size cans continue to be unobtainium, and a vacant space in the refrigerator space sat where the snack bar Members Choice hot dogs are usually stocked — first time I’ve *ever* seen that since this mess started.
Lots of unobtainium out there. Both Bush’s Black Eyed Peas and Bush’s Refried Black Beans don’t even have shelf space for them anymore at HEB. Plus name brand TP and PT (paper towels).
Home Depot sent me their “check out these deals in xxxxx” eblast, based on my search history no doubt. Trouble was, it was for swimming pools and there aren’t any.
~16 pages of items that were “sold out online” “unavailable in stores”. They had THREE pools you could actually buy, one 10 ft round inflatable, one 8 ft round inflatable, and a similarly sized rectangular inflatable. Those are basically kiddie pools, less than 24″ deep. Great job marketing droids… I wouldn’t even have looked except I was pretty sure there were no pools and wanted to see why they were trying to sell me one.
My auction contact told me he’ll have a couple in next week’s auction. Hooray for the secondary market, and for my practice in it. (assuming I’d wanted another pool) In a related story, I may go to bartertown with one of my neighbors. He asked if I knew anywhere with 223 in stock as he’s got a ‘project’ that needs that and only that. It occurs to me, I can use 223 or 556, and probably have some 223 put away. Maybe we can work a trade… I’ll note that his opsec is better than mine. It took me over 5 years of seeing him occasionally and chatting before he even let slip that he might have some defensive items, and even longer than that before grudgingly admitting that they were well set up for these current troubles. Meatspace. It takes a while. If you aren’t already meeting people, you need to start. Your network is going to be increasingly important as things go downhill.
n
My company has non-mandatory logging of personal travel. They will keep you updated on any relevant advisories and will make sure you are accounted for in case of any emergency situations (hurricanes, etc.). I’m a big boy and have not chosen to participate.
“24 Books Like The Expanse” by Dan Livingston
https://best-sci-fi-books.com/24-books-like-the-expanse/
I have read “A Fire Upon the Deep”, “Downbelow Station”, “Gateway”, “The Forever War”, “Echoes of Earth”, “Hyperion”, “Ancillary Justice”, “Eon”, “Old Man’s War”, “We Are Legion (We Are Bob)”, and “Dune”. A total of 11 of the 24. I have “Artemis” in my SBR (strategic book reserve). All of these books are excellent and very good reading.
Not sure if this has been mentioned before – I’ve gotten lucky a couple of times lately hitting the Cleaning Supplies aisle at Big Orange and Big Blue. Today at the latter was able to find some Microban 24 spray, what appears to be a generic copy of 409 spray and the flow-thru baking soda for the fridge. No ‘limit’ signs were posted but wasn’t greedy either, took two of each spray and four of the soda. They also had no-name paper towels and TP. Everything seemed normally priced. Into the pantry it goes.
“Reverse Planning” is Army 101. You can’t survive a military career without using it for everything. Impossible to teach to kids who want to live completely in the *now*. My Twins will hopefully graduate with microbiology degrees in Dec. When I ask them “when do you graduate” I get “um, I’m not sure”. $^&^%%$$ Ratsa Frackin….
Yep.
I’ve read nine of those at least and a couple sound familiar.
He includes 3 body problem though, so all his other recco’s are suspect in my mind. That thing was a piece of cr@p.
n
well
I was reading about leasing issues, and, at last, you people convinced me to not boter my daughter to buy an apartment, but, I am not so pretty sure yet
@Lynn
repeat as a mantra, good enough, good enough, your migration is worth the value? How many years arre you planning to maintain your software? You always cries about non legit copies of your software, and, if you doesnt move to some kind of SAAS, it is gonna to be worst, but, it is your business… I remember the same discussion with a frien d who has an ERP, 5 fivers after I said him move to SAAS, he moved, and later he said me, it is a cab!!! yes it is, no w he wants to move from Delphi, why? to modernize bla bla, it is broken? dont fix it! he has an 20% ebidta now
but YMMV