Cooler, maybe some rain. Certainly humid.
Almost 10F cooler outside than in my office when I wrote this late last night. During the day it got into the low 90s in the sun, but it took longer, and it didn’t stay there very long. I expect the same today, only there is a bigger chance of rain.
Daughter one got on the right bus twice yesterday and got where she was supposed to be first try. Nice change of pace :-/ She’s still adjusting to being at school all day. She says “it’s exhausting”. Daughter two likes virtual better than in person, but is getting bored being chained to the lappy. The district (passing the buck to the state) has managed to crush the best aspect of remote learning by requiring the kids to stay in sight of the lappy camera for their required time. No more finishing your work and taking out a book… no more working ahead either- by diktat of the district.
I managed to sell a couple of items on ebay, so I’ve got shipping to do today. One is easy, just a medium flat rate box. The other is sensitive and going to Germany, so needs a sturdy and large box. I hope I got the weight right, for the buyer’s sake. He’s pre-paying for the shipping based on what I had in the listing. I was offering free shipping so I didn’t worry too much about the weight I listed. Hmm. I wonder what happens if it weighs more than I thought? Never came up before. Nice to have some items selling though.
Spent a bunch of time getting some stuff ready to list. It ate more time than I thought, so I still don’t have my NVR running on linux. It’s running under windows, even if I can’t see the live cam view, it is still saving the video files so I’ve got coverage if something happens. I got really used to just glancing up to see what’s going on outside though. I can still access the stream from the cameras individually, it just takes another couple of steps. Carry that task over to today.
Not much movement on the campaign trail, given the explosive nature of the allegations against the Bidens. There must be some frantic activity behind closed doors. If the stuff in the emails is true, and no one seems to be saying it’s not, then the only way to avoid jail is to win the Presidency, or hope that being the failed candidate is a shield, like it was for Hillarity. Or fake a medical issue and then retire to ‘spend more time with family.’
Uncertainty is not good for markets. The markets and the ‘financialization’ of our economy have gotten us into a lot of trouble and will likely get us into more. I feel better with food in the freezer and a big pile of stuff to use if the going gets tough. I think it’s probably a question of ‘when’ not ‘if’, so keep stacking.
n
The prose in my alumni magazine is a freaking word salad spit out by barely literate wokesters. One whole paragraph about a new building, and it was the last line before I had even the vaguest notion about what the building was FOR. Even then it’s the broadest sort of description possible.
“Interdisciplinary Studies” programs are how they’re sneaking the unqualified into STEM fields, jobs and grants. And don’t think it is just big liberal or public schools. The Music Ed major that my previous management pretended could do my job had a minor in Interdisciplinary Studies on her diploma from Baylor.
Kindle claw-backs: I have removed the DRM from a few Kindle books. This worked, because I still have an original, version 1 Kindle – and books downloaded to it have a weak DRM scheme. Sadly, I tried to turn the Kindle on a couple of weeks ago, and it no longer starts. It claims that the battery is empty, but charging it doesn’t help.
The batteries in the first couple of generations of Kindle are extremely standard and dead simple to replace. Check around in the listings from vendors on … Amazon!
I carry a second gen Kindle I inherited from my wife . The first thing I did was swap the battery for one with a huge capacity, and I can go an entire week on vacation, reading frequently, without recharging.
Of course the device lacks the newer features like WiFi and the backlight, but I can use it wherever I would a dead tree book which is the point. The “Whispernet” (AT&T 3G service) still works so I can always get more reading material if necessary — book previews are generally free.
One thing to be aware of with early Kindles is that they are extremely picky about USB cables to transfer data with a host computer.
Ah, they’ve updated this story
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8864635/Surveillance-video-captures-armed-home-invasion-Florida.html
I don’t see any uzis in the video. I find it a bit hypocritical that they blur her butt in the stills, when more azz is on display 4 inches to the right on the page. Of course, maybe since the woman makes her living selling images of her body maybe there’s a copyright violation there? Ah what a brave new world we live in.
n
I recommend watching the video as that is what a home invasion robbery looks like. And TOUGH CHICK!
I recommend watching the video as that is what a home invasion robbery looks like. And TOUGH CHICK!
Hialeah. Not completely unexpected, but something still doesn’t seem right. The only bad publicity is your obituary.
If it wasn’t a stunt, she was targeted. The “model” needs to talk to the Dade Property Appraiser and Comptroller (?) about having her public records restricted to in-person access.
No one sane randomly invades a home in Miami not knowing what may be waiting inside. My wife’s friend in med school had an apartment in Hialeah and slept with a full auto AK47 she bought at a gun show. The girl was fully trained to use the weapon and said anyone getting past the locks on her front and bedroom doors would get the entire contents of the illegal capacity clip.
Eh. The 90s. Even with the Clinton era well underway, an attractively dressed young girl driving a Volvo into the parking lot of a gun show in Miami could leave with just about anything she wanted as long as she had the cash.
I doubt things have changed much.
Well, it makes more sense with the porn connection. My first thought when I saw the story yesterday was Why is the wife in t shirt and panties while the husband has friends over?
Nice panties too. (by which I only mean, not “sitting around the house in sweats” panties)
Leaving all that aside, she grabs the gun and heads toward the fight.
But yeah, targeted. The attackers followed someone to the door and forced their way in when hubby threw the door open. I’m pretty sure the hubby and friends were known locally with a lot of flash and cash.
n
This is nuts. The FBI publicly defending a group they’ve given every reason to believe they consider domestic terrorists?
But yeah, targeted. The attackers followed someone to the door and forced their way in when hubby threw the door open. I’m pretty sure the hubby and friends were known locally with a lot of flash and cash.
The “model” is long past the point where she should have bugged out with the kids to a nice Hacidic neighborhood in South Broward, like where my wife lived during med school.
The criminal syndicates in South Broward are much higher dollar and white collar … cough … Magic Leap … cough.
currently cleaning up the drives on my NVR machine. Found that every camera has a thumbnail folder and nothing is ever deleted from it.
30K thumbnails / camera = 30-40Gb of used disk space. And amazingly part of me says !!!40GB!!! what a waste!!!! while part of me says “meh, not much compared to video”.
n
30K thumbnails / camera = 30-40Gb of used disk space. And amazingly part of me says !!!40GB!!! what a waste!!!! while part of me says “meh, not much compared to video”.
You can set up a crontab process under Linux to clear out the old thumbnails nightly/weekly/monthly. We had to do that with plate images more than a week old at my last job or we would have overwhelmed the system storage.
Alternatively, f you are not concerned about Digital Forensic evidence trails, you can run a graphics image optimizer on the thumbnails, jpegoptim or imgcrush, respectively, to reduce the space required to store the images.
We could not optimize plate images since they were evidence in the event of a challenge.
I always heard that Mr Sony directed the engineers to fit Beethoven’s 9th Symphony onto one CD.
Alas, Mr. Chuck Waggoner no longer posts here. He’s the master of all things sound. He was working on a tome on how to rip music including the tools he used.
When I connect my Kindle Oasis to Calibre, it says books can’t be transferred. I can download to to my Mac and then stuff them into Calibre. It still removes DRM.
Perhaps I need to completely download the book to Kindle first?
Far right proud boys??? They are named after the song in the Disney movie, “Aladdin’.”
Their leader is half African American and half Cuban.
I have heard of no police cars set afire, nor shop windows crashed and looted by them.
Upwards if a billion dollars damage done by antifa-blm.
Please, everybody, upvote this post. Please!
@alan, yep, the narrative is that Proud Boys is a far right, white supremacist hate group. Because anyone opposed to the destruction of western culture, the one that provided more wealth and freedom for more people ever in the history of the world, is a hate-y McHater.
And canadian to boot.
n
…stay in sight of the lappy camera…
I have never had a computer with a camera. Pity you gave her one to use, or was it supplied by the taxpayers? Tape on lens? Malfunction?
When I connect my Kindle Oasis to Calibre, it says books can’t be transferred. I can download to to my Mac and then stuff them into Calibre. It still removes DRM.
Perhaps I need to completely download the book to Kindle first?
I run Calibre on Linux, the same machine where I do my torrents.
The books probably need to be downloaded completely. Or try a different cable. The Kindle is amazingly picky.
Plus, I wouldn’t put it past Lab126 to do something with the driver on Windows or hook into some DRM capability provided by Redmond — they’re just across the floating bridge from Big River.
Competitors or not, Microsoft will do anything for a developer if enough money is on the table.
I’ll have to try my wife’s Oasis. Most of my hardware is Ye Olde Vintage. My Linux box is not, but I built the cheapest system I could get away with and still have the ability to populate the motherboard with 64 GB RAM if I was so inclined.
Newest Kindles use a new file extension, .kfx. Calibre may or may not recognize that the files on the Kindle are books but even if it does it won’t be able to import them.
See here for instructions on installing a required plugin.
Thanks Mr. SteveF.
“I have never had a computer with a camera. Pity you gave her one to use, or was it supplied by the taxpayers? Tape on lens? Malfunction? ”
–the district taxpayers have provided a chromebook for every student. The state requires that the kid be physically present for the whole period of instruction. If they are not, the school doesn’t get the state money, or doesn’t get the district attendance money, not sure if it’s both or either. Kids have tried every variation to avoid it but the district is now enforcing it due to their money being at stake.
just like prison, you don’t have to change, you just have to be there for a certain length of time.
n
I convert my torrent downloaded to epub with Calibre on my Windows PC and then read them on my Samsung tablet via an epub reader.
Our school district has declared that the middle and high schools will remain “closed” (virtual/distance learning only) until February 2, 2021. No matter that the snot-nosed grade school kids (who are in a “modified” classroom/distance/virtual) are regularly infecting the teachers and staff with COVID. Parents don’t want their kids’ at home so they are being very vocal about getting them out of the house and back into school full time. And don’t get them started on school sports. The public health be damned.
This week has been bad for COVID here in the Tri-Cities. Infections and deaths have doubled. If the “official” reports are correct it is “large gatherings” that are the “source”. Both political sides have been doing things daily to try and outdo each other: marches, car parades, rallies. So far the Left is losing the battle as they are only able to muster half the attendance. However, the Left is more vocal and distructive. Fine upstanding citizens, NOT.
So far, as of Wednesday 10/25/20, mail-in ballot return is at a record; 23% in Benton County and 17% in Franklin County (the two counties the Tri-Cities are in).
We had our first freezing temperatures last night. We usually don’t get a freeze until the first of November. So how is that “Global Warming” working out?
Stay vigilant and don’t take any crap from anyone.
Caution: this may be politically incorrect (I would not offer this on the Rachel Maddow show).
WRT to reparations, maybe the issue is inside out. In comparing the financial situation, living environment and educational accomplishment of those livimg here vs. those whose antecedents were left there, which group is better off?
Now, personally, and if so, I would not deserve reparations as my antecedents were still in Europe prior to our Civil War.
WRT to reparations, maybe the issue is inside out. In comparing the financial situation, living environment and educational accomplishment of those livimg here vs. those whose antecedents were left there, which group is better off?
Scott Adams made the same suggestion on one of his podcasts. Were the balance sheets calculated rigorously and fairly, PoCs would more than likely end up owing money.
I’ve had a half-dozen Kindles over the years (ver 1 and forward) and had that nostart battery thing happen a couple times. Keep trying with different power adapters and holding down the start button for a full minute. Eventually they powered up through repetition combined with swearing. Ver 1 had a switch, though, didn’t it? Anyway, they’re fun to take apart. Once you do one the next is easy, even screen replacement.
Odd that Beethoven’s been mentioned. I seem to recall that Furtwängler conducted the Berlin Philharmonic on Hitler’s birthday one year but refused to salute the führer. Don’t know which symphony and a quick Google came up zip. Chuck Waggoner would know. Anyone?
Edit:
Damn, forgot to mention this deal I came across yesterday.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JRGMQ6G/
So much good stuff out there I don’t bother with anything new anymore. Edith Wharton is my next adventure. Can’t believe I haven’t read her before, and very little Henry James.
I convert my torrent downloaded to epub with Calibre on my Windows PC and then read them on my Samsung tablet via an epub reader.
Calibre will also convert EPUB to MOBI, which is the original Kindle book format. Mobi files work on most Kindle devices.
Big River bought MobiPoket to avoid having to build a reader from scratch in order to eliminate -er- compete with Barnes & Noble’s Nook. Lab126 didn’t have a great deal of talent in house until Steve Jobs died and Amazon poached a chunk of Apple’s CoreOS and other key team members in 2012.
When I interviewed with Apple for CoreOS that year, half of the offices in *Bandley 3* (of course it is the same one, Apple faithful) were empty.
Using torrented books converted to MOBI and downloaded to a Kindle is not a violation of the terms of service for your account, but sharing your legally purchased Kindle books with others via backup over Calibre could result in a suspension of your entire Amazon account.
Alternative calculation: look at lifetime net payments into taxes versus costs to the taxpayers. White men, oriental men, and Indian (subcontinent) men are net contributors. Women and black men are net burdens. It’s hard to say about Hispanics because for some purposes they’re classed as white, sometimes not. Muslim men in the US are net burdens, though until recently there weren’t enough to matter and recently many Muslims in the US are “refugees”, so I don’t know if the numbers are meaningful. It’s also difficult to pick apart the numbers for poor women-headed families because the mother’s “cost” number includes various forms of support for her kids, but the kids’ lifetime numbers also include the support they needed as kids. I don’t know if some costs are double-counted.
Alternative calculation: look at the costs of crime, both the direct and the indirect costs. Then look at who commits more than their share of violent and property crime.
Using either calculation of who owes whom, American blacks had better hope that everyone just shuts up on the topic, lest the Saxon begin to hate.
The science fiction author John Scalzi is a tricky wordsmith throughout his authorial career. In his recent book, “The Consuming Fire”, he wrote the following in Chapter 4.
https://www.amazon.com/Consuming-Fire-Interdependency-John-Scalzi/dp/0765388995/?tag=ttgnet-20
” Kiva waved him off. “Not important. You came to see me about something?””
” Yes, ma’am. A lawyer is here.”
” Toss him out a window.”
” Her, actually, I think.”
” So toss her out, then. Equally defenestratable.”
I happen to know what defenestratable means. I wonder if the average scifi reader does ?
Lynn, don’t fall into the common progressive habit of assuming you’re smarter and knowledgeable than “the average” reader or voter or worker. It’s a slippery slope from that to “I need to make decisions for them for their own good.”
The prose in my alumni magazine is a freaking word salad spit out by barely literate wokesters. One whole paragraph about a new building, and it was the last line before I had even the vaguest notion about what the building was FOR. Even then it’s the broadest sort of description possible.
“Interdisciplinary Studies” programs are how they’re sneaking the unqualified into STEM fields, jobs and grants. And don’t think it is just big liberal or public schools. The Music Ed major that my previous management pretended could do my job had a minor in Interdisciplinary Studies on her diploma from Baylor.
STEM is called STEAM now in the academic world. The A is for Arts. I have seen this in my ASME magazine (American Society of Mechanical Engineers).
Lynn, don’t fall into the common progressive habit of assuming you’re smarter and knowledgeable than “the average” reader or voter or worker. It’s a slippery slope from that to “I need to make decisions for them for their own good.”
Hey, I need to be charge of the entire world. I will fix all this mess ! I promise !
At least for five minutes. Then after I grab 1% of the money and goodies in the world, I will retire.
STEM is called STEAM now in the academic world. The A is for Arts. I have seen this in my ASME magazine (American Society of Mechanical Engineers).
Since only so many CS graduates can be turned out of an ACM accredited program every year, a lot of colleges and universities have created what are essentially HTML/Javascript developer degrees called some variation of “Digital Media” or “Digital Culture”. Some are run out of B-schools, but most are in the “Arts & Letters” departments.
Wasn’t the point of STEM to have an acronym for all the objective subjects?
It must have been offensive to someone in woke-world.
Defenestrate root must be the French fenetre (window) that I learned in first grade. We were taught French in first and second grades in 1950s. Even now, 60+ years later, I can still carry on a simple conversation in French. I tried latin in 7th grade and German in high school but nothing has stuck like what we learned in 1st grade. I surmise that the time to teach a foreign language is while very young.
In other words, teaching what ITT Tech does but taking twice as long and charging six times as much.
Yep.
Yep.
You see, “STEM” is exclusionary and elitist and it privileges some curricula more than others and the arts are just as important in modern life as the sciences. In fact, I’ve even seen “SHTEAM” floated, to bring in Humanities. It’s not fair to leave them out because the humanities are the entire point of a classical education.
Primary point to keep in mind: judgment, ranking, privileging, and excluding are acceptable only if the right [sic] people are doing it. Rating “hard” subjects higher than “soft” subjects is unacceptable. Rating “soft” subjects as worthy and inclusive while deriding “hard” subjects as “simple trade school courses” is acceptable.
Agreed. It’s possible to learn languages later but it’s enormously more difficult.
Wasn’t the point of STEM to have an acronym for all the objective subjects?
It must have been offensive to someone in woke-world.
Managers want cover to be able to hire anorexic arts majors from name schools and pretend that they’ll get the job done for the customer. BLM can only use so many of that type as martyrs next month if things get sporty.
Even now, 60+ years later, I can still carry on a simple conversation in French.
My wife spoke French as a second language in grade school, but forgot all of it. My father spoke only Croatian and Polish before going to grade school and learning English, but later couldn’t remember anything other than English. OFD used to say his daughter picked up several languages while in college. I suspect some people are different in their abilities to learn languages. Practice is also very important.
I was part of an experimental class in HS where we were taught conversational Latin by immersion in freshman year. The next three years we took conventional Latin instruction. I quickly lost the ability to speak it, but still retain some of the ability to read it. Not sure why. I have also tried to pick up spoken French and Italian, but other than a tiny bit, was never very successful. I can read some of both, however. For some reason, reading is easier than listening or speaking. Again, not sure why that is.
As natively literate in English, I feel lucky. It is difficult to learn, even if similar to the romance languages. I have an acquaintance who immigrated from southern China, and who still maintains fluency in a couple of dialects. Chinese is impossible to me.
I voted at the local library:
Requirements
1. Wear mask – check
2. Wear food service gloves – check
3. Use pencil as a stylus – check (helper kept calling it a “stencil”, even little kids snickered)
Voted Redumblican down the line, and against all tax increases.
…against all tax increases.
I upvoted you for that.
First time I have voted here. Mostly, I ignore it, but it is amusing.
About three months ago one of my hearing aids quit working. One power up, normal beeps when booting up, then with 20-30 seconds just shut down. I sent them to Denver, normal USPS, no tracking or insurance on $4K items. Denver repaired the device, sent both back. Nothing was lost.
But Denver apparently does not properly program the devices. Both were programmed to the same ear. I knew something was wrong when I first installed them. I made an appointment with the local (well Knoxville) VA audiology department. That took a month to get the appointment, same amount of time that it took Denver to “fix” the devices.
The audiology technician agreed with my suspicions. The devices were not programmed properly, not even to what was in my file. It took the tech a few minutes to transfer the settings from the middle Tennessee facility (Murfreesboro) where they devices were initially programmed to the system for the east TN facility. Apparently the files are not allowed to cross boundaries. Stupid, but at least she had access to transfer the settings.
Big difference after the devices were properly programmed. She also did some minor tweaking in the amplification profile and did something to reduce feedback that others hear that I don’t. My hearing about 10K is basically none-existent. She did a really good job as the devices are working better as the sounds I hear are more balanced and clearer.
She also stated that I could bring the devices to Knoxville and get them repaired, generally within a couple of days of making an appointment. The facility can do all but the most major of repairs. I would also get paid mileage. What they cannot repair has to go to Denver but at least their shipments are tracked so if I device is lost it is not on me.
She also provided me with a device that hooks to my TV and will stream the audio to my hearing aids. No cost to me as the VA provides the devices. All I had to do was ask. The facility had them in stock. I will hook that device up this evening and see how well it works. The demo in the office was quite effective.
So this time I got really good service from the VA. I also did when I used Murfreesboro except for the three month delay from the testing to actually getting the devices.
And not to make this a political post, I suspect that if Biden were to win the service from the VA would soon tank as the programs would be gutted. Given that scenario, when Biden is removed from office for being senile, Ms. Harris would gut the VA programs even further.
File this under ‘neglectful home improvement’ or ‘procrastination should be painful’.
What level of skill / strength does drilling into concrete and installing pipe in flanges require?
Is it something I can pull off at 4’11” with Covid withered muscles and a DeWalt 20v drill (with the appropriate bit)? Iron pipe sounds heavy. Concrete sounds difficult.
Backstory:
Our Navien heating system is wall mounted in the garage. When it was installed in 2012 we had a lot of life going on (premature infant, me recovering from multiple surgeries). The municipality inspector would not sign off on our final inspection because there was not a barrier to prevent a car crashing into the system. Since the shelving and stuff prevented a car from entering the garage, much less traversing 36′ to crash into the heating system, and since the heating guys wouldn’t do that final step, we ignored it and went on with life.
The permit for installing the heating system wasn’t closed and is now expired as a result.
We need to install a barrier now that it looks like we are going to sell the house instead of dying here as originally planned.
No big deal. Just another task.
Requirements:
Our garage is concrete slab, drywall / 2×4 stick built. Unit is wall mounted. It is conceivable a car could crash into it if the precious treasures were removed.
We need to fulfill these requirements:
-The barriers must be a minimum 30” high and be constructed of a minimum 2” diameter schedule 40 iron pipe.
-Secured to the concrete slab using a floor flange with a minimum of 4 3/8” diameter X 3-1/2” long galvanized or stainless anchor bolts.
I haven’t drilled into concrete and I don’t know that we have a drill powerful enough to do this job.
I think I want to farm this one out. I am not sure where to start on looking for someone to do this work.
Is this a General Contractor kind of thing?
Any advice?
Handout:
https://www.muni.org/departments/ocpd/development-services/codes-handouts/handouts/handoutm02.pdf
Wasn’t the point of STEM to have an acronym for all the objective subjects?
It must have been offensive to someone in woke-world.
Managers want cover to be able to hire anorexic arts majors from name schools and pretend that they’ll get the job done for the customer. BLM can only use so many of that type as martyrs next month if things get sporty.
When I jumped back from plant engineering to being a software engineer in 1989, the head guy in charge of the graphics for our CAD / Database program on VAX VMS was an English major. He knew how to write that GINO graphics code though. The big problem that he had was liquid lunches. When he quit (or was fired), he was coming back from lunch three hours later and totally soused.
I haven’t drilled into concrete and I don’t know that we have a drill powerful enough to do this job.
I think I want to farm this one out. I am not sure where to start on looking for someone to do this work.
Is this a General Contractor kind of thing?
Any advice?
Yes, find a concrete dude with a big hammer drill. The problem really hits the wall when you find the rebar. Gonna cost you, especially in Anchorage.
“Biden faces backlash for saying ‘America was an idea’ that ‘we’ve never lived up to'”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-faces-backlash-for-saying-america-was-an-idea-that-weve-never-lived-up-to
“‘Joe Biden’s closing argument is that America has always been a disappointment,’ the Trump 2020 Campaign reacted”
The President of the USA’s first job is to be a cheerleader for the USA. Sleepy Joe / Beijing Biden has demonstrated that he is in no way qualified for this job. He might be qualified for the main cheerleader in China but that job is taken.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: For the concrete, you want a hammer drill, not a normal drill. You need muscle and you also need weight. If you’re 4’11”, unless your basic shape is spherical I doubt you’re heavy enough.
@Jenny: As lynn says, it can get ugly.
OTOH the 1987 built concrete slab at my last house was such a poor mix that you could break it with a screwdriver and the “rebar” was 1/8” wire. It made fixing a leak under the slab a cinch.
A 110v hammer drill at Harbor Freight starts at $35, you don’t have much to lose if you try it.
@Jenny: As lynn says, it can get ugly.
OTOH the 1987 built concrete slab at my last house was such a poor mix that you could break it with a screwdriver and the “rebar” was 1/8” wire. It made fixing a leak under the slab a cinch.
A 110v hammer drill at Harbor Freight starts at $35, you don’t have much to lose if you try it.
My Dad and I put an electric JennAire grille into his kitchen about 30 years ago. Dad rented a 1 ??? 1.5 ??? hp electric hammer drill from the local tools guy, figuring that would go through the outside bricks for the 4 inch vent like butter. Four hours later, we had discovered that the bricks in his house were concrete instead of clay mix. We went through the 2 hammer chisel bits that he bought and got about 8 more before we finished the job. We were exhausted holding that hammer drill beast up four feet and slamming it into the very slowly growing hole in the concrete bricks. I was 30 at the time and 250 lbs. Dad was 51 and 240 lbs. The relentless hammering turns your arms into jelly fairly quickly.
“Harris, prominent Democrats listed as ‘key contacts’ for Biden family business venture projects”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/jim-hunter-biden-china-joint-venture-key-contacts
“Email is unrelated to the laptop or hard drive purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden”
The Biden Crime Family looks more and more like the Mafia every day. In a normal world, federal prosecutors would go after them using RICO statutes. And of course his VP candidate is involved.
@Jenny, what Lynn and SteveF said. I will add that I have drilled concrete, and it is difficult without a good hammer drill. An option not mentioned is to rent one. A hammer drill does not require much strength or weight to operate, and makes the job a breeze. Also depends on the diameter of the holes you need to drill. The handout does not specify this. I would choose either 3/8 Titan screws or hardened expanding studs. Either way, a floor flange will not be very effective against a car, even though it meets requirements. A better way would be to hire someone to core drill the floor and set the pipe in epoxy, but you are moving, and don’t need this.
@stevef, @jenny:
In my (admittedly limited) experience, hand-held battery drills (I have a no-name 14V hammer drill) just bounce off concrete. You’ll get no more than surface spalling.
I had to try to move a curtain rail that had ripped out of a plasterboard (sheetrock?) wall onto the concrete lintel immediately above, and gave up after doing no more than scarring the surface. My daughter installed a different way of hanging the rail (it was her flat) which worked quite well.
Admittedly, I was working above my head and couldn’t get any weight on it, but even if I had been able to, I doubt I’d have had more success.
G.
And not to make this a political post, I suspect that if Biden were to win the service from the VA would soon tank as the programs would be gutted. Given that scenario, when Biden is removed from office for being senile, Ms. Harris would gut the VA programs even further.
Trump has made the VA a special focus in the last 3 1/2 years. My wife and I think it is because a little money and attention goes a long way towards making a difference, possibly more so than any other government agency, and this President loves to make a positive difference.
The vets who hate Trump say he’s just showing off, but even they will admit their care situations are light years better than under the previous President.
The wife has musical talents and can pickup languages easily, mostly just by conversing. She says languages are like songs to her. As her first language was German, taught by her nanny as she was an army brat born in Nuremberg, I challenged her to learn a non-European language. She took Mandarin in college and was teaching it by second year. I can’t even hear some of the four inflections. Many years later we landed in Hong Kong and she quickly picked up Cantonese with its nine inflections. Not me.
“Can Trump Pull a Second Rabbit Out of the Hat?
October 15, 2020 by Patrick J. Buchanan”
https://buchanan.org/blog/can-trump-pull-a-second-rabbit-out-of-the-hat-142262
I think so. If not, we are screwed.
Anyone want to recommend a gun burial kit ? I need about ten of them.
When I jumped back from plant engineering to being a software engineer in 1989, the head guy in charge of the graphics for our CAD / Database program on VAX VMS was an English major. He knew how to write that GINO graphics code though. The big problem that he had was liquid lunches. When he quit (or was fired), he was coming back from lunch three hours later and totally soused.
80s. Times were different. However, in my experience, it was always the DB admins who had the liquor stashed in the back of their file cabinets and took two hour lunches.
It isn’t impossible to imagine an Arts grad doing high octane tech work, but today’s management wants to believe it is possible to replace all of the argumentative — to varying degrees — technical types with more pliant labor.
Anyone want to recommend a gun burial kit ? I need about ten of them.
I am wondering how long I will last when the cops seizing guns come through the front door and tie me to a chair. I will give up the first gun cache before they pistol whip me. Of course, I will have nine more gun caches. Will they know since I have obtained many of my guns through legal and undocumented means ?
Anyone want to recommend a gun burial kit ? I need about ten of them.
Burial. No, you take them fishing and admire the gleam of the metal while balanced precariously on the edge of the boat until … doh … they fall in the water. Just like my gold and silver stashes.
I encountered serious difficulty getting into my safe deposit box this week. Fortunately, the only items we keep in there are passports and original birth certificates.
At least my main credit union lobby is open by appointment. I couldn’t visit any Suntrust branch when we were in Florida in July, and the secondary credit union I use to deposit my paychecks only has drive thru service right now, no access to the vault.
I expect many will keep and then resell the guns.
I am wondering how long I will last when the cops seizing guns come through the front door and tie me to a chair. I will give up the first gun cache before they pistol whip me. Of course, I will have nine more gun caches. Will they know since I have obtained many of my guns through legal and undocumented means ?
One of my Bat Guano neighbors ran the snake torture sessons at Gitmo according to neighborhood legend. She was on the payroll of a major US consulting company, officially, with both civilian government and military contracts, so she’ll just work for the domestic division for a while. Pistol whipping is so 1940s.
No soul. Flexible morality. Google searching her name turned up a link to Admiral Poindexter and Able Danger. Neidermeyer in a skirt — I doubt she or the husband ever saw real combat.
I’ll be the first on her list when the Green New Deal facism begins. I destroyed them financially selling the FL house for market price; I think they’re still paying on the first mortgage of the house next to mine.
In case you’re wondering … Snake torture — drop a corn snake in a bag and tie the bag around the subject’s head. Wait for the screaming to stop.
I expect many will keep and then resell the guns.
And we have today’s winner of the internets ! Any cop who is willing to go door to door seizing legal and constitutional guns from citizens will probably take a bribe to allow the homeowner to keep their guns. I wonder if $1,000 in non-consecutive $20s or $50s will cover the bribe ?
I just watched a man spend five minutes berating a pharmacist lady for taking her 30 minute lunch break as he showed up to collect his drugs. She was remarkedly calm and collected. He had left and came back. I also got the privilege of him complaining to his doctor about his high blood pressure while sitting two chairs away from me while we were waiting for her to finish her lunch. I tried not to listen in both cases but his high pitched whine was hard to ignore.
Since I was waiting to get a flu shot from her, he also burned five minutes of my life away. But I did get my flu shot, whatever that is worth. Apparently there is not a super secret covid-19 vaccine in the flu shot this year.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/19/fact-check-flu-shot-not-untested-vaccine-fight-covid-19-coronavirus/3486510001/
@Jenny, you can see experience is all over the place…
If you decide not to DIY you might consider a handyman rather than a GC. Places vary, some require license and bonding, some don’t.
You’d want to check Yelp, and a reputable guy/gal will have a 3” binder full of pics of their work that they are proud of, and references you can talk to.
If you get a good one, you’ll probably find them useful in other things, that 220v outlet in the wrong place, a chimney that needs repointing, new flooring in a WC, etc.
How about precious metals? I understand lead is valuable.
In case you’re wondering … Snake torture — drop a corn snake in a bag and tie the bag around the subject’s head. Wait for the screaming to stop.
Why would the screaming stop ?
I just watched a man spend five minutes berating a pharmacist lady for taking her 30 minute lunch break as he showed up to collect his drugs. She was remarkedly calm and collected. He had left and came back. I also got the privilege of him complaining to his doctor about his high blood pressure while sitting two chairs away from me while we were waiting for her to finish her lunch. I tried not to listen in both cases but his high pitched whine was hard to ignore.
Pharmacist or tech? Subcontinent? Hipster/snowflake?
We sat in the CVS parking lot the other night for half an hour pushing up against closing time at 9:00 PM, waiting for a prescription which was called in for my wife at 5:30-6:00. We didn’t say anything, but the tech struck me as someone who was fond of sampling some of the merchandise. Hipster. I started to name the rats in the colony infesting the back of the propane tank storage as they came and went.
Of course the pharmacy industry learned from the genius of Jack Eckerd — make the customer wait 30 to 60 minutes minimum for a prescription, no matter what. Penny’s never understood that and attempted to make things efficient while CVS takes it too far running the same stores.
I just watched a man spend five minutes berating a pharmacist lady for taking her 30 minute lunch break as he showed up to collect his drugs. She was remarkedly calm and collected. He had left and came back. I also got the privilege of him complaining to his doctor about his high blood pressure while sitting two chairs away from me while we were waiting for her to finish her lunch. I tried not to listen in both cases but his high pitched whine was hard to ignore.
Pharmacist or tech? Subcontinent? Hipster/snowflake?
The man, the complainer, the snowflake, was wearing scrubs and hispanic, around my age, 60.
The pharmacist running the pharmacy at Walgreens is white and 60. Turns out I have known her
for 30 years as she used to work at the pharmacy at the grocery store where we lived 30 years ago.
@lynn
screaming
Because corn snakes like to hug a little too well with their creepy snakey body.
concrete
Gentlemen thank you, as always. You were all very helpful and I’ve got a couple directions to go with this now. Not going to do it myself this time.
I’m going to talk to my neighbor who has access to these kinds of tools, and mighty thews. Depending on his availability I may be able to get it done quickly.
I think the Arts grads who can do high octane tech work are no more likely to pass the pliant and non-argumentative test than tech grads who can do that work.
Any cop who is willing to go door to door seizing legal and constitutional guns from citizens will probably take a bribe to allow the homeowner to keep their guns.
How about precious metals? I understand lead is valuable.
His buddy will be sitting in the street in a MRAP with a .50 cal machine gun in the turrent. You do not want to swap lead with that, just ask my former USMC son.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning
gentlemen and ladies or viceversa
defenestration comes from latin,not french, from fenestra
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague (I was in the same room, it is high)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/defenestration
gentlemen and ladies or viceversa
defenestration comes from latin,not french, from fenestra
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague (I was in the same room, it is high)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/defenestration
The German word for window is fenster so it looks to go back to the Latin root also.
ADD: “1620, “the action of throwing out of a window,” from Latin fenestra “window.” A word invented for one incident: the “Defenestration of Prague,” May 21, 1618, when two Catholic deputies to the Bohemian national assembly and a secretary were tossed out the window of the castle of Hradschin by Protestant radicals (the pair landed in a trash heap and survived). It marked the start of the Thirty Years’ War.”
https://www.etymonline.com/word/defenestration
Defenestration? Thews?
Has this blog morphed into some sort of graduate seminar? 😀
@jenny, I have done a LOT of drilling into concrete and setting anchor bolts. It’s not technically difficult to do in the floor. A bigger hammer drill goes like butter, a small one does not. I finally gave up and bought myself a big one (I had a small one, and I used the company’s big one for work.)
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=bolt+down+bollard&ref=nb_sb_noss_1&tag=ttgnet-20
The easiest anchors are the Red Head ones you hammer into place but the depth is more critical. https://www.amazon.com/CONFAST-Stainless-Steel-Wedge-Anchor/dp/B07SHV1Q6W/?tag=ttgnet-20 You really just tap them to set the wedge, then tighten the nut.
The hole must be free of grit, so a vacuum and something to blow out the hole are needed too.
The biggest things that can go wrong are ‘wallowing’ out the hole so the wedge mechanism doesn’t catch, not clearing the dust out so the bolt doesn’t get set deep enough, or hitting rebar you can’t drill thru.
Rental desks at Home Depot will have the hammer drill, but you usually need to buy the bit. Buy 2 and don’t cheap out.
NOT big enough — https://www.homedepot.com/p/rental/Makita-Hammer-Drill-1-2-HR1830F/309006669
Big enough for 3/8 bolts, 3 inches deep https://www.homedepot.com/p/rental/Makita-Roto-Hammer-1-1-2-HR4010C/309392088
Freaking pipe and flanges are going to cost almost as much as the bollards, aren’t actually strong enough, and won’t have holes big enough (unless 1/4″ is ok.)
Frankly, it would be easier to have someone do it, and a whole lot better use of your time, if I understand what you’ve got to get done before Nov…
I’d ask a handy man if I already had one, otherwise, a plumber. Lots of guys will be able to do it, pretty much anyone that’s been in the trades a while will have some sort of hammerdrill and will have put bolts in concrete. Just confirm with your codes and permits people that whatever you plan to do will actually meet the requirement.
n
IMO, defenestration is one of those funny words that geeks learn just to know it.
while I was out, I saw a flag at half staff, and my FIRST thought was “Biden died in his sleep.” But there was nothing on the news so it was probably for our fallen police officer.
n
Wait for the screaming to stop.
I didn’t know snakes could scream. 😉
I guess this is where I say that some of my best friends are sssnakes.
@Jenny
Agree with Jim B: Method described is totally ineffective protection, but a hammer drill and 3/8″ Titen or Tapcon fasteners would not be difficult if you’re drilling vertically down. Tapcon has the drill specs right on the package, and drill bits in the same display. Might even make it with one bit if you cool it with lots of water.
BUT burly neighbor is better plan.
thews
Wow. New one on me. My vocabulary used to be pretty good. Learn things here.
Thews is one of the cliche’ words from romance novels. Jack the lad’s trous were stretched to bursting by his heaving thews….
n
Thews.
I was thinking of Howards and Burroughs books myself…
thews, yeah a new one, maybe it comes from village people?
@lynn, it seems that it is very hard to cache guns in a way that they don’t get ruined. Dipped in cosmoline comes to mind.
I think the modern equivalent might be dip it in oil, put it in a tube of Seal a meal sleeve and vac seal it, with a desiccant pack inside. Then do that again. and one more time with mylar.
I can’t find the article, but it’s very hard to Mcguiver a vault that keeps the water out.
n
No need to dip in oil. enclose a vapor-phase corrosion inhibitor, or just buy a treated bag from Brownell’s.
…it’s very hard to Mcguiver a vault that keeps the water out.
I lived a while in Ft Lauderdale, and that was so true. Now that I am in the desert, no problem keeping water out. In fact, we humidify. Still, burying stuff is not the best idea anywhere.
well, I opened spare parts from WW2 they were in oil paper boxes and they were as new. Later, spare parts from Korea times were with plastic enclosures. Band swichting and motors are not so different from the things you wish to store, later parts, from Vietnam era were tropicalized
Almost 49 million people have voted in the USA so far. Almost 6 million in Texas, 5 million in California, and 4 million in Florida. I wonder why people bother to vote in California, it does not matter.
https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html
“Joe Biden Promises A Pathway To Citizenship For 11 Million Illegal Immigrants”
https://dailycaller.com/2020/10/22/joe-biden-promises-pathway-citizenship-11-million-immigrants/
Do people understand what this will do to our nation ? There will be floods of new illegals expecting to become citizens and get the freebies too. Many millions of them.
@lynn, it seems that it is very hard to cache guns in a way that they don’t get ruined. Dipped in cosmoline comes to mind.
I think the modern equivalent might be dip it in oil, put it in a tube of Seal a meal sleeve and vac seal it, with a desiccant pack inside. Then do that again. and one more time with mylar.
I can’t find the article, but it’s very hard to Mcguiver a vault that keeps the water out.
Academy used to sell a water resistant box for gun and ammo burial. It was water resistant, not water tight, not water proof. I suspect if it was submerged in water that it would leak after a while.
https://www.academy.com/shop/pdp/action-products-sport-utility-dry-box-008276032p#repChildCatid=12508
@ed
thews
Tarzan stories by Burroughs.
Here’s another one I love
pusillanimous
The assembly member was a pusillanimous lickspittle, slinking in the back door of the chambers to avoid his constituents, while fawning over the Mayors plan to house the municipalities drug addicts.
I just took a quick spin around the shortwave and ham bands. While not great, they were a lot more open than they have been. I was beginning to think I had an antenna or radio issue it’s been so long since I could hear anything.
At least I was able to hear something.
n
Pusillanimous is easy. Now what on earth is lickspittle? Never mind, a wiki will do the job. 🙂
Edit: having an edit function is a problem. I just write, more or less re-read for some coherency and post. Aaaand unfailingly less than second later I edit. That is fine and dandy for this site. The problem is that most sites do not have that and it creates the wrong habits. 🙁
Regarding protecting metal items from corrosion, I have a limited background in that. Most of my experience involves selection of materials to survive corrosive environments, so not pertinent here. Less corrosion resistant materials, such as common steels, need protection in use and particularly storage. Simple in theory, difficult in practice.
Most corrosion needs water, and keeping the item truly dry is essential. Completely covering the item in Cosmoline does work, and there are other materials that can work. Real Cosmoline is not for the faint of heart, especially cleaning it off later. Cleaning is not easy or quick, so can be impractical.
Another way is to seal the item hermetically. That would involve a truly leakproof container. This means welded metal or fused glass, which are the only common materials impermeable to water vapor and oxygen. No gaskets or anything that could allow water vapor or oxygen to pass through are allowed. The container is purged of air, and filled with a dry inert gas such as nitrogen. While effective, this is less practical than Cosmoline.
A combination of coating and a container can be a good compromise, but I have little knowledge of this. Modern methods involve vacuum sealing in (I think) PET after coating with rust inhibiting agents. These two methods work together, and lessen the need for each to be perfect. I would suggest that this is not truly long term. The tiniest leak could spoil the integrity and lead to very bad corrosion.
A combination of a dry environment, coatings, and mild sealing is often sufficient. Dehumidifiers or desiccants can create a sufficiently dry environment. A popular coating is RIG (Rust Inhibiting Grease,) but this seems to have changed from what I have used. The product I know was pure silicone, and was good for items handled frequently, such as tools. Now, there are several products that seem different. Mild sealing could be vacuum bags, but I would worry about condensation.
Vapor Corrosion Inhibitor paper is another possibility, but most of these are of limited lifespan, often only a couple years.
Finally, make sure nearby objects don’t emit acidic gases, easier said than done. So many common household items emit corrosive gases.
One of the experts I knew stated that corrosion has cost the world untold trillions of dollars and many failures. He maintained that proper material selection was the best first step. Sounds good, but rarely found in practice.
Um…how can they enforce that? Anyway, I remember being in class, finished with whatever work was assigned, and reading or doing something else. Good teachers never had a problem with it. Private school, though (my experiences in US public schools don’t bear repeating).
And working ahead just makes sense, since the pace of the public curriculum is aimed at the slowest-common-denominator.
Completely absent from the news here. Last time I looked on Reuters (to see US-based news), it was also completely absent. Yet the information is almost certainly true, or Biden would have taken legal action. The MSM bias is beyond bizarre.
That’s exactly what people warned of with the first amnesty, for 2 million illegals. “If you do this, next time it will be 20 million.” Which is where the US is today, somewhere around 20 million illegals.
Grant another amnesty, and you just as well open the borders, because there won’t be any point any more.
@Jenny, yup, Jane was a fan I guess…
Good luck on the barrier, at 64yo I often rely on my neighbor for that kind of stuff myself…
A bit uncertain I should comment here (Canadian after all), but on the evidence the US has never effectively controlled its border with Mexico, hence you have 11 million folks living and working illegally. If the US doesn’t control that border, the problem will never go away because people coming for “a better life” will not stop coming. Control the border first, then decide what to do with those 11 million. At that point, I would say amnesty, but nothing can or will change unless the US does a better job of controlling that border.
Mr./Ms. TV for President! We’ll amend the Constitution!
If nominated, I will not run. If elected I will not serve…
More than enough to deal with up here in the Great White North. (Hence my reluctance to open my big yap on almost anything political regarding the US. As a Canadian, I may hear, and know, more about America than anyone would from any other country. That’s still not the same as living there.)