Cooler and overcast. Maybe some rain. Plenty of humidity I’m certain.
Did lots of little things around the house yesterday. Actually cleaned up some things and put some stuff on shelves. Doesn’t feel like much and it wasn’t.
I cut the grass in the backyard. Mower battery died after about 5 minutes. Put it on the charger while I used the string trimmer, and even though it wasn’t fully charged it was good for the remainder of the yard. Put it back on the charger when I finished. Did some string trimming around the blueberry bushes. I don’t let the lawn guys do that. They used to just whack off the bushes too. Cleaned the filter in the pond. Water was still clear but flow to the aerator/waterfall was slow. There was about a 1/4 inch of fine black silt on the top of the filter. Flows good now…
Many ripe lemons, but the oranges and grapefruits are still a bit green. I don’t want to wait too long, but I want tree ripened fruit! I cleaned up the failed planting beds, and I’ll try some other seed packets tomorrow.
Plugged in lights for a couple more fake jack o lanterns in the yard.
And that was about that. My wife spent the afternoon with her Brownie troop. They did a couple of craft projects including making “sit upons” and decorating them. Before heading out, my 9yo discovered the vinyl cutter. Oh MY. She’s turning out 3 and 4 color stacked stickers. She’s using my wife’s Cricut cutter so she’s not drawing the shapes but she’s doing all the rest. She’s doing a great job of making good looking vinyl too. I might have to get her dialed in on Inkscape and my big cutter….
Today should be more of the same. More cleanup, more auction, more wasting time on the internet with my friends…
And somehow, I’ll find time for more stacking.
nick
Our school has gone fully virtual (again). We had been half-and-half, so now I have to re-plan and reorganize. Somehow, I’m currently feeling very stressed – dunno why, it’s not that much work. Maybe I just need a vacation – what with working on courses, I didn’t take more than a couple of days off over the summer.
Also trying to find a new doctor in the new neighborhood. I printed out a list of all of the local GPs. It’s typical: a good half of them are older than I am, i.e., they’re basically retirement age, and could quit at any time. Young doctors just don’t want to practice general medicine – there’s a serious shortage.
I’m trying to get accepted by one of the younger docs – but, of course, most of them have a full set of patients and aren’t taking any new ones. I’m working my way down the list, getting farther from home. At the moment, I have a call in with a woman doctor in the French-speaking part of the valley. The last doc’s office tells me that she speaks German, and is currently accepting new patients. Hope that info isn’t already out-of-date.
Did I say? Our access road is finally paved. Just missing a bit of topsoil along the edge to pretty things up, then it’s finally done. Now we wait for the next explosion by the neighbors. I’m sure they’re not done being PITAs. At least we wait, while having a finished road – the first serious snow could arrive this week already.
@brad, any chance they can ‘judge shop’ and continue the fight over the driveway?
Finding a new Dr sucks. When I moved to this area, I found an old guy who I liked very much. Very straightforward. He died in the saddle, so to speak. The next guy was a year or two younger than me. Had him for over a decade, but obamma don’t care finally got to him and he went ‘concierge care’ just before wuflu hit. I’d love to be a patient but don’t have/can’t convince the wife/etc that the $2600 additional per year would be worth it. I do not care for the GP they put me with at my local office, but I haven’t needed to see a Dr bad enough to pursue changing her. Under my plan, she or someone else in that office is my Primary Care Physician and is my gateway/triage/screener for more specialist care. I usually don’t need any particular care anyway, just long standing prescriptions renewed.
That could change during the next decade, but I hope not.
n
Go to a real eye doctor, a surgeon. Ask for a vitrectomy to remove all the floaters. Relatively trivial. I had one eye hemorrhage and was blind in the eye the next day. Scared me. Surgeon called me personally a couple times and said everything would be fine. It was. Just took a few days to clear up.
From my experience well recommended for floaters. If the floaters affect the vision there is a very effective remedy. Don’t wait.
EGO battery packs self discharge to 20% if not used for 30 days. A design feature to extend battery life.
“Wintry Mix” this morning. Ice and snow just to the west, maybe getting to us tomorrow. Heavier ice expected before things get back to normal by Friday. Thank you global warming.
I do not care for the GP they put me with at my local office, but I haven’t needed to see a Dr bad enough to pursue changing her. Under my plan, she or someone else in that office is my Primary Care Physician and is my gateway/triage/screener for more specialist care.
My wife’s associate in Vantucky came from the big GP program at San Jacinto in Baytown. Spoiled rich girl. We weren’t impressed but were given little choice since the group wanted the fat check from Daddy at the partnership offer meeting.
I’ve written before that one of the ground zero points in 2019’s WA State measles epidemic was my wife’s former office. Valentines Day morning hot zone early in the outbreak due to the mishandling of someone contagious by the former associate and the nurse practitioners the group pretended could substitute for my wife.
Unfortunately, for anyone under 50, GP is a fast way to go broke unless the doctor has a spouse capable of subsidizing the practice of medicine or family money which, at a minimum, allowed him/her to go to school without loans.
If you do the concierge contract, make sure you get to see/contact the doctor you like as needed and not an associate, ARNP, or PA allowed by contract as “provider”.
I usually don’t need any particular care anyway, just long standing prescriptions renewed.
If you were contemplating moving out towards Austin, I could recommend an independent group of doctors based just north of Downtown, one of whom lives across the street from me — when he isn’t working his for-real farm outside Temple — and another my wife worked with for several years.
If you are eligible for the VA system, the big Austin outpatient clinic where my wife works is not far from the Surplus Store, in the Met Center — right next to my former employer!
Our GP MD converted to concierage about twenty years ago. We went with that and have been very happy with it. Office waiting room never more than five minutes.
Fry’s has upright freezers in stock, only $750! That’s about $100 less than 2 months ago, if they were available at all. Of course, they’re Danby brand…
n
You can use this to teach algebra and trigonometry. I did that when my sons were 9 and 10-1/2, using Logo and turtle graphics to stroke-draw their names and such. SVG files are just XML with, for instance, line segment endpoints identified, so you/she could do the computations and write a SVG file, load into Inkscape, and then print or cut when it finally looks right.
There’s also a lot of hate hoaxes. So many that it’s a reasonable assumption that every hate crime — especially those directed against blacks, women, Jews, and Mohammedans — are hoaxes until proven otherwise.
Religion has become quite the punchline. If you watch a lot of TV, especially the stuff targeted toward younger audiences, they flat out make fun of religions and the people that believe in them every other episode. There is a VERY concerted effort from Hollywood/MSM to promote atheism. I was raised Lutheran but have been an atheist for as long as I can remember and even I notice how many jabs they get in on religion. I’d guess we’re maybe two generations away from the country being a majority atheist. Some will tell you we’re already there. I suppose it comes down to how many closeted atheists you think there are (e.g. show up to church every Sunday so they don’t upset mom and dad).
I was raised Presbyterian but never believed in it. I have no animosity towards Christians though. It always seemed to me that the universe is inexplicable and what do I know?
I used to work with a guy who was also atheist but HATED religious people. He hated Republicans too. Like all of that kind, he could never articulate a real reason, just a general blame for everything. He was another one who though socialism will cure everything, but couldn’t say why other than “it will be better”.
–seriously, wtf are they thinking.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8877425/Tampax-slammed-tweet-celebrating-diversity-people-bleed-amid-calls-boycott.html
n
Fry’s has upright freezers in stock, only $750! That’s about $100 less than 2 months ago, if they were available at all. Of course, they’re Danby brand…
Fry’s is circling the drain.
If you go take a look and the knockoff cologne display at the entrance is larger than last time, the end is drawing closer. Another metric is the graphics card aisle.
They’ve been circling for years. There are ownership and leadership issues apparently.
What surprised me was them having ANY new stock, and at slightly lower than market prices to boot.
n
@Nick – Playing around with Mint 19.3 and my main desktop again this morning, I am still unable to mount my Windows 10 partition as RW despite spending the weekend installing all the updates Windows wanted along with turning off the fast start feature. I also completely shut down the machine from Windows 10 and started from the live DVD.
I will continue to look. I’m starting to get concerned now.
The drive has never sounded healthy, even when new, but I can mount the Windows 7 /dev/sda1 as RW without a hitch.
So it’s not just me! Well, that is actually a relief. I was thinking ‘operator error.’
n
They’ve been circling for years. There are ownership and leadership issues apparently.
What surprised me was them having ANY new stock, and at slightly lower than market prices to boot.
Danby. It is anyone’s guess as to who really made the freezer.
Heading into Christmas last year lot of Fry’s suppliers insisted upon cash payment upon delivery of merchandise. I don’t know how they survived the holidays other than the family possessing deep pockets.
If the return policy is 30 days, you’re probably ok.
“Playing around with Mint 19.3 and my main desktop again this morning…”
I like Mint, really. But strange things happen with it. A version a few years back wouldn’t mount any extra file system, usb or whatever, then finally forgot where it’s own system was stored.
Currently running 18, but it no longer accepts my root password, so i’ll have to wipe it and install something new.
Little things like that.
SystemD issues? I don’t know, but inclining away from it now.
John Holiday from Rosenberg, Texas on The Voice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM5dJQXxdIY
I have never even heard of a counter-tenor. That is amazing. And from my town.
My right eye has a floater three times the size of my lens in near center. It is like looking through a very dirty window.
Go to a real eye doctor, a surgeon. Ask for a vitrectomy to remove all the floaters. Relatively trivial. I had one eye hemorrhage and was blind in the eye the next day. Scared me. Surgeon called me personally a couple times and said everything would be fine. It was. Just took a few days to clear up.
From my experience well recommended for floaters. If the floaters affect the vision there is a very effective remedy. Don’t wait.
I was told by a retinal surgeon when I was 53 ??? to not do anything until I am 60, which, I am now. I have been told by my eye surgeon to not fix it since the only failure that he has had on cataract surgery is a person who just had a vitrectomy. If I do the vitrectomy then he wants to do the cataract first. So at minimum, I need to fix the cataract first before I do the vitrectomy.
““Before the leaves fall from the trees””
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/before-the-leaves-fall-from-the-trees-29166/
“Covid only scratches the surface.”
“We now know without a doubt, for example, how governments will respond the next time they feel there’s a threat to public health.”
“They’ll say, “We’re listening to the scientists.””
“Really? The same scientists who tell people they can’t go to work, school, or church, but it’s perfectly fine for peaceful protesters to pack together like sardines without wearing masks because they’re apparently protected from the virus by their own righteousness?”
“The same scientists who want to lock everyone down to prevent Covid, but are happy to accept skyrocketing rates of cancer, depression, suicide, heart disease, and domestic abuse as a result of those very lockdowns…?”
“And then there are the social trends– the rise of neo-Marxism that’s sweeping the world faster than Covid-19. It’s the Red Scare of the 21st century.”
“They despise talented, successful people. They believe it’s greedy for you to keep a healthy portion of what you earn… but it’s not greedy for them to take it from you and spend it on themselves.”
“Many of the people in this movement, of course, are violent fanatics who routinely engage in arson, assault, and vandalism.”
“Same for the social justice warriors who are just as quick to violence and intimidation; plus they’ve already commandeered the decision-making of some of the largest, most powerful companies in the world.”
Nice writeup. I think that he is saying don’t trust the government. Ok, I got that message a long time ago.
And inflation is coming.
Um not just inflation.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8880423/Dow-plunges-400-points-hit-new-record-high-daily-coronavirus-cases.html [650 in the body of the article]
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/creditors-finally-wake-apocalyptic-reality-bond-losses-high-99 [bonds are proving to be completely worthless]
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8880115/Britain-recording-Covid-19-deaths-million-people-day-US.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8879447/We-need-miracle-Czech-PM-says-Covid-19-restrictions-looming.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8879409/Russia-coronavirus-Bodies-pile-morgue-country-hits-one-day-case-record.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8879957/US-reports-record-481-000-new-coronavirus-cases-single-week-hospitalizations-spike-14-5.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8878543/Curfew-imposed-El-Paso-County-Texas-hospitals-ICUs-hit-100-capacity.html
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/average-new-us-covid-19-cases-hits-new-record-hospitals-run-out-space-live-updates
—yeah I know, still not where we were, only a small percentage, etc. But if we have enough cases we’ll get more serious cases too.
The kabuki is real. The diseases are real. The threat may not be what we feared it was, or it was bad but the control measures worked, or it just doesn’t kill us like it killed them, but increase the numbers and you’ll increase the bad outcomes. Right now, because people lied for political reasons, because people didn’t actually understand what was being communicated and why, because MTV gave us all the attention span of a spider monkey on crack, people in general are DONE with restrictions- and the result is predictable.
LONG HAUL. “This will still be with us 2 years from now.” <--- that was from the first few weeks, btw. No one ever said this was going away in a hurry no matter what we did. Come to Texas. We're learning to live with it. VOTE the power mad local tyrants out. VOTE out the Judges who enabled them. Vote out the Mayors and get rid of the DAs who are enabling the insurgents. Last chance to try to do it without violence. Are you really doing EVERYTHING you can to avoid a shooting war? n
LONG HAUL. “This will still be with us 2 years from now.” <— that was from the first few weeks, btw. No one ever said this was going away in a hurry no matter what we did. Come to Texas. We're learning to live with it. VOTE the power mad local tyrants out. VOTE out the Judges who enabled them. Vote out the Mayors and get rid of the DAs who are enabling the insurgents. Last chance to try to do it without violence. Are you really doing EVERYTHING you can to avoid a shooting war? n
Please don’t come to Texas ! ! !
Fix your own home state. If everyone moves to Texas then we are going to have to secede from the Union. And most of the people moving here vote dum-bro-crat no matter what. My county is over half immigrants now and they are busy converting us into a liberal hell-hole.
The kabuki is real. The diseases are real. The threat may not be what we feared it was, or it was bad but the control measures worked, or it just doesn’t kill us like it killed them, but increase the numbers and you’ll increase the bad outcomes. Right now, because people lied for political reasons, because people didn’t actually understand what was being communicated and why, because MTV gave us all the attention span of a spider monkey on crack, people in general are DONE with restrictions- and the result is predictable.
The deaths are not real here in Fort Bend County. We just recorded our 273rd death. Almost every single death here had comorbidities according to our local paper. 273 / 820,000 = death rate of 0.03%. The normal death rate for the USA is 1%. These two numbers do not match whatsoever.
I do not believe the USA national death figure as it appears to be inflated by comorbidities. But, using that number from the accepted total, 230,631 / 330,000,000 = a national death rate of 0.07%. This is not a pandemic.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
The Dumbocrats don’t want Pence to get a photo op by presiding over ACB’s confirmation. They are shouting CHINESE BAT COOTIES at the tops of their voices ’cause someone around him tested positive. He should go just to stick it to them for their stupidity.
Playing around with Mint 19.3…
After trying several desktop Linux distros, I got sucked into Mint. My first install was good on the test bench, so I deployed a later LTS version for production. I have used that on two systems for five years, with one version update, but am giving up. Too many issues, primarily flaky networking. Also have had file system issues, where the last modified dates of about 10% of my files were set to the install date of the distro when copying them to the new machine. This is not a big deal, but annoying, and makes me worry about what else is wrong under the hood. Also have many issues with Libre Office, and would have replaced it if there had been a better alternative (not a thorough search: I stopped looking and decided to dump Linux for primary use.) Note that I usually do several installs of any OS before putting it into production, and this usually wrings out problems. Not Mint; about every other update brought new problems. To top it off, their updates don’t seem to be organized. I blame Ubuntu, since they run the repos.
I tried several other desktop Linux distros before settling on Mint. The absolute best was Mepis, but it is defunct; I miss its stability over the couple of years I used it on a secondary machine. Honorable mention goes to PC Linux OS, a rolling distro, tried because I had some audio editing to do, and why not? That one did almost everything well, but eventually succumbed to its one creator’s illness, and I escaped before it came back. Rolling distros don’t take kindly to neglect. I miss both of those, and there is a lesson there. I probably should have tried Red Hat (?) but was tired by the time I settled on Mint.
Now, for various reasons, I have Windows 10 on two machines on the test bench. One machine is an old HP Zeon workstation bought refurb. This thing is well built, and I bought it for way less than I could have built my own. It came with Win 7 Pro 64 bit, and I upgraded it to Win 10 Pro 64 bit when it was offered a while back. After that, I disconnected it from the outside world and used it only occasionally. I resumed my journey a couple of months ago, and just let it update at its leisure. It is now just about all up to date. All this was as painless as possible, given my 3 Mb/sec Internet access. Some updates take hours of downloading, but that machine is completely functional while downloading. I have it set so it requires my approval before a restart. I even had a couple of Internet outages (good ‘ol Frontier) during the updates, but the updates resumed days later without a hitch. MS seems to have this under control.
The other one is a new notebook bought on Black Friday for my wife five years ago from a Microsoft store with the original Home 64 bit. I just connected it to the Internet for the first time about a month ago. It went through one update, and had one minor problem that caused me to do a reset in place, or whatever MS calls that. The problem was very minor, associated with the original MS update repo, and the Troubleshooter led me to what seemed like a drastic solution. A couple of clicks, and I now have a new uncle Bob. Wow, it jumped all the way to the latest version, skipping the unending updates people complain about; and it is so far trouble free. Everything I have tried works fine. No software installed yet. Power management is so far the most impressive.
I think it was Marcelo who said he has several Win 10 machines running without issues, and my limited experience agrees. I am not done yet, and it will take some more pounding before I declare these boxen fit for service. My wife has the patience of a saint! 😉
Oh, and I will still have a place for Linux on a secondary machine, just not sure what distro. I am waaay out of date.
“Zeta bound for Louisiana, Houston to see its first sustained stretch of fall”
https://spacecityweather.com/zeta-bound-for-louisiana-houston-to-see-its-first-sustained-stretch-of-fall/
“”Holy Sh*t!”: Videos Of Tesla’s Full Self Driving Beta Are Surfacing And They’re Frightening”
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/holy-sht-videos-teslas-full-self-driving-beta-are-surfacing-and-theyre-frightening
“It was just days ago we noted that after Tesla released its much awaited “Full Self Driving” beta that it had also warned drivers that the software “may do the wrong thing at the worst time.””
“Now, videos have started to surface of users “beta testing” FSD on city streets – and the results are alarming. Several videos show software that clearly seems inadequate, confused and outright dangerous. Most importantly, the software is being used on roads where other surrounding drivers have not consented to being part of a beta test.”
Nope, I do not want a five year old driving me around the place.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
I’m mildly considering Devuan, which is apparently Debian w/o SystemD. Never used it before – tried Gentoo years ago and found it too much work.
It runs on ARM, and in a bit of synchronicity some friends last week asked me to build a pi-hole for them – and i’ve been meaning to build one for myself anyways.
“”Holy Sh*t!”: Videos Of Tesla’s Full Self Driving Beta Are Surfacing And They’re Frightening”
Tyler Durden cowardice. I’m betting someone at Car & Driver or one of the other mainstream car publications.
@JimB
You might want to check out MX linux. It is certainly popular based on distrowatch. I’ve been using it for awhile along with Manjaro (dual boot).
“MX Linux, a desktop-oriented Linux distribution based on Debian’s “stable” branch, is a cooperative venture between the antiX and former MEPIS Linux communities.”
“”Holy Sh*t!”: Videos Of Tesla’s Full Self Driving Beta Are Surfacing And They’re Frightening”
Tyler Durden cowardice. I’m betting someone at Car & Driver or one of the other mainstream car publications.
Are there ANY articles on ZeroHedge nowadays that are not Tyler Durden ?
https://www.zerohedge.com/
@jdkamp – that was the other distro i was considering, actually.
When talking about a Tesla, it would have been funnier to say Holy Smokes!
Some. I saw one a few days ago.
Are there ANY articles on ZeroHedge nowadays that are not Tyler Durden ?
Tyler Durden at Zerohedge is like the Bob Cringely pseudonym used to be at Infoworld before Mark Stevens claimed squatters rights sometime around the publication of “Accidental Empires”.
I was a pretty avid Gentoo user like 17 years ago. Lots of work but fun in that “twisting wrenches under the hood” sort of way. It was cool to custom compile everything. I used to kick off my compilations on the way to bed at night. Got bored with it years ago.
Funny how what’s popular on Distrowatch has changed. Here’s the top 10 from today and 15 years ago:
Today:
1. MX Linux
2. Manjaro
3. Mint
4. Pop!_OS
5. Ubuntu
6. Debian
7. elementary
8. Fedora
9. Solus
10. KDE neon
2005:
1. Ubuntu
2. Mandriva
3. SUSE
4. Fedora
5. MEPIS
6. KNOPPIX
7. Debian
8. Damn Small
9. Gentoo
10. Slackware
I was told by my retina surgeon that one of the side effects of a vitrectomy was cataracts. Sure enough, about six months later the cataracts developed. That may be why your surgeon wants cataract surgery first. They all have preferred methods. I also had my retina lasered during the vitrectomy process. Much easier done when knocked out as that little laser is a tiny little man hitting the inside of the head with a small hammer. Not at all pleasant.
Regardless, get the procedures recommended. From my experience you will not regret. The next day when you can open, and use, the eye (they only do one at a time) is one of those “wowsers Batman” moments.
As I stated sometimes the eye will hemorrhage. My retina surgeon told me it is not uncommon. But I can state it is really scary. Waking up to an eye that has no white, just deep purple and black, and basically no vision other than light detection, was really scary. Surgeon called me twice on two separate days (one of those days a Saturday) to tell me everything is fine and the vision will return. It did.
One eye I had to have a bubble inserted during the vitrectomy procedure. Never did fully understand why. Odd having this thing floating in they eye, always at the top. I was advised to keep the face facing down as much as possible. Took several weeks for the bubble to go away, getting smaller over time.
The techniques that are available for the eye with todays technology is just simply amazing. If you need it, get it done.
I have never fully understand how something as complicated as an OS, can be done for free and be a good thing. What is the motive other than just something to do? Perhaps show a person’s nerd factor. Maybe bragging rights to produce in 25 lines of code what someone else did in 32 lines of code.
Without a profit motive I fail to see how the effort can be trusted. With no real unified control structure, contributions by multiple people of all different skill levels and most importantly different mindsets. Who directs these multiple contributors? Who defines what the standards are for the code blocks?
For profit efforts if they don’t work no money is made. Free code, if it doesn’t work, comes down to ego.
I have tried multiple efforts to get Linux, various distros, to work fully. To do what I need to get done. None have been successful. Now I no longer care. I consider the OS a tool to make my other software and hardware work to get what I need accomplished. If Photoshop AND Lightroom, and Quicken, and TurboTax, and a half dozen other applications were to come out for Linux, I might be more motivated. But the equivalent applications are poorly designed, cumbersome or simply don’t work.
Heh, Debian has hardly budged since 2005, I guess that’s good?
I see that SUSE has faded. I tried running it for a while, but there were driver issues, and somehow I always ended up getting the German versions of packages. It really tested my junior college “Deutsche”.
“The Next Wave of COVID-19 Litigation: “Take Home” Lawsuits”
https://t.e2ma.net/webview/qi76md/2a0ddc408df91e2f9d580f9af5455f36
“The potential for employees to contract COVID-19 at their place of employment has been a huge issue during the current pandemic. This is especially true for essential workers who continued to clock in hours despite a nationwide shutdown when the virus first gripped the country. Some states, such as California, have amended their Workers’ Compensation laws to create a “rebuttable presumption” that an essential worker testing positive for COVID-19 had contracted it during their employment. In the severely impacted meatpacking industry, infected employees filed lawsuits against their employers directly. This was the case for over 4,500 workers at Tyson Food’s meatpacking plants who alleged violations in worker safety.”
The lawyers are here.
If I do the vitrectomy then he wants to do the cataract first. So at minimum, I need to fix the cataract first before I do the vitrectomy.
I was told by my retina surgeon that one of the side effects of a vitrectomy was cataracts. Sure enough, about six months later the cataracts developed. That may be why your surgeon wants cataract surgery first. They all have preferred methods. I also had my retina lasered during the vitrectomy process. Much easier done when knocked out as that little laser is a tiny little man hitting the inside of the head with a small hammer. Not at all pleasant.
Nope. He has performed three cataract surgeries after a vitrectomy. In one case, the new lens came out of the little sack that your lens is free floating in. He is very upset about that as his only failure in 4,000+ cataract surgeries. He blamed the lens failure on the saline solution used as a vitreous fluid replacement.
One eye I had to have a bubble inserted during the vitrectomy procedure. Never did fully understand why. Odd having this thing floating in they eye, always at the top. I was advised to keep the face facing down as much as possible. Took several weeks for the bubble to go away, getting smaller over time.
The bubble is used for retinal detachment. My wife’s cousin’s husband had to have this done. He is basically blind in that eye now as the retina detached again and again.
https://www.uwhealth.org/health/topic/surgicaldetail/pneumatic-retinopexy-for-retinal-detachment/hw187768.html
Yep. I have a number of laptops and all on Windows 10. No problems except for the HP Envy with a dirt UEFI\BIOS that does not allow me to nail the SSD as the boot device. With some Win10 updates, during the restart, it will have problems. If I restart several times without changing anything it will eventually find the correct restart and finish the update. 🙂
I played a lot with Linux many years ago. I gave up because I never got a useful and stable version. To me it is still a play OS.
“5 Programming Languages Doomed Over the Next 10 Years” by Nick Kolakowski
https://insights.dice.com/2020/10/20/5-programming-languages-doomed-over-the-next-10-years/
Flame on !
“5 Programming Languages Doomed Over the Next 10 Years” by Nick Kolakowski”
Flame on !
Dice.com clickbait. Hot skillz!
C isn’t going anywhere. The Linux Kernel is not moving to Rust or Go as long as the Benevolent Dictator is still in charge.
As for the rest, Ruby and Haskell always struck me as Hot Skillz. Perl has largely been supplanted by Python since the Camel book tripled in size.
Objective C is the dark horse. AFAIK, the only way to mix C++ model code into a Cocoa GUI is via Objective C++, and I’ve long suspected C++ is Apple’s secret to building their internal apps with decent performance.
Swift is vendor lock in, and like all LLVM-based languages, syntactic sugar for C++. My what a lovely culdesac we’ve driven into. Say, which one of these houses is the one built on top of the old Native American burial ground …
Hot Skillz now is about wasting time with AWS and containers more than specific languages used to develop a service.
For me it’s simple – Windows 10 is the desktop due to its compatibility with everything.
Anything that’s a server is Linux, other than Windows file sharing.
I only use Windows server for Hyper-V, and often VMWare for production virtualization, as it doesn’t need regular reboots for updates.
That is what I have heard. The surgeon had already lasered my retina so little danger of separation. He never mentioned retina separation, said something else that I do not remember. Maybe he stated the technical term for detachment. Maybe the bubble was preventative. Only did the bubble in one eye, the one that had the hemorrhage. I was still a little loopy from being knocked out. The vitreous fluid had been replaced. That fluid gels over time and pulls on the retina. That no longer existed after my procedure. I had no signs of retina detachment. For retina detachment with the bubble the patient is provided with a pillow that allows the patient to sleep face down so the bubble is always at the back (now the top) of the eye. I was never given those requirements.
For my vitrectomy I was prepped in a preparation room. Clothes removed and surgical gown. IV started. I was knocked out for a few minutes while someone went behind the eye to deaden the muscles and nerves that move the eye. When I became conscious again in a few minutes they eye did not move but I could see with the eye.
Then into the procedure room. Three probes stuck in the eye. One probe was for light. One probe broke up the vitreous fluid and sucked out the pieces. The last probe was used to inject replacement fluid, probably some form of saline.
After that was done I heard the surgeon say “put him under” at which point I remember nothing. That was when the surgeon lasered the retina. I had requested lasering at that time. When I had the retina lasered for the first eye it was the next day after the vitrectomy. That little green laser snapped every shot, little hammer in the head, and purple vision for a few seconds. After about 10 of those zaps I was starting to cry as it was really uncomfortable. I had purple tinted vision for several hours after the lasering. Thus the request to laser when I was knocked out for the vitrectomy.
I see that COBOL and FORTRAN were not mentioned. There is hope for us old code slingers from years past. Although I never want another job coding. Oh, shucks, I never want another job.
I’m surprised Visual Basic didn’t make the list. Especially since Microsoft has basically come out and publicly said, “Ummm, yea, we’d like this to go away and so we’re going to start pulling back our support of it.” Somewhere out there some VB6 developer is hacking away on his NT4 workstation and grumbling about it.
I also have Win 10 on all systems here. Fresh/new systems, and old systems upgraded from Win7.
All work just fine. Updates are not a problem on any system – I let them download and then install (reboot) when convenient for me.
I don’t run any fancy software. Do a lot of programming (PHP/MySqli and web sites) using the RapidPHP Editor. Book writing with Atlantis, although moving back to Word now that I got Office 2019 (not ‘365’) for $40 via a FB ad link. Use Adobe Fireworks for image editing out of old habits – have installed GIMP and Photoshop but don’t have significant editing needs. FireFox for web browsing; occasionally Chrome.
Did make a media server on a Raspberry Pi, but don’t even use that media server much. Haven’t updated anything there for over a year.
It Just Works for me. I have no reason to try anything else – I am past my computer experimenting days.
I played with various Linux since 1996. In 2008 I settled on Ubuntu for all home systems. By 2010 I put it on the wife’s pc so I wouldn’t have to keep rebuilding it after she clicked on yet another virus filled link. Been rock stable since then through all the LTS releases. The only issue is that she uses a genealogy program requiring Windows which I have running in a VM for her. Not one single virus issue in almost a decade. Considering that she clicks on almost anything, that’s quite a time saver.
PCs, for consumers, are appliances at this point. Turn it on. Do the thing. Turn it off. If it breaks under warranty have it fixed. Otherwise, buy a new one.
Many computer enthusiasts would be surprised how many people don’t own PCs anymore (either desktops or laptops) and rely on just a smartphone or tablet.
Here in Indian country we are on the edge of the first of 3 ice storms this week. The ice starts about 20 miles to our west and is taking down trees and power lines. Fingers crossed we remain outside the worst of it. I have the generator but have not yet gotten it hooked into the power box. It would run the furnace fan and most everything else but the oven, AC, and washer if connected. News reports almost half a million without power and growing. I hope I don’t regret not putting the transfer switch on higher priority.
Saw another dual-fuel 7.5KW generator for sale on the local FB site for $300. Very tempted but didn’t know what I’d do with a second. (Our original host would have said one is none and two is one)
Counter-tenors used to be common in Baroque opera. They were castrati back then. Now they are just men who have that particular type of voice. Very rare. If they are good, they can make $$$ in opera, singing roles that were written for men but are often done by women as “trouser roles”.
I’m surprised Visual Basic didn’t make the list. Especially since Microsoft has basically come out and publicly said, “Ummm, yea, we’d like this to go away and so we’re going to start pulling back our support of it.” Somewhere out there some VB6 developer is hacking away on his NT4 workstation and grumbling about it.
VB6 binaries are supported until EOL of Windows 10, possibly beyond. Many VB6 internal apps float around big companies with deep pockets, and Microsoft will do anything for a customer as long as they’re willing to pay for it.
Phone companies in particular have a lot of VB6, leftovers from the client-server implosion in the late 90s, when costs and mergers forced cancellations of attempts to get away from mainframes for customer service applications. A weird hybrid model desktop has existed since then, which I got a taste of in scab training at the Death Star in 2008.
Windows XP will run the appropriate Visual Studio for VB6. I have a VM on one of my machines with everything installed since Visual C++ 6 was the last C compiler before Redmond went crazy with versioning of MSVCRT.
If I do a GUI for my own use on Windows, I use Tcl, even more dead than VB6 on the desktop.
5 Programming Languages Doomed Over the Next 10 Years
I see that COBOL and FORTRAN were not mentioned. There is hope for us old code slingers from years past. Although I never want another job coding. Oh, shucks, I never want another job.
Cobol and Fortran were doomed a long time ago. The fact that Mickeysoft does not offer a compiler for either recently is the first sign. The Mickeysoft Fortran compiler Powerstation was removed from the marketplace at least 20 ? 25 ? years ago.
It Just Works for me. I have no reason to try anything else – I am past my computer experimenting days.
PCs, for consumers, are appliances at this point. Turn it on. Do the thing. Turn it off. If it breaks under warranty have it fixed. Otherwise, buy a new one.
Many computer enthusiasts would be surprised how many people don’t own PCs anymore (either desktops or laptops) and rely on just a smartphone or tablet.
Yes and yes. And most people just need a smartphone and / or a tablet.
I have never even heard of a counter-tenor. That is amazing. And from my town.
Counter-tenors used to be common in Baroque opera. They were castrati back then. Now they are just men who have that particular type of voice. Very rare. If they are good, they can make $$$ in opera, singing roles that were written for men but are often done by women as “trouser roles”.
A castrato (Italian, plural: castrati) is a type of classical male singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto. The voice is produced by castration of the singer before puberty, or it occurs in one who, due to an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castrato
Yeek !
That’s COBOL you young whipper snapper.
I suspect there are a few dozen million lines of COBOL and FORTRAN still being used. I have been called by companies looking for COBOL coders as they are desperate to find COBOL trained killers. Business applications with lots of batch processing, which COBOL did very well.
FORTRAN used in some heavy math applications such as modeling for weather and nuclear stuff. I suspect a lot is still in use at the local ORNL facility.
The languages are dead, but still useful. Unlike Pelosi who is still alive and not useful.
VB6 binaries are supported until EOL of Windows 10, possibly beyond. Many VB6 internal apps float around big companies with deep pockets, and Microsoft will do anything for a customer as long as they’re willing to pay for it.
Yup, I support one for my largest customer with 300,000 PCs. They tried to convert it to C# but failed.
I suspect there are a few dozen million lines of COBOL and FORTRAN still being used. I have been called by companies looking for COBOL coders as they are desperate to find COBOL trained killers. Business applications with lots of batch processing, which COBOL did very well.
Try a few dozen BILLION lines of Cobol and Fortran still being used. Shoot, we have about 750,000 lines of Fortran for us alone.
I just doubt that any new applications are being written in Cobol or Fortran.
FORTRAN used in some heavy math applications such as modeling for weather and nuclear stuff. I suspect a lot is still in use at the local ORNL facility.
My former employer’s ORT system has a optical sensor array dependent on FORTRAN to do the heavy duty number crunching.
Essentially, the computer watches a 3D movie of the road and measures speed/size of anything that “pops” out of the screen … like the monster in “Revenge of the Creature”.
The system was originally developed to track missiles approaching planes.
The languages are dead, but still useful. Unlike Pelosi who is still alive and not useful.
Pelosi is a skin bag with a lizard inside it ! Haven’t you seen the V documentary ?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1307824/
“VB6 binaries are supported until EOL of Windows 10, possibly beyond. Many VB6 internal apps float around big companies with deep pockets, and Microsoft will do anything for a customer as long as they’re willing to pay for it.”
Yup, I support one for my largest customer with 300,000 PCs. They tried to convert it to C# but failed.
VB6 compiled with the “pro” version of Video Studio 6 and linking in DLLs with the performance sensitive code would smoke an application written for pure .Net.
The last time I checked, the Death Star was still using my Python code to generate the schedules for the Uverse DVR scheduling app. That was the first Python program I ever wrote!
It looks like my unscheduled three week vacation will soon come to an end. As for whether it is unpaid time off, stay tuned …
IIRC, NASTRAN, the most common finite element analysis software is over 1 million lines of code, written in FORTRAN for the most part. NASA had a supercomputer that did nothing but NASTRAN analysis runs when I was there.
I was told in 1977 that knowing COBOL you would always guarantee a job. Ada was the Great Byte Hope of programming languages that year.
a former partner said, Linux? recompile is the sinonym of this, a patch, recompile the kernel. I was very doubtful of w10, but, it runs
COBOL and FORTRAN maybe will live forever, unless some tool has the ability to migrate AND processing power goes infinite. Is the same as languajes used on PLCs, ladder logics etc etc.
But, as I am going to stables, due reasons , office is enough
A comorbidity doesn’t mean that you were likely to die in the near term from it. I have controlled high blood pressure. If I was to die of COVID, it would be on my death certificate as a comorbidity, even if it had nothing to do with my death. Discounting the deaths because there are comorbidities is just not how it has to be looked at. Now, there is evidence that some of the countries that are having lower death rates due to having had higher than normal death rates for seniors in the last 3 years – i.e. many of those that would have been most vulnerable died off. So, we may see a lowering of the death rate over the next few years. A friend that is an actuary is trying to crunch some numbers on that from the data that are available. I’ll post here when she does. BTW, she is convinced that we undercounted COVID deaths in the early months of the outbreak here because people died without being tested and there was a spike in excess deaths back then that are not tagged COVID. It seems to be 10-20k deaths. Again, she is hoping to crunch some firm numbers as more data come in.
The CDC has funded outside studies to get a handle on how many asymptomatic cases are out there. Based on that data, they have estimates of the IFR (Infection Fatality Ratio), which is your chance of dying if you get infected. The current estimates (which are supported by lockdown skeptics that are in the health field, btw) are:
0-19 years: 0.003%
20-49 years: 0.02%
50-69 years: 0.5%
70+ years: 5.4%
The best numbers I found for “average” flu are:
0-17 0.01%
18-49 0.02%
50-64 0.6%
65+ 0.83%
So it is less severe for kids, about the same for young adults to middle age, somewhat worse for near-seniors, and much worse for seniors. My guess is that we are at best halfway through the disease. More likely 1/3 through. A vaccine will help a lot, even at 50% protection. At 50% we will likely be near herd immunity by the time we deploy it here.
A pandemic is a technical term and given the spread around the world, we ARE in a pandemic. You can have a pandemic of a benign disease that doesn’t kill. It’s the spread and number of cases that trigger the designation.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett. All Redumblicans except Collins.
And now for something completely different. A Gerry Anderson series a hadn’t heard of:
Secret Service
I haven’t seen it yet so it might be bleeechh.
Okay, I stand corrected although I’m reminded of a joke from an old Robin Williams routine (I think).
A man takes a bus to work every day, and every day he sees a guy on the street corner with a sandwich board which says, “The End is Near!” One day he leans out the window at the stoplight and asks the guy, “That’s what you said yesterday and all last month.”
At the stoplight the next day the man had a new sign. “The End is Nearer!”
@~jim:
American service, not available in Europe, citing GDPR. In other words, they make their money by selling your viewing habits to anyone who will pay them. And/or advertising – and selling your viewing habits.
And they can’t make their business model GDPR-compliant. A lot of American media businesses have done the same, “Not available in Europe, because GDPR”. Maybe we’ll see similar geo-blocking in Kali, because of their new privacy law. Although it wouldn’t surprise me to find that CCPR (the Kali version) is specifically written to exempt media companies.
G.
Happy Birthday, Cankles!
Electoral Vote winner Trump confirmed three SCOTUS justices so far.
Popular Vote winner Hillary confirmed birthday reservations at Applebee’s.
One of the things I picked up was
https://www.amazon.com/Firefield-FF26024-Impact-Reflex-Sight/dp/B075MFZT6Y?tag=ttgnet-20
Open box. Didn’t turn on. Close examination shows battery cover is crossthreaded. Remove battery cover and battery, and see that the shipping plastic tab that prevents the battery from making contact is still in place. Remove protective shipping tab, insert battery, properly screw on cover. Bob’s your uncle. NEW, never used, because DUMB. $20USD.
It’s cheap but fine for a shotty. Really bright reticle too.
n
A vaccine will help a lot, even at 50% protection. At 50% we will likely be near herd immunity by the time we deploy it here.
It depends on the side effects for the vaccine if one ever passes the strict testing that I envision but will probably not get. For instance a vaccine that kill the kidneys of ten percent of the population a year after would be a freaking disaster.
And since they are talking about using a new technology for the vaccine, I will wait to be last. After all, I probably had the COVID-19 back in February.
https://www.ajmc.com/view/experts-highlight-covid-19-vaccine-developments-and-remaining-challenges
Again, I reference the “Grups” episode of Star Trek to unforeseen effects of a life extension experiment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miri_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)
Justice Amy Coney Barrett. All Redumblicans except Collins.
All I wanted from the Trumper was a conservative SCOTUS justice. Now I have three ! ! !
Everything else is gravy.
And Collins is an idiot. So are several of the dum-bro-crats representing red states. Doug Jones, your goose is cooked !
https://www.al.com/news/2020/10/alabama-us-senate-race-2020-tommy-tuberville-has-13-point-lead-over-doug-jones-poll-shows.html
You might want to check out MX linux. It is certainly popular based on distrowatch. I’ve been using it for awhile along with Manjaro (dual boot).
“MX Linux, a desktop-oriented Linux distribution based on Debian’s “stable” branch, is a cooperative venture between the antiX and former MEPIS Linux communities.”
Thanks, @jdkamp, I am putting that in my Linux notes. I liked the stability of Debian, but, like Mint and Ubuntu, Debian is better with a third party. I thought Warren Woodford was an excellent third party, with a good community backing him up. I was very sad to see MEPIS go. It was the best full featured desktop Linux for me. Everything comes to an end at some time.
I will probably use Linux on an isolated machine to play around with things not readily available on Windows, or maybe costly. I have been away from looking for too long, just getting work done. I was pleasantly surprised to see some of my favorite freeware now available for Windows. The only thing that comes to mind is ShowFoto, an app I have come to like for a few of the things it can do that many others can’t. I won’t put an Adobe product on a machine, so their photo editing stuff is not a consideration for me. Besides, I take a minimalist approach to editing stills, and don’t need much. I actually want to try Picture Window Pro, something that only runs on Windows, and is now free. I would have paid its modest price some years ago, but I had moved to Linux.
Another area is 2D and 3D CAD. There is very little of this on Linux, and what I have tried is buggy, so I gave up. Again, for an old retired guy, one of the low cost or free Windows CAD packages would probably be sufficient. I did use Libre Office Draw, but it lacked features and didn’t work very well. Besides, I might want to get started in CNC machining, and that requires Windows.
So much to do, so little time. Wish I could live to 200. 😛
I played a lot with Linux many years ago. I gave up because I never got a useful and stable version. To me it is still a play OS.
Yup, see my previous comment.
Score another one for the Marshals..
–maybe they’ll take down Hunter and save the 14yo.
n
Don’t jinx it!
“I might want to get started in CNC machining, and that requires Windows.”
–that didn’t used to be true. EMC2 would run all kinds of machines and it was a linux live CD.
TinkerCAD is entirely web based now, iirc. It will do solids and 2d.
Granted that Sketchup is incredibly powerful, and there are other things, like PCB layout software, and other CAD that only run on windows…
I only want linux running on my camera NVR because it should be like an appliance. It should NOT be updating and rebooting, and then not running my startup folder because it wants to walk me thru the “windows 10 experience”…. almost all of the hardware NVR boxes are really cheap machines running linux.
n
–maybe they’ll take down Hunter and save the 14yo.
n
I just saw that Ashley Biden wrote in her diary about showering with her dad, Joe Biden ? What the ???
https://www.lenorathompsonwriter.com/beyondnarcissism/ashley-biden-disturbing-memories-of-creepy-handsy-father-joe-biden-where-was-mother-jill-biden
Yeek !
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
FreeCad (supposedly) supports CNC, and one of the reasons i want a decent Linux is so I can compile it from scratch. There are a lot of dependencies and the old Mint 18 distro had some sort of repository issue that i never quite fixed – it would always take a couple tries to completely update. Annoying.
It’s a hobby box, so being forced to blow something away and re-install isn’t that big a deal. Just slow over Frontier DSL.
“A friend that is an actuary is trying to crunch some numbers on that from the data that are available. I’ll post here when she does. BTW, she is convinced that we undercounted COVID deaths in the early months of the outbreak here because people died without being tested and there was a spike in excess deaths back then that are not tagged COVID. It seems to be 10-20k deaths. Again, she is hoping to crunch some firm numbers as more data come in.”
The CDC deaths by week chart in the USA in Jan and Feb 2020 were below average. The deaths did not jump above average until March 28, 2020. The week of March 21, 2020 was exactly average.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
Another area is 2D and 3D CAD. There is very little of this on Linux, and what I have tried is buggy, so I gave up. Again, for an old retired guy, one of the low cost or free Windows CAD packages would probably be sufficient. I did use Libre Office Draw, but it lacked features and didn’t work very well. Besides, I might want to get started in CNC machining, and that requires Windows.
We have our own 2D CAD package embedded in our Windows user interface front end for our process simulator. Even under Windows, you would not believe how hardware dependent it is. I have rewritten much of it over the last 30 years and continuously screw things up. It is a difficult compile on a good day since the code was first written under Windows 1.0 (yes, the tiled version !). Our saving grace was the conversion from Win16 C code to Win32 C++ code which gave us much stronger type checking.
https://www.winsim.com/screenshots.html
“A.F. Branco Cartoon – Creepy and Sleepy”
https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-creepy-and-sleepy/
“The perfect costume for a hunter this Halloween is as Joe Biden’s monster, collecting treats for the Big Guy. Political cartoons by A.F. Branco ©2020.”
ROTFLMAO.
Ahhhh, the old “The right tool for the job” excuse, eh?
I concur. If the current tool does not do the job then try and find the right one.
@ech
There are international standards used to address the relative importance of comorbidities in the assignment of cause of death. These worked just fine for decades.
“BTW, she is convinced that we undercounted COVID deaths in the early months of the outbreak here because people died without being tested and there was a spike in excess deaths back then that are not tagged COVID. It seems to be 10-20k deaths. Again, she is hoping to crunch some firm numbers as more data come in.”
The Wuhan coronavirus altered normal treatment protocols. One large change was erecting barriers to transfer of elderly patients between long-term care facilities and hospitals. There are three potential outcomes of delaying or denying hospital care post-pandemic. I look forward to the analysis of this unintended experiment, and fully expect a flood of null hypothesis conclusions from flawed methodologies by researchers with questionable funding.
(I also look forward to the paper that takes the opportunity to answer the question: How many people die in hospitals each year because doctors don’t wash their hands?)
There is also the question of the effect of the delay of “elective” surgeries, presumably on a somewhat less-elderly group.
Note that a result showing premature deaths from postponement of elective surgery could be turned against the insurance industry’s routine delay tactics for medically approved procedures, and conversely, failure to find an effect for some procedures might foment a re-examination of the medical necessity. Wouldn’t be surprised at all to see the health care interests move to restrict public access to data.
@greg– does this mean your interview went well? Because that would be the shortest tech layoff I’ve ever heard about!
“It looks like my unscheduled three week vacation will soon come to an end. As for whether it is unpaid time off, stay tuned …”
And good news to boot.
n
After only 2/13 episodes, I declare Gerry Anderson’s
The Secret Service (1969)
to be a jolly good time. It’s not a kids show!
The Wuhan coronavirus altered normal treatment protocols. One large change was erecting barriers to transfer of elderly patients between long-term care facilities and hospitals. There are three potential outcomes of delaying or denying hospital care post-pandemic. I look forward to the analysis of this unintended experiment, and fully expect a flood of null hypothesis conclusions from flawed methodologies by researchers with questionable funding.
My father-in-law’s nursing home in Lewisville, Texas locked down on March 14 or so. They eventually converted one of the four wings into a COVID-19 quarantine wing (June ? July ?). Of course, it was my FIL’s wing so he got moved to a new room even though we had requested that they did not move him ever again (he had a Kennedy Ulcer on his lower spine which was incredibly painful).
https://www.healthline.com/health/kennedy-ulcer
My wife moved him to the next door hospital in August to treat his swallowing problem. The hospital discharged him after a week back to the nursing home to the quarantine wing where he died a week later of Ischemic Cardiomyopathy (worn out heart). The only advantage to the hospital was that my wife and her sister got to visit him for a week. In fact, they kept him awake for the 12 hours of the second day he was there so that he slept for the next 24 hours and the hospital thought he had a stroke when they could not wake him up.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/17145-ischemic-cardiomyopathy
Note that a result showing premature deaths from postponement of elective surgery could be turned against the insurance industry’s routine delay tactics for medically approved procedures, and conversely, failure to find an effect for some procedures might foment a re-examination of the medical necessity. Wouldn’t be surprised at all to see the health care interests move to restrict public access to data.
I expect this to be another push for Medicare For All ™ in 2021 which Greg expects to be as bad or worse than Medicaid For All ™.
BTW, as a strange point, I got a refund of $1,000 of the monthly health insurance bill that I pay for 14 people in my November bill. $7,000 instead of $8,000. Apparently we are using our health insurance less during the COVID-19 pandemic. Just another statement that this is not a pandemic.
After only 2/13 episodes, I declare Gerry Anderson’s
The Secret Service (1969)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163491
to be a jolly good time. It’s not a kids show!
The wife watches IMDB.com about half of the time. It is connected through Amazon Prime. Shows like “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”, “Petticoat Junction”, “Little House on the Prairie”, etc.
Re COVID: William Briggs says that the current excess deaths are now below the current flu death numbers, which in turn are already low (last plot):
https://wmbriggs.com/post/33026/
Then again, he’s a statistician, and those are heartless b*st*rds…
Thanks @ech. I wish the TV would show people facts and not try to scare everyone. I’m not in the high morbity category and feel relatively safe. If I believed the TV I’d be wearing my mask while driving alone…
“Justice Clarence Thomas Swears In Amy Coney Barrett To The Supreme Court”
https://dailycaller.com/2020/10/26/clarence-thomas-amy-coney-barrett-supreme-court-swear-in/
Interesting that Clarence Thomas swore ACB in. The court’s most conservative member swearing in another like conservative ?
My sister, in the S.F. Bay area, sent me a picture of her neighbor’s halloween display: the skeletons are wearing masks
Might be the law, dunno.
Humor?
n