Cooler and humid. We’re supposed to get some Fall weather for a few days. The national forecast also says ‘rain’ or really thundershowers possible.
Monday was mostly overcast depending on your part of town. Houston is a collection of micro-climates and even the local forecasts aren’t local enough.
I did my pickups, got some gub stuff and some household stuff. That ate my afternoon by the time I got the stuff and went by my secondary location to drop some of it off. I brought home some of what I need for my halloween candy dispensing machine too.
Before I left the house though, I went looking for a drive for my NVR pc. Grabbing some drives from my box-o-random drives, I plugged them in to see what was what. Two of the 4 were dead- clicks and whines, no platter spin up. Two were fine, spun right up, partitioned and formatted no issues. The dead ones were both Seagate, the good ones both WD Caviar Green. Tiny sample size and old random drives from who knows where, but it was striking.
Had a police chopper orbiting over the neighborhood again too. Then he went straight up a major street until it ended, then followed another to a point where he orbited, then back to the barn. Looks like they were watching someone, who ran. They followed until he ran out of road, watched for a while, then left. The flight radar website was very helpful.
That led to some playing around with scanners for a while, but nothing productive. I never did hear any chatter about the chase.
Closer to home I put the motion sensor for the “Driveway Patrol” on the porch and the receiver at my desk. Even with the camera covering the front porch, I’ve been surprised to find a package waiting on the porch. I really want to know if someone is at my door. So I picked one up at an estate auction, and it works great. Now I see the flashing light when someone approaches the door and I can glance at the camera and respond or not.
Small steps, baby steps, but steps nonetheless.
And I encourage you to take some steps toward your own goals. Some of those steps should be stacking the stuff you might need later…
n
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.
– No new wars. Cleaning up the mess of what Obama started.
– Adult about Russia. Do you not think Trump and Putin talk regularly?
(Summit at Mar a Lago in the second term, timed for DeSantis re-election)
– Ethanol free gas at Walmart.
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 ™.
I lived subsidizing the practice of medicine in my household for nearly 20 years, six under Obamacare, writing checks even unemployed, including one for $11,000 of tail malpractice coverage out of my grad school earnings to let us escape Vantucky. I’m the poster child for B*tchy Doctor’s Wife.
Ask your parents what Medicare would be like without their supplement plans. That’s what’s coming in Medicaid For All.
@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.
I don’t want to jinx it, but I heard something yesterday afternoon.
Money is good, but I’m filing my TWC appeal today. My former management will look even more foolish if I go into that hearing with the UI ineligibility already vacated by six weeks of stable full-time employment.
Yep, going back to work, in tech, in this environment, so quickly will make a very strong statement about your worth as an employee.
n
:fingerscrossed
Our saving grace was the conversion from Win16 C code to Win32 C++ code which gave us much stronger type checking.
When we did a 32 bit Linux port of our core VPN library at the Death Star 14 years (yikes!) ago, GCC uncovered a multitude of sins in the code base, particularly one with an assumption about fread() which is not valid under the strict interpretation of standard.
I strongly suspect Microsoft has been cribbing from Clang lately since the BSD license permits “borrowing” for commercial use with attribution to the Regents and original source. Pay attention to compiler complaints if you’re using a recent Visual Studio.
Yep, going back to work, in tech, in this environment, so quickly will make a very strong statement about your worth as an employee.
Age has been my biggest obstacle for about 10 years. I turn 52 on Monday.
In Vantucky, I had an HP manager give me an “off the record” read that being 46 (at that time) was my problem. Shortly after that discussion, I coached one of my students about the obscure C questions they would ask in their tech interview, he aced the screening process, and he’s worked there for five years, now.
C obscura:
– The third argument to main()
– Use of the ‘volatile’ keyword relating to optimizations — HP lost an assembly line for months over this
– Behavior of select() in Unix vs. Windows
– malloc() vs calloc() memory initialization
… and fread() weirdness if the IO fails!
Not working isn’t a problem in terms of eating in the short run, but my wife doesn’t manage her career well enough that I’m not subsidizing her working in private practice.
The VA is making noises about a mandatory Covid vaccination for all the staff. If Plugs wins, the probability increases of my wife having to submit to BillG’s kinky needle fetsh, and she may have to go back to private practice.
More crazy amish attacking cops and looting in the heart of the colonies, Philly….
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/10/breaking-driver-runs-police-officer-philly-black-lives-matter-riot-video/
n
More crazy amish attacking cops and looting in the heart of the colonies, Philly….
Amish. A barn raising and cider afterwards always gets them worked up.
I am of the opinion that Benjamin Crump, a civil rights attorney, is nothing more than a media whore, ambulance chasing, racially bigoted, low life scum.
I am of the opinion that Benjamin Crump, a civil rights attorney, is nothing more than a media whore, ambulance chasing, racially bigoted, low life scum.
You must have seen the footage from Austin yesterday.
Crump is in town to sue Williamson County over the actions of the Sheriff, who allegedly destroyed evidence relating to a racially-charged case filmed for “Live PD”.
Conveniently, the Sheriff is up for reelection on Tuesday, against a Dem who is arguably a real racist.
Wilco Sheriff is the true law enforcement keeping a lid on North Austin, where the city creeps over the Travis/Williamson line, trying to increase tax base with the Applied Materials plant, and that doesn’t sit well with some demographic groups.
Along with many other articles. He is the lawyer of choice for any racial lawsuit. Probably receives 40% or more of any award. He is a racist from the start. All of his clients, especially the dead ones, are portrayed as noble people, hearts of gold. Then it turns out the dead person was nothing more than a criminal thug. Every time he speaks, every police action against a black person, becomes a racial issue. Left out of his venomous rhetoric is the real background of the thug. He is the families equivalent of a lottery ticket. So the family can buy gold chains and teeth and be penniless within a year and back on their career path of welfare.
Woke this morning to freezing rain and a thick coating of ice on the roads. The ice on trees is very bad too, ruining many old oaks and taking down power lines. Here on the golf course, all our utilities are buried but that doesn’t mean that a feeder line upstream can’t be taken down. Fingers crossed power stays up. This ice storm has caused me to rethink the priority of installing the generator transfer switch. My huge old suburban would be my choice in this weather but it has street tires that give no traction on ice or snow. I hate to change them as they have very little mileage on them. This is the earliest ice storm on record for Oklahoma. Thank you global warming.
Watch me reply to a half dozen of yesterday’s comments in one lengthy post… 🙂
We had a bad one of those here in September 1997. Freezing rain and the leaves on the trees were still green. So, all that ice stuck to the leaves and the added weight snapped the branches. The older part of town got hit the worst as the houses are connected to the electric grid via an above ground cable strung between the house and the utility pole. Newer parts of town have buried electric and most of the above ground lines are well above the height of most trees. When the ice heavy branches came crashing down they tore down all of those power lines. I can still remember the mountains of brush piles in all of the city parks as that’s where they had everyone bring downed branches for disposal. The trees around here looked like sh_t for years afterwards.
I knew a guy that got a job as an Ada programmer back in 2001. A local USAF contractor was desperate for Ada programmers. The guy didn’t have a degree and most of his professional experience was the equivalent of working help desk. However, he learned Ada via online tutorials enough to make it through their interview process and got hired as a full time Ada programmer. When I saw him again 3 months later he was still working there. I suppose when you advertise a position for a year and you only get one applicant…
It’s like those people who land jobs because they already have an active Top Secret security clearance from a previous employer (or because they just came off active duty). They’ll get hired over much more qualified people just because their new employer doesn’t have to go to the cost or hassle of getting them a new clearance.
I’m still not sure how to do a proper COVID-19 to Influenza comparison. We have a vaccine for flu, so we’re not really comparing apples to apples. So, should we be comparing COVID-19 to what the numbers likely would be for flu if there was NO flu vaccine? How would COVID-19 stack up against flu then?
I lol’d.
A local (semi-regional) pharmacy here is offering COVID-19 antibody testing (I believe they ship it off to a university research hospital), so you can see if you ever had it. Though, i’ve heard there’s some disclaimer about how if you’ve had another illness from a different virus in the corona family that you might get a false positive.
Until the next Democratic President adds 5 seats to the court and then proceeds to fill them with liberal justices. We seriously need a Constitutional amendment that sets the size of the Supreme Court in stone.
Too funny and too true
http://ninetymilesfromtyranny.blogspot.com/2020/10/be-careful-this-halloween-look-for.html
I would not want to risk a con-con. Once the mob was assembled, they could too easily be stampeded in the wrong direction.
n
“You must have seen the footage from Austin yesterday.”
Along with many other articles. He is the lawyer of choice for any racial lawsuit.
We’ve known about him in Florida going back a couple of decades. The Dems have pretty much shot all their credibility above the local level in the state, and the meltdown of their 2018 candidate for Governor, Andrew Gillum, has lifted a rock on a lot of things going on in Tallahassee, particularly among the African American and legal communities in the capital. It will catch up with Crump, give it time.
The Dems want to take out the Wilco Sheriff this year. BLM and Antifa in Downtown Austin doesn’t *really* matter nearly as much as if they had free run in Georgetown, Round Rock (Dell HQ), and Cedar Park. Plus, the entire power grid for Texas is run from Taylor.
We occasionally get creepy stuff happening in our neighborhood since the county cut a road out to 183 through the H1B development next door, but it is very easy to put a clamp down on access with just one law enforcement vehicle due to the design of the fences along the road.
I believe the H1B development is City of Austin. The homes ran $600k+ so the tax base potential was probably irresistible when the former ranch land went on the market.
It’s like those people who land jobs because they already have an active Top Secret security clearance from a previous employer (or because they just came off active duty). They’ll get hired over much more qualified people just because their new employer doesn’t have to go to the cost or hassle of getting them a new clearance.
Part of the CGI tax incentive package to build the office in Belton, TX was an agreement to hire former military out of Fort Hood in Commercial/FSG, where a clearance isn’t necessary.
My manager had ex-Army, ex-Cop, and African American working in his favor, but he wasn’t qualified for either the technical work or managing civilians. After I left completely professionally and with more than two weeks notice, he took out his pent-up fury unfairly on the next person who quit, and “Sergeant Hulka” is currently stocking shelves at Buc-ee’s in Temple.
In light of what happened over the last three weeks, leaving CGI was arguably a bad idea, but I don’t think Sergeant Hulka would have been exposed as a fraud nearly as quickly if I hadn’t left.
Looks like Disney will take care of the “Hocus Pocus” stars for dumping on Trump.
Of the three, I’d only like to see Kathy Najimy working again, and that’s only as part of a revival of “King of the Hill” … which Disney also owns currently. Unfortunately, I don’t see a new “King of the Hill” series as possible until Disney is forced to sell off the Fox catalog to keep ESPN.
https://www.piratesandprincesses.net/bette-midler-indicates-that-all-three-sanderson-sisters-actresses-are-on-board-for-sequel/
“Blowed up SIR!”
n
“Blowed up SIR!”
I have to wonder how much of that performance was improv.
This bit, Bill Murray’s first film appearance, is all improv according to legend, and the outfit is what he arrived on set wearing that morning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7jXZQSxTSA
Even when Murray is in scripted material that sucks, he offers something interesting to watch.
If you haven’t seen his improv-ed cameo in “Zombieland 2”, find a way to screen it. And watch *all* of the film, completely through to the end of the credits. There will be a quiz.
The bonus is that the movie isn’t terrible. Sequel, sure, but still entertaining with some sly social commentary that I doubt anyone else could get away with these days.
Dog woke us up 2am growling and looking worried. Then the ring doorbell app dinged, indicating someone at the front door. I pulled up the security cameras that cover our outdoor approaches and accesses. Nothing on the cameras. Then I pulled up the doorbell camera to watch the recorded video. Nothing. Something set off the motion detection but didn’t show up on camera and we have a long covered walk to the front door, no place to hide from any of the cameras. The dog doesn’t even lift her head when the coyotes go barking by in the middle of the night. (carrying children up from Mexico I presume)
61F when I woke up, 66F and still overcast.
@harold, better watch out a safe doesn’t fall on your head when you leave the house this morning.
n
61F when I woke up, 66F and still overcast.
Cold front stalled. Austin is currently 39.
I’m in shorts doing household chores, but with the window open.
I wasn’t kidding when I said that I could use a year to get our house straightened out, but priority #1 is vacating my ineligibility with TWC for unemployment, whether through appeal or working for six weeks.
The last time I was ineligible was my first job out of college, and that place let me go two days shy of eligibility, knowing full well, after getting 12 weeks of work out of me, including really solid technical drawings and dimensions done as part of prep for their move from prototypes to manufacturing cell phones. All for $11/hour: not great even in 1992.
(I’m not a draftsman — pencil and paper then — or MechE. I just play one on TV.)
I also innovated getting all of the pieces of the phone to fit inside a case made from a mold they purchased before the design of the electronics was complete. $1 million then; God only knows what that tooling would cost now.
Don’t worry — kharma caught up like it seems to whenever I have a cr*ppy employer.
All I wanted from the Trumper was a conservative SCOTUS justice. Now I have three ! ! !
Until the next Democratic President adds 5 seats to the court and then proceeds to fill them with liberal justices. We seriously need a Constitutional amendment that sets the size of the Supreme Court in stone.
Oh, you have not heard the latest about SCOTUS. Biden is saying that he can demote the justices in SCOTUS to lower federal courts. “Biden raises idea of rotating Supreme Court justices: ‘There is some literature among constitutional scholars'”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/joe-biden-move-justices-supreme-court
The first Constitutional limit that we need is term limits for Congress and Senators. We probably need an 80 year age limit on SCOTUS justices.
It’s amusing to think the Supreme Court would have to rule on the Constitutionality of demoting or rotating Supreme Court justices.
I used to write my own performance reviews. Is that the same concept? Asking for a democratic friend.
It’s amusing to think the Supreme Court would have to rule on the Constitutionality of demoting or rotating Supreme Court justices.
There is precedent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison
From yesterday:
Probably on purpose to annoy lefties – black man swears in woman. If they were democrats it would be the most amazing thing ever. Because they are republicans, it’s of no importance.
“it’s of no importance. ”
–in fact it’s either racist, pandering, or cultural appropriation doncha know.
n
@greg, I did the actual install of Mint, let it check for drivers and then let it update from a generic video driver to nvidia… which it did, then asked to reboot.
It’s been 20 minutes of black screen with big blinking cursor in the upper left, while the drive activity light blinks. Um, is that normal for a drive update/swap?
Am I going to have to reinstall to recover this?
And FFS, did I ever have to jump thru hoops just to get the dang machine to boot from the USB for the install.
n
In Vantucky, I had an HP manager give me an “off the record” read that being 46 (at that time) was my problem. Shortly after that discussion, I coached one of my students about the obscure C questions they would ask in their tech interview, he aced the screening process, and he’s worked there for five years, now.
C obscura:
– The third argument to main()
– Use of the ‘volatile’ keyword relating to optimizations — HP lost an assembly line for months over this
– Behavior of select() in Unix vs. Windows
– malloc() vs calloc() memory initialization
… and fread() weirdness if the IO fails!
I had forgotten about the third argument to main () – cause it never worked right on DOS !
https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/language/main_function
I have never used the keyword volatile. I would look upon any code using it to be suspicious.
https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/cv
I have no idea what select () does. I have never used it.
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/unix_system_calls/_newselect.htm
Off the top of my head, malloc does not initialize allocated memory. Calloc initialized the allocated memory to zero. Yup.
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/difference-between-malloc-and-calloc-with-examples/
Having been screwed by fread repeatedly, it will just hand you gobblygook when the IO system dies. Of course, the entire computer is dying at that point so little matters.
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 ™.
I lived subsidizing the practice of medicine in my household for nearly 20 years, six under Obamacare, writing checks even unemployed, including one for $11,000 of tail malpractice coverage out of my grad school earnings to let us escape Vantucky. I’m the poster child for B*tchy Doctor’s Wife.
Ask your parents what Medicare would be like without their supplement plans. That’s what’s coming in Medicaid For All.
You have managed to educate me on the downsides of being a doctor. Chief of those being that when you leave a practice, you must carry tail malpractice insurance to cover crooked people. Lovely, just lovely.
I pay for my parents supplemental Medicare insurance. I know what it costs and how much it does NOT cover. It is a constant source of pain for them since they use it. Both of them are in remission for stage 4 cancer, Dad since the age of 42 (non-Hodgkins lymphoma) and Mom since the age of 73 (endometrial).
The VA is making noises about a mandatory Covid vaccination for all the staff. If Plugs wins, the probability increases of my wife having to submit to BillG’s kinky needle fetsh, and she may have to go back to private practice.
Shoot, I figure if we do come up with a vaccine that does not kill the kidneys of half the population, we will all be forcibly vaccinated by army troops going door to door no matter who wins the election.
The best numbers I found for “average” flu are:
I’m still not sure how to do a proper COVID-19 to Influenza comparison. We have a vaccine for flu, so we’re not really comparing apples to apples. So, should we be comparing COVID-19 to what the numbers likely would be for flu if there was NO flu vaccine? How would COVID-19 stack up against flu then?
The flu vaccine is not a true vaccine. There are several flu types, the civilian vaccine only goes after four of them (best guess of the CDC). The military gets a special vaccine that has all types. It put everyone down in their bunks for a day or two. The lucky ones get the flu right then. My son got one each year (with 37 other shots) in Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children and then they went out for a five mile jog in full gear. Apparently carrying a 60 lb mortar tube and a M-4 and water / MREs five miles after getting 38 shots is just not the high event of the week. “Pain is just weakness leaving the body”.
Yep, going back to work, in tech, in this environment, so quickly will make a very strong statement about your worth as an employee.
Age has been my biggest obstacle for about 10 years. I turn 52 on Monday.
All programmers over the age of 35 are sadly out of date. I learned Fortran at 15, Basic at 18, IBM 370 Assembly at 19, Pascal at 23, C at 27, Intel x86 assembly at 32, HTML and Java at 35, Python at 36, and C++ at 40. Nothing more after all that. And according to the son, I don’t understand C++ because I put in too many back doors. He may be right.
Wait until 60 and you look at the folly of everything.
I would not want to risk a con-con. Once the mob was assembled, they could too easily be stampeded in the wrong direction.
n
???
I don’t see COBOL in that long list of languages. No wonder you don’t call yourself a real programmer.
I have done several of those, plus a few extras. BPL, ALGOL, COBOL, Burroughs Assembler, IBM 1401 (yeh, that dates me), Honeywell 800 assembler, Sperry assembler, Databus (Datapoint only), and a couple of highly specialized languages for which I wrote the compiler.
My favorite was ALGOL on the Burroughs B-6900. Fast, fast, fast compiler. Single pass. Could rip through 60K lines of code in about 3 minutes. Less if there was a syntax error.
Yes, I am out of date. No desire to get not out of date.
Read this news over coffee this morning. Gives me the giggles, don’t know about you guys.
Does it get any worse? 🙂
An amendment to limit the number of seats on the SC is a good idea. Seems the framers didn’t think of everything.
When did schools stop teaching Civics? Probably when ‘communication’ supplanted civility… Anyway, Why More Democracy Is the Last Thing We Need should be required reading for any young whippersnappers out there.
Oh, you have not heard the latest about SCOTUS. Biden is saying that he can demote the justices in SCOTUS to lower federal courts. “Biden raises idea of rotating Supreme Court justices: ‘There is some literature among constitutional scholars’”
If you really want to get academic about the situation, the Supreme Court has no enforcement authority of its own for any of its decisions. Arguably, the President has the Marines and command of the Army. Congress has the purse strings to fund the military and advise/consent on the Admirals and Generals.
This was standard operating procedure when I was working for a consulting firm. We would go interview at potential clients and we had standing orders to call back to the office ASAP after the interview was over. They would debrief us on every question asked so they could prep the next guy they sent. So, if you ever wonder why candidates from consulting firms and staffing firms interview well, it’s because they were basically given a cheat sheet created by all of your previous interviewees. All of that stuff also goes into a database so 5 years later when you’re looking for another programmer they can reference what questions your known to ask (and, of course, repeat the debriefing method too).
My favorite was ALGOL on the Burroughs B-6900. Fast, fast, fast compiler. Single pass. Could rip through 60K lines of code in about 3 minutes. Less if there was a syntax error.
It takes Mickeysoft Visual Studio Professional 2015 about 45 minutes to compile and link our Win32 user interface of 450,000 lines of C++ code from scratch. The link file is 800 MB ! The resulting executable is 17,923,072 bytes. Uh, we might inline some code for our friends in China and Russia. The time doubles if you use a rotating hard drive instead of an SSD.
Here is my friend’s post on excess deaths. https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/mortality-with-meep-us-excess-deaths
And according to the son, I don’t understand C++ because I put in too many back doors. He may be right.
No one really understands C++ well at this point, even Stroustrup.
After C++03, I appreciate three things from newer versions:
– “auto” – C++11
– Closures – C++11
– Co-routines – C++20
I can and have implemented shared pointers in C++03.
Oh, you have not heard the latest about SCOTUS. Biden is saying that he can demote the justices in SCOTUS to lower federal courts. “Biden raises idea of rotating Supreme Court justices: ‘There is some literature among constitutional scholars’”
If you really want to get academic about the situation, the Supreme Court has no enforcement authority of its own for any of its decisions. Arguably, the President has the Marines and command of the Army. Congress has the purse strings to fund the military and advise/consent on the Admirals and Generals.
SCOTUS has US Marshalls to enforce their decisions. That came after the first Civil War.
The President has the Marines and the Navy for his direct needs. The Army belongs to Congress. I am not sure who the Air Force and Space Force belong to, they do not know either.
8,000 generals and admirals. Be scared.
I can and have implemented shared pointers in C++03.
Shared pointers are the devil.
I have never used the keyword volatile. I would look upon any code using it to be suspicious.
It was a huge deal at HP since they had a printer assembly line down for weeks about 30 years ago because the developer forgot about using it in an embedded server which had memory locations reading directly from sensors through a buffer. Volatile prevents the variable access from being optimized away or ordered incorrectly by “smart” compilers when the AST doesn’t show the global being written anywhere within the program.
HP PA RISC had really “smart” compilers back in the day, and the company “ate its own dog food” as the saying goes.
I have no idea what select () does. I have never used it.
The select() call is used for multiplexing handling of socket connections without Windows’ WaitForXEvent(s) calls, threads/polling or, really old school, fork()/exec() on Unix. Windows and Unix handle the timeout structure pointer differently, and the programmer has to be aware of the difference if timing is critical.
I also use select() for really high precision timeouts on Windows where the C standard timeouts either fail (threaded code) or only give 1/17 second precision regardless of values passed.
Braved the wet streets to get wife’s medicine from a Walmart pharmacy. Noted Walmart had tinned corn, green beans, and peas for 50 cents each. So I brought home another flat of each. They also had the Jiffy cornbread mix for 40 cents. The wife has been making lots of cornbread lately in her cast iron skillet. She put in a lot of bacon grease, heats the skillet on the stove till its crackling, then drops in the cornbread mix and moves it to the oven. Crispy, yummy co.
“I can and have implemented shared pointers in C++03.”
Shared pointers are the devil.
Unique pointers are the devil, but I grudgingly accept them now for one specific use.
I use shared pointers all the time to make life easier with containers and pointers to allocated memory.
Noted Walmart had tinned corn, green beans, and peas for 50 cents each. So I brought home another flat of each.
On the Sam’s club run yesterday, I noticed canned green beans were being limited again. Interesting. Strange are the ways of Bentonville. The company is a huge Cray customer and intensely data mines every item purchased.
Our Sam’s was nearly completely cleaned out of canned soda. They also had a run on the hot dogs like the store uses in the snack bar.
I was picking up a package of hot dogs and keeping three in rotation in the back of our refrigerator. Now I’m down to one.
Whenever I grill, a package of the hot dogs goes on after the primary dish, and we keep the cooked hot dogs in a bag for kid lunches. My daughter eats the hot dogs sliced.
@harold, I make it in the pan that’s divided into wedges. Getting the pan oiled and hot first is essential for that ‘skin’ that holds it together to form. And yum is right. With the little wedges, I’ve even converted my wife.
@lynn, ‘con-con’ is short in ‘liberty’ circles for “constitutional convention” where you are likely to get it good and hard if the herd moves the wrong way.
@greg, I just went ahead and reinstalled mint. I’m not going to be foolish enough to “update” to the nvidia driver again. Nice to know that even 10 years after leaving work and not messing with nvidia video drivers anymore, they still SUCK.
n
isn’t there only about 50 calories in a 15oz can of green beans? Doesn’t seem very stockpile-worthy except perhaps for the sake of variety.
@greg, I just went ahead and reinstalled mint. I’m not going to be foolish enough to “update” to the nvidia driver again. Nice to know that even 10 years after leaving work and not messing with nvidia video drivers anymore, they still SUCK.
Sorry, I didn’t get around to responding to that before the grout people showed up to give an estimate on our upstairs tub.
Yeah, upgrading the Nvidia driver in Ubuntu/Mint can be a cr*p shoot. It works on my Ye Olde main desktop with an “obsolete” GT240 card but barfed when I experimented with a newer GT740 card in the same box. To be fair, Windows 7 didn’t like the newer card either.
You’ll want to become familiar with Timeshift to back up the system partition before trying any experiments to avoid reinstalls in the future.
The official Linux word on Nvidia, from the Benevolent Dictator himself. Say, that word got me fired, but, in Linus defense, I used it twice within 30 seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVpOyKCNZYw
Yeah, upgrading the Nvidia driver in Ubuntu/Mint can be a cr*p shoot. It works on my Ye Olde main desktop with an “obsolete” GT240 card but barfed when I experimented with a newer GT740 card in the same box. To be fair, Windows 7 didn’t like the newer card either.
And I couldn’t get our MacBooks with Nvidia to accept the official driver and Ubuntu variants either.
One thing to try if you ever reboot with the official driver to a blinking cursor is to edit the boot arguments and add the option ‘nomodeset’ in front of the “—” at the end of the line that, IIRC, starts with “linux …”. Can’t hurt, and it sometimes works.
As Dr. Pournelle used to say, “Unix was a guru full employment act …”
I’ll add the qualifier, “… brought to you by the ultimate gurus at Bell Labs.”
Driver support, particularly multimedia, is why I don’t see Microsoft ever taking Windows to a Linux kernel. 20 years of WHQL is a heckuva competitive advantage.
Consider yourself fortunate that you missed the days of fixed frequency monitors and configuring X from timing specs in the monitor’s documentation … if you had it. This was the early days of the web, after all, mid 90s, pre-Windows 95, and a lot of people made monitor circuit boards, some even … gasp! … domestically.
Get the timing specs wrong in the X configuration, and your monitor would burn up if left misconfigured for more than a few seconds. Fun!
@lynn, ‘con-con’ is short in ‘liberty’ circles for “constitutional convention” where you are likely to get it good and hard if the herd moves the wrong way.
Gotcha. I think that the con-con would attract a great many of the ne’er-do-wells (good for nothing people) and lots of arguments. We would certainly lose the existing Bill of Rights as being “antiquated” and unneeded.
There was a great letter to the editor in the latest American Rifleman magazine (NRA). The man said that he was born in Cuba in the 1950s. After Castro took over Cuba, the first thing he did was get rid of the constitution and replace it with his own. All their liberties disappeared. The man’s Dad got them out of Cuba as soon as he could to the USA, meanwhile enduring great persecution from both the government and their neighbors. It took him several years.
https://www.americanrifleman.org/
The Navy will do it. They like giving it to you in the butt.
The official Linux word on Nvidia, from the Benevolent Dictator himself. Say, that word got me fired, but, in Linus defense, I used it twice within 30 seconds.
Were you running the demo ?
Torvalds is in a great place. He owns the USA and worldwide trademark on Linux which he collects million in royalties on each year. He could quit and watch it all burn down without a dictator in charge.
Not sure where you got that. I believe the Constitution says the Prez is CINC of the Army and Navy. Old timey stuff. The Marine Band is usually called the President’s Own and play only for the Prez and the Corps.
We discussed the President as CINC quite a lot at the Command and Staff College at Leavenworth. In general, the Army and Navy gave birth to the other forces, so we consider the Prez CINC of them all. Deep in the regs and law is “The President’s 100,000” meaning the Prez can activate a mix of 100,000 SMs from all the forces. At any time and for any reason. But it’s not like he (I won’t say he/she since Cankles WILL NEVER BE PRESIDENT) can order the 82d Airborne to go blow up Biden. We even asked “does the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff control the other forces”? Nope, only the CINC. It’s complicated. Maybe tRump should blow up Biden just to see what happens.
“Interesting that Clarence Thomas swore ACB in.”
Probably on purpose to annoy lefties – black man swears in woman. If they were democrats it would be the most amazing thing ever. Because they are republicans, it’s of no importance.
Isn’t Clarence Thomas now the longest-tenured member of the Court?
Checked. Yup.
Barrett, as the least tenured now has, among other responsiblities, the job of answering the door on the Justice’s meeting room during deliberations and setting the Supreme Court’s cafeteria menu.
The President has the Marines and the Navy for his direct needs. The Army belongs to Congress.
Not sure where you got that. I believe the Constitution says the Prez is CINC of the Army and Navy. Old timey stuff. The Marine Band is usually called the President’s Own and play only for the Prez and the Corps.
We discussed the President as CINC quite a lot at the Command and Staff College at Leavenworth. In general, the Army and Navy gave birth to the other forces, so we consider the Prez CINC of them all. Deep in the regs and law is “The President’s 100,000” meaning the Prez can activate a mix of 100,000 SMs from all the forces. At any time and for any reason. But it’s not like he (I won’t say he/she since Cankles WILL NEVER BE PRESIDENT) can order the 82d Airborne to go blow up Biden. We even asked “does the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff control the other forces”? Nope, only the CINC. It’s complicated. Maybe tRump should blow up Biden just to see what happens.
I have read and heard that there is an unspoken agreement between the Congress and the President. The President can deploy the Marines and Navy to wherever he / she wants to without Congressional permission (allocation of funding). That is considered to be a temporary action and comes out of the regular DOD budget. But if the President deploys the Army, watch out ! Then the bucks really start to flow and Congress wants to be involved. Like you said, its complicated. And the Air Force is kinda on the border. And Special Forces don’t count either. But if the Prez deploys an Army Division, look out !, we are at WAR. Johnson got in trouble with Congress over that in Vietnam (money ! money ! money !).
Obama used the Air Force to do a lot of his dirty deeds but he did not pay the piper. So when Trump got in office, a bunch a military dudes showed up and and said, “we are out of bullets”, bullets being bullets, missiles, mortars, this and that. Trump looked at the inventories they brought him and the only ammo that Obama left him was the nukes. And nobody wants to use the nukes. So Trump had to expend his political capital to rearm ALL of the military forces in his first year as Prez. Except the nukes. Trump told this to Rush just a couple of weeks ago on Rush’s radio show. This ruined some of Trump’s plans for his first term when he had to buy $200 billion of bullets.
Of course, this is just an outsider looking in. Never served in the military. But I watched the Marines deploy and the bucks flowed like they were water. I can just imagine what an Army Division deploying would look like. Kinda like D-Day. Kinda like Desert Storm. Lots of bucks and Congress is very jealous of their control of the bucks.
“Interesting that Clarence Thomas swore ACB in.”
Probably on purpose to annoy lefties – black man swears in woman. If they were democrats it would be the most amazing thing ever. Because they are republicans, it’s of no importance.
Isn’t Clarence Thomas now the longest-tenured member of the Court?
Checked. Yup.
Barrett, as the least tenured now has, among other responsiblities, the job of answering the door on the Justice’s meeting room during deliberations and setting the Supreme Court’s cafeteria menu.
Trump needs to demote John Roberts to janitor after the first of the year. Roberts voted with the crazy libs to extend the election results for three days in Pennsylvania last week. “Republicans Lose Supreme Court Battle Over Pennsylvania Mail-in Ballots as Roberts Sides with Liberals”
https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-lose-supreme-court-battle-over-pennsylvania-mail-ballots-roberts-sides-liberals-1540435
“After a split decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, election officials in Pennsylvania will be allowed to count absentee ballots for three days after the 2020 presidential election.”
This gives Biden’s fraud department three days to throw the election in Pennsylvania by driving a car with a truck full of mailin ballots to each County. “Look what I found !”.
John Roberts is not a Constitutionalist. In fact, he looks more and more like a closet liberal as he sides with the liberals more and more often, all by himself. ACB will stop this nonsense.
Were you running the demo ?
Torvalds is in a great place. He owns the USA and worldwide trademark on Linux which he collects million in royalties on each year. He could quit and watch it all burn down without a dictator in charge.
I didn’t run the demo, but I had to sit on the conference call while it proceeded.
Linus Torvalds was in on the initial public offering of VA Linux, and that was the foundation of his wealth. I have a documentary about early Linux days featuring a clip of Torvalds playing with his kids at a conference the moment the stock pops and he realizes he will never have to work a standard corporate job again for the rest of his life.
Linus and family are local celebrities in Portland, but sightings of his yellow Mercedes are rarer than Bigfoot reports.
I wonder if the PTBs have put extra security on The Notorious ACB for the time being? The crazies are really whining on Social Media. I bet the death threats are rolling.
This gives Biden’s fraud department three days to throw the election in Pennsylvania by driving a car with a truck full of mailin ballots to each County. “Look what I found !”.
Lets try “trunk” instead of “truck”. The editor won’t let me change it before the time is up.
This gives Biden’s fraud department three days to throw the election in Pennsylvania by driving a car with a trunk full of mailin ballots to each County. “Look what I found !”.
“Texas Dem MJ Hegar’s Latest Detractor Is Her Own Mother-In-Law”
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/texas-dem-mj-hegars-latest-detractor-is-her-own-mother-in-law/
“Texas Democrat MJ Hegar’s bid to unseat Republican incumbent senator John Cornyn will be without the support of her own mother-in-law, who says she would “never vote” for Hegar because “she is not a good person.””
“Patricia Heiman, the mother of Hegar’s husband Stephen Hegar, took to Facebook in the race’s final weeks to warn voters against supporting the Democratic Senate candidate, specifically pointing to Hegar’s failure to lend a helping hand to her three step-children after their home was burned down in a fire earlier this year.”
@greg, this one’s for you ! Maybe she will get canned in her C-suite job over her second failure to get elected.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
I wonder if the PTBs have put extra security on The Notorious ACB for the time being? The crazies are really whining on Social Media. I bet the death threats are rolling.
Is the Court hearing arguments right now?
I know First Monday and all, but the Justices usually hear arguments, hold preliminary votes in their conference room, and then go their separate ways to write opinions with their staff.
Barrett probably already had tight security as a Federal Judge. Plus Touchdown Jesus has his first Supreme Court Justice so the Church and Notre Dame alumni network are probably on high alert regardless of political beliefs.
Torvalds is in a great place. He owns the USA and worldwide trademark on Linux which he collects million in royalties on each year. He could quit and watch it all burn down without a dictator in charge.
I didn’t know that. So much for “free.”
@greg, this one’s for you ! Maybe she will get canned in her C-suite job over her second failure to get elected.
The helicopter door from the ad probably actually spends most of its time in her office at Dell. They like her name on the door.
Plus, IIRC, Hegar has an MBA from UT and did well working for the Army in Logistics before she pushed for flight school training. She may actually be qualified to do whatever job she works at Dell.
Who knows what the story is with the ex-wife and kids. I’m a member of the generation — the “Ferris Bueller” graduating class of 1986 — and I’ll be the first to tell you X-ers are weird in really complex ways. We’ll be on mop duty for the rest of our lives, cleaning up after our parents messes and trying to get our kids out of the house while we’re still able to get out and see a few things.
I received a final offer letter. Vacation’s over.
_The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency)_ by John Scalzi
https://www.amazon.com/Consuming-Fire-Interdependency-John-Scalzi/dp/0765388995/?tag=ttgnet-20
Book number two of a three book space opera series. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB. I have ordered the third book in the series in MMPB when it is released on Big River on March 30, 2021.
As the Flow interdenominational conduits start to fail between the more than four dozen human settlements, Emperox Grayland II is moving the interdependency towards self sufficiency for each settlement. But, others want to take advantage of the situation and set themselves into power.
Please note that the author has a very active blog at:
https://whatever.scalzi.com/
My rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (753 reviews)
The Army is really strict on “trophies”. Even if a chopper is totaled, all the detritus goes to Corpus Christi Army Depot*. If that’s her actual door, a giant political favor was granted.
*At least it was CCAD. I supervised the removal of two totaled Blackhawks from Korea when I was the Logistics Officer (S4) for 2d Aviation Battalion. The Hawks ran into each other taxiing under NVGs. The hulks were eventually lifted by Chinook to Daegu and put on a cargo vessel to CCAD. A pilot tried to “trophy” an ashtray from one (yes, the pilot and copilot doors had ashtrays). A reprimand was in order, fortunately for him, only verbal.
Survived wave two of the October ice storms. No ice in our town but the nearest city lost power and ice on the roads. The big problem is that the storm is so early in the fall. Trees still have most of their foliage to collect extra ice, the weight is bringing down many old oak and pecan trees, many taking down power lines too.
Wave three comes through tonight with more cold but not more ice. Then wave four will bring more ice storms to the western half of the state. However the weekend is supposed to be sunny and in the 60s, with a cool but dry Halloween.
OG&E, the biggest electric company in OK, is reporting over 345k without power. That’s including the MIL. She tells us she’s been through worse. She has gas stove and a small gas heater in her trailer. She goes out to her truck to recharge her cellphone. The problem is that her well head could freeze without the incandescent bulb on to keep it warm.
Flash is finally being obliterated from Windows. Two step process.
https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-releases-manual-update-packages-for-removing-adobe-flash-from-windows
The Army is really strict on “trophies”. Even if a chopper is totaled, all the detritus goes to Corpus Christi Army Depot*. If that’s her actual door, a giant political favor was granted.
Hegar made herself into a political figure suing the Army so she could fly missions into combat arenas so it is possible she got a favor out of the Obama administration. This is the original “Doors” ad that went viral two years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi6v4CYNSIQ
Whether or not the door is real, I have my doubts about that being her house. I’ve noted before that we may have looked at that house six years ago.
Flash is finally being obliterated from Windows.
Long overdue, but I’m not sure a few megs of Javascript over https instead is all that great of a replacement.
@Greg Norton
Congratulations
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer:
“..why cops in Philadelphia didn’t ‘shoot to injure’ man approaching with knife…”
This is going around the ProgLibTurd and MSM programs. Cops barely shoot enough to hit center of mass. The PLTs want cops to “shoot off the little hangy-down part of the ear” instead. “Oops, missed the ear, went through the eye…”
Ditto.
@Greg Norton
Congratulations
Now get to work!!1111!1!!! 🙂
Seriously, congrats on a very short vacation. Bet it didn’t seem like one. Hope the new place is Nirvana, or at least verrrry goooood.
Greg
enjoy!! and if possible have fun
Mint weirdness.
My issue with read only filesystem is apparently a “mount” issue and not a permissions issue.
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=214602
https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-mint-84/read-only-file-system-problem-4175591561/
I note that this helps me not one bit.
The graphical tools provided don’t have the ro rw permissions exposed and I don’t know how to put them or change them in fstab.
Further, the graphical tool provided CHANGED the mount point from /[username]/media/[disklabel]/NVR to /mnt/238904239482398723907 which of course broke me telling the NVR program where to put the stored video in the first place.
I’m about to use mint to format the 8TB drive I want to use for video storage and start over as who knows what I’ve changed at this point.
F windows 10. F linux. F computers. I should have sucked it up and bought the hardware NVR in the first place.
n
And then you would have to add another F. F lousy tech support that is offshored. 🙂
F windows 10. F linux. F computers. I should have sucked it up and bought the hardware NVR in the first place.
I remember when this wasn’t so. We expected to do everything using just a computer with the right software. It was a brilliant concept only partially realized. I still have hope, but I need more than hope.
@Nick:
Was wondering if this Open Source Broadcasting software might be useful (https://obsproject.com/ ). It converts video input for webcasting. Maybe you could use that for your camera monitoring.
There seems to be an active forum, and lots of docs. Might be an alternative.
I used ISpy for a while and I think Nick used it too but I seem to recall that there were limitations with the non paid version…
Nope, ISpy is still free and no device limitations. They have a new software that I do not care about that may require subscriptions.
First page of User Guide online gives details.
https://www.ispyconnect.com/userguide.aspx
I’m using Ispy. It doesn’t allow remote viewing without a subscription but is full featured otherwise. It uses a lot of CPU, but it supports just about every camera out there, and I still have a mix of old and new cams from about 4 different makers. The plugins are really neat too, including ANPR. I runs on windows in most flavors, 32 and 64 bit, and linux and mac…
I’m got tired of win10 and the updates that stopped my NVR from recording for really gratuitous reasons. The Freaking TOUR of win features was the last straw. I’ve had the OS for a year and NOW it insists that I accept or decline the “what’s new” tour? And stops all other programs running while it waits for an answer??? That is arrogance beyond stupidity.
If I still had any familiarity with linux I’m sure it would have gone better, or if I’d taken the good advice to start clean…
After the 8TB drive was formatted, I restarted the software, pointed it at the drive, and everything ‘just worked.’
Now I need to figure out how to have it start automatically whenever the machine reboots…
-start the NVR server back up, which I do now by opening a terminal window in the right folder and typing dotnet agent.dll then about 20 seconds later, restart the browser pointed at localhost to see the cameras.
I set the browser to start with the correct page, and to restore session when restarted, so that should take care of itself, but I don’t have any idea about starting the server from a terminal…
n
(as jerry p used to say, I do these silly things
for my own damn selfish and stupid reasonsso you don’t have to…)added– I’m using Mint 19.3 because that was the most fully loaded mainstream linux the ispy developers recommended. With all the video stuff, I wanted the proprietary software and codecs baked in.
n
(again, guru might have been able to just load what was needed on another distro, but I’m just monkey punching the keyboard when it comes to linux.)
What is especially galling is that I knew enough to look in /mnt for the drives, but it was empty. I had no idea about /media/blah blah…. except that the graphical file manager showed it that way.
After using the control panel settings for drive management, it must have broken a link or something and then the drive was in /mnt/2938430984902341859023417 and after that it showed up that way in the file manager too. Not cool.
n
re: iSpy
If the software works for you, except for remote viewing, then the $70/yr (12 month prepaid) would seem to be worth the expense.
And there are several ways to prevent Win10 updates from happening, so they happen manually. And there are ways to put the iSpy software in the ‘startup’ group so a reboot will keep things running (Windows, Settings, Startup – configure which apps autostart after a reboot/startup).
And I do Win10 updates all the time, and don’t get the ‘new features nag screens’. So there is apparently a way to disable those also. I have updates scheduled for non-working hours (while I am sleeping).
But, playing around with computers and software can be fun, sometimes. I’m past that, myself. Although I do play around with web sites – that’s still fun/satisfying for me.
@Nick, I am sorry but you may need one of the various Windows Server versions. Windows Server 2019 seems to be the latest.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/trial
I am assuming that Windows Server will not do the updates and crazy apps that you have seen.
I run Windows 7 Pro x64 on both of my file servers. Now you have me wondering if I am going to see this kind of tomfoolery on my two file file servers when we upgrade to Windows 10.
Mint weirdness.
My issue with read only filesystem is apparently a “mount” issue and not a permissions issue.
I still can’t mount the Win10 partition RW on my main desktop under 19.3. Mint keeps complaining about the drive being “unhealthy”, suggesting that I turn off the fast start (done) and restart into Win10 before totally shutting down (also done).
Still not mounting RW after that.
Sorry I can’t be more help. Now I have a project of my own.
@ rick, there is no way on the whole googles that is current to turn off updates for the version of win10 I had installed that I could find. You could delay them, but they took away that, and scheduling them for the middle of the night was when I lost a night’s worth of recordings, because it didn’t allow ispy to restart while it waited for me to answer that stupid tour. Which, wtf? Installed for over a year? Never saw the tour before, then saw it one time between then and now. Ispy is supposed to start up automatically, as were several other things, all of them on hold waiting for that dialog box to close. I have no idea why they chose that update to be big enough that people needed the ‘whats new’ but I’m over it. The NVR is an appliance, and doesn’t need a consumer OS.
Add to the general win10 issues, ispy wasn’t stable and would constantly have to restart.
It was very stable on the live distro of mint, but I overran my available storage very quickly.
It’s been running now for over an hour and hasn’t restarted once. It’s not throwing errors in the terminal window either, so I think as far as running is concerned, I’m good.
I don’t know if I have the saved file management set up correctly in ispy to delete and write over old files. I have been deleting them by hand under the windows version, every 3-5 days when the disk filled up. Developers that have disk space limit selectors in BYTES with up and down arrows in the day of $150 8TB drives should be flogged. With a hardware NVR it’s easy, there is a checkbox for ‘overwrite old files when disk gets full’ and that’s it. You get a full drive, with a rolling chunk of saved files.
The ‘production triangle’ of Good, Fast, Cheap – pick any two is in full force for ispy…. I traded my time for money on this one.
n
Now I need to figure out how to have it start automatically whenever the machine reboots…
-start the NVR server back up, which I do now by opening a terminal window in the right folder and typing dotnet agent.dll then about 20 seconds later, restart the browser pointed at localhost to see the cameras.
The documentation for the NVR server should discuss using “systemctl” or possibly “monit” to set up the autostart for the server when the system boots.
Systemd/systemctl are still voodoo to me, but I acknowledge that they are the future. Sigh.
@greg-
“and restart into Win10 before totally shutting down (also done).”
At one point I got an error about my smaller win10 drive, it said that the windows partition had hibernate information in it, and I needed to open it with windows to read that data and shut down the drive. Maybe that’s your problem too.
(I ran the linux drive management ‘check filesystem’ thingy on both drives. I ran the other “check xxxx ” things too. None found any issues.)
n
@ech
Here is my friend’s post on excess deaths. https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/mortality-with-meep-us-excess-deaths
Interesting. I did not have time to look at previous posts, but there may be some questionable assumptions:
First, states are using different criteria to declare a death as caused by Wuhan coronavirus, making comparisons of dubious validity.
Second, computations of excess deaths using historical data as a baseline need to get more granular with the data rather than just use aggregates.
These statements:
While 92% of official COVID deaths are of those age 55 and older, in 2017 (the latest year with completed death data), 87% were of people age 55 or older. Five percentage points aren’t much different.
The percentage of deaths of those age 44 and younger in 2017 were 7%. Again, about a four to five percentage point difference with COVID deaths. [NOTE: 2.7% as given several paragraphs above]
need some editing, particularly the implication that 2.7% is not much different than 7%.
For anyone interested in the politicization of the pandemic, I recommend Scott Johnson’s ongoing series “Coronavirus in One State” on the Powerline Blog.
Of particular interest is the continued obfuscation of the numbers by the state government of Minnesota. The latest chapter (118) notes that 94% of the fatalities have underlying conditions (82% of those under 60 (7% unknown) and 95% over 60 (3% unknown)). Underlying conditions are specifically of seven kinds:
1. chronic lung disease/severe asthma
2. serious heart disease
3. immunocompromised
4. severe obesity
5. diabetes
6. chronic kidney disease undergoing dialysis
7. liver disease
As of 10/21, only 128 deaths (6%) out of 2141 have been people without at least one of those underlying conditions.
@Greg..
Congratulations!!
re: remote viewing
I used TP-Link cameras for a while to overlook my front yard. Since I didn’t want to have my video on their website (can’t remember the cost involved) I used a VPN on my phone to the home network, which allowed me to use the local app on my phone while not at home. Maybe that might be a possibility?
One place you may have heard this was from Dr. Pournelle at “Chaos Manor”. I think the statement was more true pre-WW2 when the US Navy would be kept at a fairly large size and the Army was relatively tiny. It was easy to deploy the existing Navy and Marines to put out a brush fire in the Americas. Staffing up the Army in a time of total wars and wars of attrition was a big deal, not just money but maybe needing to use a draft and mass casualties. Hence the need for political support as well as money, so you need Congress. That seems to be broken now and the US has kept a large Army since WW2. The US will send the Army (and everyone else) without a declaration of war by Congress. See Vietnam, but also Iraq and Afghanistan. These days, it may be easier to send the Air Force (drones) than the Marines. You can think about whether that’s a good idea or not.
Real quick–Linux mounts–also check /etc/fstab, unless your mount commands are specific, general mounts (e.g. ‘mount -a’) will pull from that config file.
.mg
As TV said, Pournelle said that all the time. It may well have been true before WW2, when we didn’t keep the Army overseas. Once that happened, the “understanding” was moot.