Cool, and hopefully dry. I’ve got stuff to do and rain won’t help.
Got through Sunday without rain, and got a bunch of stuff done at my secondary location. Took forever to get the forklift started, and then it wouldn’t stay running on a hill. Which is where I needed it. I did get stuff done despite that, and I’ll have to call in a mechanic to take a look at it. I was hoping to avoid spending money on it, but it looks like it is the prudent thing to do at this point.
I didn’t really get anything else done though. That all slipped to today. Plan is to get my local auction stuff together, then delivered. Then do decor, at least lights. Housecleaning, laundry, groceries, present shipping, and all the normal stuff needs to happen too.
79 years ago, the Japanese made what would turn out to be one of the biggest political and strategic blunders of recent history. It ended up with them being the test bed for the only time anyone on the planet has used nukes in anger. And we did it twice. Now you can make an argument that by ~60 years later they actually won the conflict. To the extent their homeland survived and thrived, yes. Any imperial ambitions were ended though and they haven’t been a world power since.
I don’t know that we’re the same people that we once were, or that there is a giant left to wake. I have a feeling that we’re going to find out though, and some time in the next year. It’s unlikely to be pretty, or quick, and it’s likely to damage us severely for years to come. The lines won’t be clear, the enemy won’t be far away, and we won’t be messing up someone else’s cities. We won’t have a clear end state goal either. Frankly at this point I’m HOPING for aliens, because we’ve always united against the outsiders.
But I’m stacking food, clothes, tech, defensive items, books, various and sundries, because I want to bring my family through whatever comes and out the other side. I’d like to see all y’all there too. Keep stacking.
nick
I used Backup for Workgroups at my last job. https://www.backup-for-workgroups.com
It worked really well for backing up my servers. It installs on one computer with an attached external drive, or any disc drive for that matter. Additional machines install a small program that communicates with the master program. All files, from all machines, are backed up on the single backup disc. Duplicate files from any machine are not copied, just a link, thus saving space. It can be specified how long to keep files. Multiple generations of files, including deleted files, are kept for the time specified.
The program will also backup open files and I never had an issued backing up the SQL Server databases. Or any open file for that matter.
Using this program it was possible, and done more than once, to recover a file several generations back that someone had changed and completely messed up. It was extremely easy to recover a single file from months in the past.
That was the first level of backup. The files from the above backup software were copied and carried offsite. I also copied all the files from the servers to another desktop weekly, then copied those files again to an external drive which was rotated offsite at my house. From the desktop where the files had been copied the files were then copied to the cloud using Carbonite.
From my experience the software was solid, never an issue. I did have a question and their tech support was top notch. One time fixed cost when I purchased.
RAID is not a backup. It is for performance (depends on the level) and redundancy. It will keep your access to data while tolerating some hardware failures. Greater redundancy requires more hardware (money).
I have my home data sitting on a Synology 2 disk NAS. I use robocopy to backup to an encrypted drive on my desktop every time I boot (almost daily). I backup monthly to an external USB drive that I keep at the office. I also keep a separate drive in my car’s glove box. Both of those are encrypted. Finally, I have a subscription at Backblaze where my NAS automatically syncs on demand. I view that as my last resort fallback.
I test my backups at least monthly. I verify files have been copied and can be opened.
Ultimately, the only backup solution that works is the one that you actually do. And check.
Speaking of computers, I got the ‘out of disk space’ error on my NVR again. The os drive was full, but not so full the os couldn’t run. I looked in the same place and sure enough, two giant error logs in var/log/cups
I played with Linux Mint on my wife’s old MacBook Pro over the weekend, and I noticed that the HP all-in-one we have on the network automagically registered with the system as an available printer.
As I’ve documented here before, HP hasn’t kept the firmware up to date with various standards which causes occasional problems for me.
Error logs in CUPS should be on logrotate, but Apple’s been neglecting the package lately.
At my last job I would test the backup and restore procedures every three months. I would take a bare metal system, install the OS, install all the software, then restore from the backup disk that was carried offsite by me. I would then verify the operation, documenting the steps I took. Once that was done I wiped the system clean also documenting that procedure.
This was all necessary for the yearly auditors and the insurance company. Insurance company would provide significantly better rates it was proven that the organization had good recovery of the electronic information.
When I worked at the bank they used an offsite recovery location. A full data center (big iron back then) where the environment of the bank could be replicated. Expensive to subscribe, expensive to use for testing, expensive to fly a dozen people 1,500 miles, expensive for hotels, expensive for meals. A full test had to be run once a year to satisfy the auditors.
It was over a million dollars (I was never told the exact price) for the backup site and process for every test. However, the cost savings in the reduction of insurance rates for the bank more than paid for the site subscription and the testing.
One of our tests was only known to about five people, myself included. At 3:00 AM the person in charge of testing declared an emergency. Critical people gotten out of bed, get to the airport, others go to the offsite storage and get the backup tapes, everyone on an early morning flight to Paoli PA.
The first time we did such a test it was discovered that many of the critical personnel did not have enough limit on their credit cards to buy tickets. They would be reimbursed of course. The bank also had an arrangement with a Ford dealership that would provide two full size vans, at sticker price, within two hours notice. The bank just rented the vans for the tests. Because of the costs the bank also staged a credit card (actually two cards) at the offsite location that was grabbed with the tapes. These cards had no limit on purchasing. It was possible to purchase a new 747 with one of those cards. Thus highly guarded and controlled.
It was a major effort for backup, offsite location, testing, etc. One person dedicated full time to monitor and keep the backup systems working and active.
I wonder how big financial institutions backup, or allocate a backup operating location, with all the servers involved. The logistics in keeping backup locations, other sites that can carry the load, making certain data is current at all the sites, would be a formidable task.
An entity like Google or Amazon, losing a major data center. I know they have many centers scattered around the world that could take up the load. But keeping data current among all the centers has to be a daunting task. How much data loss could Google or Amazon tolerate if a data center went toes up?
I worked in banking for a couple of years back in 2011-2013. If I recall, offsite/remote backup is required by banking regulations. You have to be able to demonstrate that in the event of a natural disaster (or whatever) that you can be back up and running within so many hours. Some things are higher priority than others. People being able to withdraw from their checking/savings accounts was top priority (critical to prevent banking panics), investments and mortgages slightly lower priority, and on down from there. They called the team the “BR/DR” team (business resiliency and disaster recovery). They real-time mirrored everything critical (your deposits and withdrawals) and backed up the less critical stuff and we’d run a test once a year to verify we could “flip a switch” and start using our secondary location. I can’t remember what the rules were on how far away from the primary location that the secondary location had to be.
“These cards had no limit on purchasing. It was possible to purchase a new 747 with one of those cards. ”
–I have a buddy from my trade show days. He was a VP at a major shoe manufacturer and was in charge of all their tradeshow business. One day the President/CEO got up in his face very upset. “Why does this guy have a company card with no limit when MY card has a limit?” (amex black) “Because this guy runs our tradeshows that cost $$$M, but generate $$$B in business, and you don’t.” He’d do settlement for a show at someplace like McCormick Center in Chicago and put the whole thing on the card….
–one of my siblings works for a minor private investment bank. Prior to covid and working from home, the bank had a hot failover secure facility outside of Chicago. They would rotate ‘critical’ staff through, iirc they had to do a couple of weeks a year in the facility. Plain as a paper bag, but behind iris scanners and man trap doors. My sibling liked the time without distractions of the normal office. The bank has stopped the practice as most of their staff is now geographically disbursed and working from home anyway.
If anyone learned lessons from Cantor Fitzgerald and 9-11, it was banking and financial firms.
n
Um, are enough people sleeping in their cars that there is a whole category for it?
https://www.amazon.com/OLIVIA-AIDEN-Inflatable-Mattress-Portable/dp/B07TBB4VX4/?tag=ttgnet-20
n
Um, are enough people sleeping in their cars that there is a whole category for it?
Oh, yeah. Anyplace with high real estate costs due to the whole world wanting to move there it is inevitable. Austin is increasingly as desirable as San Francisco or Seattle. Not so much with Chinese, who still prefer California, but definitely Subcontinent.
When I worked in Downtown, I noticed people who slept in their cars would set up around St. David’s church starting around 6PM. I assumed the church looked the other way. My guess is that the car campers were hospitality workers on 6th St.
The phenomenon is starting to spread up to the safer suburbs too. Getting into my car after doing a return of an online purchase at Walmart near the house last week, I noticed a woman sleeping in a recent-vintage Camaro with what looked like all of her possessions. The Walmart must be one of the stores that let campers stay overnight; Goodwill is across the parking lot. One stop shopping/camping.
The Walmart is not far from Apple’s vaunted Austin expansion campus. My property taxes are already bumping against $10k for a similar sized house that had $4k of annual taxes in FL. I know what’s coming — the Jaguar/Land Rover dealership across the toll road from Apple went up fast.
My Solara could probably make one of those beds work. I’m not sure about the Camry. We wouldn’t need it in the Exploder.
My time was from 1980 to 1988. I don’t know if the bank had a plan before that time as the plan I was involved in was created while I was there. Your time was dealing with servers, mine was big iron. Backup prior to that may have been keeping records offsite. For a bank to have a full offsite data center would have been prohibitively costly. I know we sent microfiche offsite nightly.
““Listen to the scientists” ” by Simon Black
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/listen-to-the-scientists-29623/
““Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.””
Amen.
The Walmart must be one of the stores that let campers stay overnight;
Sam Walton had a policy that any RV or 18 wheeler could spend the night in one of his parking lots. I see RVs and 18 wheelers parked in Walmart and Sams Club all the time so it still must be ok.
Besides that, those people go shopping while they are there. Customer base !!!!
So if Walmart is 10 ??? 15% ??? 20% ??? of retail in the USA, they are always looking for ways to lock in their customer base.
Well, yes and no. It’s clear the security people look out for roving wanderers trying to set up camp. At one near my old house the parking lot had a couple of dirt areas towards the back corner that were obviously future buildouts where I have seen ‘campers’ clearly asked to leave. Probably nicely but clearly.
Sam Walton had a policy that any RV or 18 wheeler could spend the night in one of his parking lots. I see RVs and 18 wheelers parked in Walmart and Sams Club all the time so it still must be ok.
Besides that, those people go shopping while they are there. Customer base !!!!
Some Walmart store managers don’t allow camping. IIRC, several sites online maintain lists of stores which don’t allow overnight stays in the parking lot.
On my second run west in 2010, I learned how Love’s got its name late one night around 2 AM in Boonies, Wyoming. That’s the time when the barrels of porn DVDs appear in the store and the hookers start working the diesel gas pumps. I’m sure meth was being traded. I got the heck out even though I needed a restroom stop.
“The Best Fantasy Books of 2020” by Dan Livingston
https://best-sci-fi-books.com/the-best-fantasy-books-of-2020/
Zero for 23 here.
“Covid Shame Police: Pasadena to use volunteers to help enforce mask mandates”
https://gunfreezone.net/covid-shame-policepasadena-to-use-volunteers-to-help-enforce-mask-mandates/
The Karen patrol.
“We don’t need no stinkin’ badges.”
The Karen patrol.
“We don’t need no stinkin’ badges.”
Think Church Ladies without churches. It is a common personality type in WA and OR. That they would be in CA makes sense since so many people in the Northwest seem to move up from LA.
And, as I’ve noted before, men can be Church Ladies too. They’re often the most obnoxious.
Karens a century ago.
With the difference that these “ladies” were pushing men to do something the women weren’t.
“The Best Fantasy Books of 2020” by Dan Livingston
https://best-sci-fi-books.com/the-best-fantasy-books-of-2020/
Zero for 23 here.
Ditto.
As an antidote to the recent glut of “woke” SF/F, let me recommend some hard SF by Jeff Duntemann.
The Cunning Blood:
https://www.amazon.com/Cunning-Blood-Jeff-Duntemann/dp/193208410X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=cunning+blood&qid=1607373426&s=books&sr=1-1&tag=ttgnet-20
Ten Gentle Opportunities:
https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Gentle-Opportunities-Jeff-Duntemann/dp/1932084096/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1607373482&sr=1-10&tag=ttgnet-20
Just two.
A Deadly Education was great – Harry Potter meets the Hunger Games meets Roanoke Academy – but with, as Heinlein might say, “the serial numbers filed off”.
Piranesi was good, but more of a novelette.
0 for 23 of those “best” books. Never heard of any of the authors, either, except maybe in passing.
He’s a decent writer (though I’ve read more of his nonfiction than his fiction). I like hard SF, but don’t insist on it. I do insist on a world with natural laws that make sense, magical laws which form a logical universe which won’t collapse as soon as the author stops propping it up, human characters who act like mostly rational humans unless there’s a good reason they don’t, thought given to the consequences of the physical or legal rules, a plot, and characters who are not included solely as exemplars of some checklist of disempowered minorities who must be included.
The universe’s laws need not be explicated, nor even all known to the characters. But the author needs to have thought them through. A world which is just like our own (to make for easier worldbuilding) which differs only in having cheap, error-free teleportation is a failure.
“Christmas star is coming: Jupiter and Saturn are about to do something not seen for nearly 800 years”
https://www.foxnews.com/science/christmas-star-is-coming-jupiter-saturn-double-planet-800-years
“Jupiter and Saturn will look like a double planet, an event not seen since 1226”
Oh yeah, 2020 is getting weirder by the day.
Back in the mid eighties, I was working for the R&D department of Continental Airlines, working on communications projects directly under a VP. One week he flew us from San Francisco where we were HQed to Miami to look at the MIS facility where Continental reservations system was housed. It was an interesting trip and the Reservations System was hosted on a special OS running on IBM mainframes. The building was filled with 3330 disk drives. He explained that the idea wasn’t large storage but to keep as much data under the read-write heads as possible for speed. In any case, we got to Miami Airport Friday evening and were told that the last Continental flight for SF had just left. So my VP friend, insistent that he get home THAT NIGHT, pulled out his Amex card and rented us a Gulfstream to SFO. I’ve always preferred Gulfstream to Lear ever since.
What will Uranus look like?
BA DUM TSS 🙂
“Transgender Oregon student wages lonely battle to use boys’ locker room”
https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2015/12/transgender_students_locker_ro.html
“This is the latest chapter in the saga of a high school in Dallas, Oregon, where in 2015, a freshman student, a biological female who had recently adopted the name Elliot Yoder, decided that changing in a single-occupant restroom for gym class was too inconvenient and embarrassing and asked to use the boys’ locker room instead. According to the Oregonian newspaper, Dallas School District officials sent a letter to the 67 students in Yoder’s gym class, saying that an “unnamed transgender student” would be using their locker room in future.”
Why would a girl want to use the boy’s locker room ? This makes no sense to me whatsoever other than a cry for attention.
Hat tip to:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-us-supreme-court-refuses-to-hear-appeal-for-single-sex-spaces-for-children-at-school
Yeah, I have friends that work for AWS and Google. They can’t speak too directly, but I got the impression that they have significant redundancy built in and can tolerate an entire data center going toes up.
LockMart had some serious spare capacity for unclassified storage. All the local operations had a way to move user data offsite rapidly. When we had a hurricane on the way, the data center announced a shutdown time, closed access to the servers, and started doing offsite backups to somewhere in the Rocky mountain area. Plus they started burning DVDs, which were FedExed to divison HQ in New Jersey. There were also periodic backups done to other sites, IIRC weekly. The company had some seriously large leased pipes to locations around the US. When the servers went down, we had hurricane kits at each desk – big plastic bags to put your PC or laptop/docking station, monitors, keyboard, and mouse in. Then seal and place in a secure spot. If you had a cube or office with a window, that meant a cube in the middle of the floor, otherwise on top of your desk.
_Bloodring (Thorn St. Croix)_ by Faith Hunter
https://www.amazon.com/Bloodring-Thorn-Croix-Faith-Hunter/dp/0451462416/?tag=ttgnet-20
Book number one of a three fantasy post apocalyptic series, the Rogue Mage series. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB published by ROC in 2008. I have already purchased books two and three in the series.
Wow, when Faith Hunter decides to go biblical she does not go small. Around 2050, the seraph Azreal appeared on top of the Eifel Tower in Paris, France, and with his sword he brought the plague of pestilence to Paris in which only 1,000 survived and spread across the entirety of the world. The twin seraphs, Mordad and Murdad, destroyed Jerusalem and Mecca. The seraph Metatron destroyed many human cities, Washington D.C being the first. It has been 105 years since the first plague, and 87 years since the last battle between the seraphs and the darkness that killed 90% of the human race. The war is unresolved as seraphs and demons pursue each other across the face of the Earth and in the depths of the Earth. As a result of the nuclear weapons used by the humans against the demons, the earthquakes, and the volcanoes, the Earth is in a serious Ice Age.
Thorn St. Croix is a stone neomage who lives by masquerading as a human outside of the mage enclaves, in the mountains of Appalachia. She earns a living by buying gems from miners and creating jewelry with her partners. It is illegal for mages, a new race created from humans and seraphs, to live outside the enclaves. Mages caught outside of the enclaves will be tortured by the church elders and killed since they do not have a soul according to the seraphs.
The author has a website at:
http://www.faithhunter.net/
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.2 out of 5 stars (235 reviews)
“President Trump on GA Gov. Brian Kemp: ‘What’s wrong with this guy? What is he hiding?’”
https://noqreport.com/2020/12/07/president-trump-on-ga-gov-brian-kemp-whats-wrong-with-this-guy-what-is-he-hiding/
“The Georgia Governor has pretended to be concerned about the sanctity of the vote in his state but his actions do not match. The President has questions.”
Just another Never Trumper who would rather have Biden XXXX Harris as Prez.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
Tyler Durden cowardice spilling the truth that neither party wants to forgive student loan debt on the scale promised by the Progs over the last year. 2022 has started already.
Since the student loan program was nationalized to pay for Obamacare, what the “flick of the pen” really does is monetize the program’s debt load via printing press.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dont-need-congress-just-flick-pen-schumer-demands-biden-cancel-50k-student-debt-all-day-1
Just another Never Trumper who would rather have Biden XXXX Harris as Prez.
Kemp has a shadow governor who he will most likely have to face again for reelection in 2022.
Plus, if he buys too much into the election being stolen, the suburban Dem women in the Atlanta suburbs will turn out and finish what the Libertarians started with Perdue.
I just saw the same analysis I made about the Libertarians tipping the Senate race into a runoff in November.
One of the comments from the auditors at my last job was the location of the offsite backup location, my house. It was only 30 miles from work. My response to the auditors was that if a disaster was large enough to affect my work place, and my home, I really did not care if the organization got any data restored or was ever in operation again. My life and survival were more important than a database, software or operation of the organization. Of course it was not financial data and just member records along with donation history and other information. No one would die, or really suffer, if the information was lost forever. It was more of an operational issue.
The auditors then questioned the security of my backups. I pointed out that there was nothing really financial, no SSN’s, just basically names, addresses and email information. I doubted any crook would be interested in the information. They then questioned what happened if I lost the backup. I pointed out the information was additional stored in the cloud and could be retrieved in a few hours. The offsite was strictly for convenience.
The auditors made some other silly recommendation to which I told them no, not going to happen.
Just another Never Trumper who would rather have Biden XXXX Harris as Prez.
Kemp has a shadow governor who he will most likely have to face again for reelection in 2022.
Plus, if he buys too much into the election being stolen, the suburban Dem women in the Atlanta suburbs will turn out and finish what the Libertarians started with Perdue.
I just saw the same analysis I made about the Libertarians tipping the Senate race into a runoff in November.
Stacey Abrams ?
What in the world is going on with the Libertarians ?
One of the comments from the auditors at my last job was the location of the offsite backup location, my house.
During the housing bubble in Florida a dozen years ago, a favorite “sweeps” news story of the local stations would feature an abandoned storage unit in the middle of nowhere stuffed full of boxes containing mortgage paperwork from home purchase closings. The reporter would usually attempt to track down the closing companies or mortgage brokers named only to find the offices shuttered. Hilarity ensued.
Your house is definitely safer.
One of the comments from the auditors at my last job was the location of the offsite backup location, my house.
During the housing bubble in Florida a dozen years ago, a favorite “sweeps” news story of the local stations would feature an abandoned storage unit in the middle of nowhere stuffed full of boxes containing mortgage paperwork from home purchase closings. The reporter would usually attempt to track down the closing companies or mortgage brokers named only to find the offices shuttered. Hilarity ensued.
Your house is definitely safer.
We moved some of our offices into an old bank building in late 1989. The office space was not cleaned up and there were stack of boxes everywhere. The boxes contained banking / mortgage records for many people. We threw a few boxes into the building dumpster each week until they were gone.
One of the comments from the auditors at my last job was the location of the offsite backup location, my house. It was only 30 miles from work.
Uh oh, my offsite location is only four miles away.
It is across the railroad tracks, do I get points for that ?
Actually had a fire in the building in which I worked.
Started about 1:00 PM in the auto shop where the engineering students worked on experimental vehicles. The staff tried to put it out but it got out of control. Fire department arrived and was set up within 10 minutes of the alarm then stood around for another 30 minutes doing nothing. The fire department was afraid of putting water in a facility when they had no idea what chemicals were in the area.
The air handling system for the building did not shut off as it was supposed to do when a fire alarm was triggered. Lots of heavy black smoke distributed throughout the entire building. My office was on a separate air environmental system and thus was not affected.
The fire was put out within 5 minutes of the fire department actually working on the fire. Total time for the fire was probably close to 45 or 50 minutes.
The state fire marshal closed the building, no one allowed inside. That included my offices even though the offices were not affected but the hallway was affected. The rational was there was cleanup crews and no one was get in their way.
So I had to punch a hole in the firewall and was allowed to enter the building under supervision for about an hour to get port opened on the firewall. All the internal business applications ran on specific port and that was enforced in the web handler and in the code itself. A security measure. The university set up the staff in a different location on campus. The building was closed for a month.
The damage from the actual fire was a few thousand dollars. The cleanup was almost $10 million dollars. All ceiling panels had to be replaced and all the surfaces in the building washed down. It is a large building. And the building had to be brought up to code for fire protection. Thus a sprinkler system had to be installed in the building, a whole lot of piping. There were some places that only had one ingress and egress point, large areas, that now had to have an additional egress point created. This required some significant modifications to those parts of the building. Then the entire fire alarm system had to be upgraded to visual as well as audio warnings and properly shut down the air handlers. That process took a year and the university had to go over the state fire marshal’s head to get that resolved. There was significant butting of heads on that issue.
The offices also had an 8″ chiller water pipe that ran overhead on the roof burst open. Too large a volume of water for the drains to handle and thus overflowed into the offices where I worked. We opened the door to the hallway, forced open the elevator doors, and was pushing water down the elevator shaft. The flow of water damaged four computers and destroyed three desks. There was also some paper records stored in cabinets that got damaged. Those cabinets were then placed on 3″ blocks. Good thing because two months later the pipe repair failed and it all happened again. There is a LOT of water in an 8″ pipe to the water chiller in the next building that can flow before the low water sensor shuts down the pumps.
That was OK. The records were probably backed up on microfiche, a special version of the film, which is rated for very long term storage. The bank where I worked produced those nightly and they were carted offsite to a storage warehouse somewhere in the city of San Antonio. We had a machine that would read specially produced tapes and create the fiche, the square kind. These were also developed in the machine that created the fiche. As long as there was a machine that could read the fiche the records were adequately backed up.
Divemedic at streetpharmacist has shared how the bank in florida lost his paperwork and couldn’t foreclose… iirc he eventually just got to keep the house. That was because of the financial services companies and financialization of mortgages, and how they were sliced and diced and passed around until no one could say with certainty who actually held the mortgage…
n
Speaking of mortgages, I was wondering how the experience with https://www.lenderfi.com/ was going ?
They are currently advertising refinances at 2.25% for 15 year terms.
The refi is done, no issues. I would definitely use them again.
Divemedic at streetpharmacist has shared how the bank in florida lost his paperwork and couldn’t foreclose… iirc he eventually just got to keep the house. That was because of the financial services companies and financialization of mortgages, and how they were sliced and diced and passed around until no one could say with certainty who actually held the mortgage…
n
He lost the house after living in it rent free for five years and getting paid $50K in damages:
(2011) https://street-pharmacy.blogspot.com/2011/04/who-do-i-pay.html
(2017) https://street-pharmacy.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-end-of-my-mortgage-story.html
ADD: You can read the whole sad story at:
https://street-pharmacy.blogspot.com/search?q=mortgage
–yeah…. make that a hard No for me.
I recognize Mr Lynn’s cousin, and Christopher Moore and that’s it.
As an anodyne to the ‘woke’ fiction, anything of the 4 series by Bernard Lee DeLeo.. they are basically the same story told in slightly different ways, and two of the series end up crossing. They are ‘men’s adventure genre fiction’ and the good guys always win, the men are men, the women are psychotic knife wielding murderers (but on the side of good) and lots of ‘off screen’ sex is had. Cold Blooded and Hard Case are the two that eventually intersect and join.
He seems to write them in real time, with the news open in front of him. Literature it ain’t but I’ve read all of them, that’s like 60 medium long books. And I look forward to the next ones. Pop corn.
n
Speaking of mortgages, I was wondering how the experience with https://www.lenderfi.com/ was going ?
The refi is done, no issues. I would definitely use them again.
Thanks !
Did they resell the refinanced mortgage or are they holding it ?
Re: backups
I work for a small bank and I’m sure I’m not allowed to tell you. Anyway I’m not on that team so I have no details. I’m sure it’s obvious that you would start with the data center environment replicated at another location, plenty of bandwidth between sites, and that virtual machine replication makes life easy. But I don’t know how they actually do it at this bank, I just make the internet and internal network function.
Google runs a huge network that no-one knows about. Multiple 100Gb ethernet circuits everywhere, automated configurations, undersea cable leases. I’m sure facecrack, AWS, etc are the same.
@Nick
four series by Max Allan Collins:
Mallory
Nolan
Quarry
Heller
The first three, like Westlake’s Parker, are a bit dated. Heller is a period piece.
Divemedic at streetpharmacist has shared how the bank in florida lost his paperwork and couldn’t foreclose… iirc he eventually just got to keep the house. That was because of the financial services companies and financialization of mortgages, and how they were sliced and diced and passed around until no one could say with certainty who actually held the mortgage…
Yeah. Fun with MERS. Common story in Florida.
The fact that got lost in the Treyvon Martin mess is that neither family could truly afford that neighborhood. A lot of the jury were probably in over their heads too.
Did they resell the refinanced mortgage or are they holding it ?
2.25%? The Fed bought the paper. Someone services it for a fee.
Is Biden still talkng a $20k first time buyer credit? Party on!
Yep, much easier than in the old days when we walked to school, in snow, uphill, both ways, 50 pounds of books.
And the wolves, Ray. You didn’t mention the wolves.
In my case it was coyotes. Thanks for the correction.
Yep, much easier than in the old days when we walked to school, in snow, uphill, both ways, 50 pounds of books.
You forgot “barefoot.” 😀
And the wolves, Ray. You didn’t mention the wolves.
In my case it was coyotes. Thanks for the correction.
The pure coyote packs aren’t too bad, you yell at them and they go away.
It is the mixed coyote and dog packs that are bad. The feral dogs are not afraid of humans.
We have one of each pack within five miles. It is why I carry while walking now. They cruise through my neighborhood occasionally.
And my neighbor’s 130 lb German Shepard bothered me the other night when she was in the front yard when we went walking by at midnight. No chain, no leash. He let her out to potty in the front since they have a huge hole in the backyard right now where they are slowly building a swimming pool. She gave a us a very long look while she was doing her business. My 26 lb dog was barking her fool head off of course.
They kept it and are servicing it. I really like not dealing with Wells Fargo anymore.
Nah, I had shoes. I wasn’t completely ghetto as you experienced. I didn’t even have a FLASHLIGHT for the early winter nights.
“‘Exceptionally disturbing’: Forensic exam shows Dominion machine switching votes?”
https://www.wnd.com/2020/12/exceptionally-disturbing-forensic-exam-shows-dominion-machine-switching-votes/
“‘Extreme likelihood of massive voter fraud'”
“They used an equal number of votes. This is the thing to keep in mind here. They had sequestered Dominion equipment. Ware County ran an equal number of Trump votes and Biden votes through the tabulator, and the tabulator reported a 26% lead for Biden. Thirty-seven Trump votes in the equal sample run had been switched from Trump to Biden. So in actual algorithmic terms this means that a vote for Trump was counted as 87% of a vote and a vote for Biden was counted at 113% of a vote.”
Ok, it looks like they put the modified vote tabulation machines in the big heavily dum-bro-crat areas.
That’s one vote for you and two votes for me !
Ok, it looks like they put the modified vote tabulation machines in the big heavily dum-bro-crat areas.
Ware County is SE Georgia, almost North Florida. Not a big Dem area, but that’s exactly where you want the weird tabulation counting a 1-1 split as 1.13-.87.
My plumber buddy wants me to put in a whole house water filtration system from:
https://www.expresswater.com/collections/whole-house-water-filtration-systems
He just put one in a neighbors house in front of his water softener. My buddy hates water softeners.
Well worth reading:
Voices from the Pandemic
‘Do people understand what’s happening here? Do they care?’
Bruce MacGillis, on the excruciating wait for a vaccine inside a coronavirus-infected nursing home
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12/05/covid-vaccine-nursing-homes/?arc404=true
Governors in at least three states qualify as mass-murderers. None of them have enough perception to recognize that they are incompetent and resign. All of them have massive security details.
Bar bouncers. Thugs with badges. Used to having fear of the law on their side. NOT bodyguards or a personal protection detail.
My understanding is that there is a HUGE difference when push comes to shove. They don’t have the training or mindset to keep their primary alive in a truly hostile environment.
I think that environment is ‘coming right for us’.
n
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/12/michigan-trump-supporters-home-bombed-saturday-night/
there’s video.
n
A question for the tax experts: I read a comment that if plugs forgives the first $50,000 of a student’s debt, that becomes taxable income.
Is this true?
Since the student loan program was nationalized to pay for Obamacare, what the “flick of the pen” really does is monetize the program’s debt load via printing press.
A question for the tax experts: I read a comment that if plugs forgives the first $50,000 of a student’s debt, that becomes taxable income.
Is this true?
Depends on how the legislation is written. If done with an Executive Order, not sure.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/07/schumer-calls-on-biden-to-cancel-50000-in-student-debt-per-borrower.html
Chuck Yeager dead at 97. RIP
Chuck Yeager dead at 97. RIP
Sad news indeed.. A prime example of “The Right Stuff”….
Wow, wasn’t aware he was still with us.
More of the old guard passing every day.
n
Unsurprisingly, NYC’s Times Square will be closed this New Year’s Eve, replaced with a virtual celebration.
More of the old guard passing every day.
But who is filling the ranks of the new guard??
That’s the scary and sad part.!! 😀
I’m always pleasantly surprised when I come across some ‘kid’ on youtube who gets it. There are a bunch of people out there who have some of the same qualities as the old set. They are mostly in the trades and crafts, but they have passion and drive, and are working to get better at whatever they do every day.
n
“AOC calls for boycott of Goya Foods, ends up being named ’employee of the month’”
https://newsthud.com/aoc-calls-for-boycott-of-goya-foods-ends-up-being-named-employee-of-the-month/
Cool. I love it when people think outside the box.
I am a huge fan of StoreBackup, which is an open-source Linux tool. It links files where they are duplicated, keeps multiple versions over time, and is highly configurable over a simple text file. I have it running in the background on my desktop. For offsite backups I periodically copy the whole backup directory onto an external disk.
I’ve never needed to do more than restore individual files that someone had accidentally deleted, but that has always worked painlessly. A mass restore should work just as easily, but I’m too lazy to experiment.
Probably the biggest feature is simply the fact that I never have to touch it. I do check the backup partition – supposedly once a month, in reality less – but there are never any problems.
The transgender fad is really beyond belief. Parents won’t let their kids get vaccinated, but will put them on hormone therapy before or during puberty. Teenage depression? Let’s permanently screw up your body – that’ll help!
After the first tech crash there was a huge amount of dark fiber out there, available for pennies on the dollar. That’s probably where they started.