Well, in Houston it’s cool and damp.
Elsewhere Civil War II is heating up. There are a couple of links late yesterday.
Yesterday I did get some stuff done. Most of what I was hoping to accomplish, but still not anywhere near what was needed. Today if the weather holds, I’ll head over to my secondary location and do some work over there.
Got the tree up and decorated. House smells nice. My wife and girls are baking cookies today.
It’s a bit crazy that while I was watching a couple of episodes of The Mandalorian (stilted, heavy handed, third writer and still it’s meh) there was fighting in the streets of DC. I was pretty sure it would hold off until after Christmas, but I guess the anger is growing faster than I thought. That is the problem with being comfortable here in Houston. I have a hard time getting a sense of the real mood and conditions in the rest of the country.
Things do tend to change slowly until they change all at once. We might be closer to flipping the switch than I thought. Use what time you have to improve your position. This isn’t going away, and it isn’t getting better without getting a whole lot worse first.
Stack it as high as you can.
Nick
It’s a bit crazy that while I was watching a couple of episodes of The Mandalorian (stilted, heavy handed, third writer and still it’s meh) there was fighting in the streets of DC. I was pretty sure it would hold off until after Christmas, but I guess the anger is growing faster than I thought.
My wife and kids watch every episode of Baby Yoda, but I tune in sporadically. I couldn’t ignore Rosario Dawson showing up and got Michael Biehn as a bonus. *That* was cool TV.
Something was bound to happen in DC this weekend. BLM would have tried harder in their efforts to get a pretty white coed shot by police if the Supreme Court had not rejected the Texas lawsuit.
Anyone not in retail/hospitality who is still working starts burning unused vacation time this week. I doubt much will happen before the week leading up to the Senate runoffs in Georgia.
We used to be able to roll over up to 400 hours PTO. A couple years back, it was reduced to 200 hours. Now it’s back to 400 hours. Good thing, since by the end of the year I will be at almost 260 hours.
Working from home half the time feels almost like a vacation. Combine that with no travel and the days are piling up.
I have 159 hours of PTO, of the max 160 allowed for this year. Normally 120 max, but bumped because of the dempanic. On the one hand, I’m nagged by HR and various levels of manager to use the time, partly to avoid burnout and partly to avoid making the parent company look bad because of people maxing out their accrued time.
OK, great idea. When, exactly, am I supposed to take this time off? On any given day there probably won’t be server problems that can be fixed only by me. In any given week, there almost certainly will be. And I’m the only one who can deploy new reports or update existing reports or who can do any number of other maintenance tasks which are trivial for an experienced *NIX admin but are challenging for Mac and Windows users who are nothing more than users on their laptops.
(Fun side note: when I point out that the lack of anyone else who can do these tasks is a management failure, as this isn’t supposed to be my job and everyone else refuses to learn any of it.)
This family group, “Clamavi De Profundis”, has a Christmas play list. I first came across them because they sing some LOTR themed songs. Their version of We Three Kings may be the best I’ve ever heard.
That was what I ran into, working for a tech company – and I didn’t even do “tech”, although my job did put me on-call 24/7. Despite not using it, they would add another week every few years! I don’t know if there was ever any year in which I was able to use all of my PTO. They would call me regardless. The only solution I can imagine that would actually work would be to pay salaried people for their unused PTO at the end of each year.
I have 159 hours of PTO, of the max 160 allowed for this year. Normally 120 max, but bumped because of the dempanic. On the one hand, I’m nagged by HR and various levels of manager to use the time, partly to avoid burnout and partly to avoid making the parent company look bad because of people maxing out their accrued time.
A lot of people have to use time before the end of the year or lose it. The policy at my old job was that no more than half of my yearly vacation time could be rolled over.
Fun side note: when I point out that the lack of anyone else who can do these tasks is a management failure, as this isn’t supposed to be my job and everyone else refuses to learn any of it.
If you’re not looking, start. Nothing will change, and there are a lot of jobs out there.
Firing the stupid is tough in a lot of states, especially during the pandemic.
I hung on to the last job way beyond the point where management and I would ever come to an amicable parting. As I’ve noted here many times, it started bad.
As I understand it, PTO has to be carried on the books as liability at whatever your pay rate is.
Funny you should mention that…
I’m being picky about what I’m looking for and pickier in interviewing the prospective employers or clients. A number of them don’t much care for that, as they much prefer to play the role of the lord deciding whether to grant the serf’s request, but that’s fine. If they don’t like me asking awkward questions, neither of us would be happy with me doing work for them.
BTW, my previous comment was rather garbled, most likely the result of my wife nagging while I was typing it.
I had the same problem, when I was gainfully employed. We got 5 “weeks” annual leave – that’s weeks for 5-day-weeklings, i.e 5×40 hours, plus “stats”, statutory holidays – Christmas, Easter, and the various Bank Holidays, to a total of 11. Note: for shift workers, like me, the statutory holidays were 12 hours, each. Also note: We in UK do not do ThanksGiving.
And, come about October, I routinely had at least 14 days left to take, often 21. So they didn’t see me for the month of November, because the shift pattern meant I would work 7 days in every 14. But I would have to take annual leave to guarantee getting a weekend day off – in other words, weekends were no different to ordinary days, although the rota gave alternate weekends off.
I could carry up to 3 days over into the following year, but only until March.
There was no particular reason for this, I just couldn’t be bothered to take leave earlier in the year.
@pecancorner: I second your opinion of Clamavi de Profundis, and counter with this “Bethlehemian Rhapsody”.
G.
One of the reasons I stay where I’m at is manpower. I have 6 admins working for me. I’ve just hired another and am actively trying for one more. In the private sector, and honestly many gov places as well, there would be at most three of us. So while there are compelling reasons for me to leave, they still don’t outweigh the positives.
Our contract is rare in the fact that it is for engineering work, not IT. The IT functions are hardly even mentioned. It’s challenging to get people qualified for the labor categories, but it means we end up with senior people, since you need so many years of experience and a degree.
I want one immediately:
Death from above! Drone is converted into a flying flamethrower to destroy 100 wasp nests in China
h/t DailyMail
LET THE HEELING AND FLAMING BEGIN!
@Greg
“Law enforcement can’t ask for contents of a specific PC without a warrant, but the repair shop can turn suspicious files over to the police unsolicited since the customer has zero expectation of privacy. ”
Having found it once, the penumbra has never been sighted again.
Are you sure? I coulda sworn someone said you celebrated thanksgiving on July 4.
/tinfoil hat
‘I believe we are being played’: Pharmacist’s thread about COVID 19 and seasonal flu a ‘great yet terrifying’ MUST-READ
I approve! Anybody got a flu shot yet?
h/t Twitchy
/tinfoilhat
LET THE HEELING AND LYING BEGIN!
“Law enforcement can’t ask for contents of a specific PC without a warrant, but the repair shop can turn suspicious files over to the police unsolicited since the customer has zero expectation of privacy. ”
Having found it once, the penumbra has never been sighted again.
People are clueless about expectation of privacy and tech.
Well, I got a lot of sleep last night, most of it this morning technically. Woke early to massive thunder, realized I wasn’t going to my secondary to pull stuff out into the parking lot for hours with the rain falling, and went back to bed.
Thru a lack of foresight and a misunderstanding, I ran out of the medicine I take for my chronic back pain. That was incredibly stupid, going into a weekend with cold damp and rain forecast.
The problem is, when you have effective management of pain for a while, you begin to believe you might be cured, or at least that the problem might not be as serious as you remember. I was actually thinking it would be ok to run a little test, see if I could get by without the meds, see how I would do.
UMMMMmmmm, NO. Not only do I need the refill, I need to actually stockpile, beyond the extra couple of months I normally have on hand. NORMALLY, but not at the moment. Cost isn’t even an issue, my copay is $4 for 90 days worth. Even if I had to go to the fish med guys it would only be about $1/day. (it’s an old and cheap formulation, no generic because it’s so cheap)
Prepper fail. I was working out of reserves not daily use. I didn’t notice the lack of refills because I was using an older bottle… and my Dr of decade+ was victim of Obammna care, my substitute Dr was possibly drinking on the job and no longer with the group, and no one left wanted to write the refill, or didn’t get the message from the pharmacy. So I hurt.
I’ll deal with it but I’m unhappy on a number of levels.
n
@SteveF:
We don’t do Independence Day, either. Remember, your ancestors were responsible for the loss of our American colonies. We should celebrate this?
G.
I was joking. I do that.
My understanding is that the Caribbean colonies were profitable but the American mainland colonies were pretty much a wash, financially. They were useful in the endless pissing contest with France, but that’s your business, not ours. Also, considering how France got totally swindled a couple decades later with the Louisiana Purchase, there’s no cause for a grudge on that basis.
“If you’re not looking, start.”
Funny you should mention that…
I’m being picky about what I’m looking for and pickier in interviewing the prospective employers or clients. A number of them don’t much care for that, as they much prefer to play the role of the lord deciding whether to grant the serf’s request, but that’s fine. If they don’t like me asking awkward questions, neither of us would be happy with me doing work for them.
I turned down a job in February being picky, but I regretted the decision as things deteriorated at my last job. I ended up being fired in a category that made me ineligible for UI, and that could have made life really hard if I hadn’t already been close to landing the new gig.
@Lynn — They’re still backed up at TWC for processing appeals. Six weeks in, and mine still hasn’t been across anyone’s desk for a decision about granting the first hearing.
@stevef:
You got me – again!
You probably have better info on the relative profitability of various colonies than I. But I suspect that slavery made a large part of that difference.
Not to mention that slavery is inherently a Bad Thing. , or so I believe.
G.
Prepper fail. I was working out of reserves not daily use. I didn’t notice the lack of refills because I was using an older bottle… and my Dr of decade+ was victim of Obammna care, my substitute Dr was possibly drinking on the job and no longer with the group, and no one left wanted to write the refill, or didn’t get the message from the pharmacy. So I hurt.
I’ll deal with it but I’m unhappy on a number of levels.
Texas DEA. The new assigned doctor at the group will probably want to see you.
Drinking. Geesh. My wife doesn’t miss private practice. Most big groups handed down pay cuts this year. BIG cuts. 30-40%.
If your GP doesn’t have family money or a spouse willing to subsidize the practice of medicine, they won’t be around long after Medicaid For All begins.
The upside of the VA is that I don’t subsidize the patient care beyond the taxes we all pay.
I do have to provide gratis IT support and give up my home office desk to try an fix the ergonomics issue. That’s getting real old, but the VA is providing a laptop for televisits starting Monday.
@Geoff, Bethlehemian Rhapsody is fun…. and very well done. Thanks!
Absolutely. We took Obama, Hillary, Biden and Harris out of your governmental system. You should most definitely thank, and possibly pay, the US for saving your country a monumental disgrace.
@ray:
And our present politicians are better? BoJo et al. appear not to know their *rse from their elbow.
Most of your pols are lawyers, most of ours are PPE graduates (Philosophy. Politics and Economics) There appears to be a correlation.
G.
Than the cretins that will take office on 01/20/2021, yes. But just marginally. Politicians are liars, thieves and generally scum.
Ugh. HARRIS/plugs are crowing about re-entering the Paris Accords. Kiss your tax dollars goodbye if this gets past the Senate. Let’s see if HARRIS/plugs illegally enter the treaty like ObuttWad did.
The ProgLibTurds have sold Climate Ejaculation to the sheeple. More fear porn. “We’re all gonna die in 12 years!” The PLT’s are arrogant enough to think they can fix the World. Welcome back Lurch and the Goracle. More tax dollars down the drain.
_Seraphs (Thorn St. Croix)_ by Faith Hunter
https://www.amazon.com/Seraphs-Thorn-Croix-Faith-Hunter/dp/0451462440/?tag=ttgnet-20
Book number two of a three book 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 book three in the series.
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 now a legal neomage who has been given a visa by the seraph of death. There are two seraphs and a cherub imprisoned in the mountain that Thorn is wanting to free. But, there is a dark power in the mountain also.
The author has a website at:
http://www.faithhunter.net/
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (176 reviews)
More messing around with the linux version of my NVR software.
I couldn’t figure out why the NVR would use a local directory, even though it’s configured to use a different hard drive for file storage. The local disk quickly fills up with video and causes faults.
We just had a power blink, and the pc running the NVR rebooted. I restarted the NVR and watched the errors in the terminal. LO! it can’t access the data drive. So it opens a local directory and starts saving there.
I immediately killed it.
Clicked on the drive in the file manage, and it [presumably mounted NOW] and then was accessible. Start the NVR and everything is fine.
So that problem is due to Mint not remounting a drive on boot. I guess I’ll have to figure out how to do that, and how to get the terminal to open in the right directory and run the ‘dotnet agent.dll’ command to run on startup.
More learning. Gahh.
n
added– and WTF Linux? Why NOT remount all attached drives on reboot?
OK, I am a little unhappy with the 2019 F-150 4×4 now. Driving back from Port Lavaca last night, I get this weird warning on the dash, “Power Steering Sensor Fault, press OK”. And the steering got real heavy. I was in a 55 mph severe construction zone, going this way and going that way. I could handle it but a person with lesser upper arm strength would have had trouble.
So I get to the exit for the major road going three miles south to my house and take the exit. The right turn was interesting. So, at the first light, I rebooted the vehicle (turned it off / wait ten seconds / turn on). The power steering started working again !
So I googled “Ford power steering sensor fault”. Oh my goodness, there have been several recalls and many failures with the electric power steering system. The system is apparently unfixable and must be totally replaced at a cost of $2,000. I am at 12,700 miles so I have a warranty for a while. I figure that I got a reprieve for while but I am betting that the problem will come back.
Why NOT remount all attached drives on reboot?
Quite possibly a timeout problem with the drive. The linux box may be booting too fast for it. See if you can add a mount command in some other place that gets run by the o/s as the last thing.
Yep, there is the problem with accumulated leave. It can be paid out but then margins go down so, forfeiting it is in the best interest of the company….
So I googled “Ford power steering sensor fault”. Oh my goodness, there have been several recalls and many failures with the electric power steering system. The system is apparently unfixable and must be totally replaced at a cost of $2,000. I am at 12,700 miles so I have a warranty for a while. I figure that I got a reprieve for while but I am betting that the problem will come back.
See what the dealer says. Ford will probably extend the warranty if the problem is that big.
Are the OBD codes consistent with the online reports?
added– and WTF Linux? Why NOT remount all attached drives on reboot?
You’re mounting an NTFS drive? IIRC, mounting on startup requires a manual edit of /etc/fstab.
The marriage of NTFS and Linux was a shotgun affair.
No such problems with my 2014 F-150. Biggest issues I have is with the rear window defogger which is in series with the mirror heaters. Something in the sliding window opens up opening the circuit. There is also that annoying skid plate (pressboard) under the engine. It must be removed to change the oil. The fasteners suck and fail. I lost one shield and the replacement was $300.00. Shield is needed for airflow to cool the transmission, important when towing. Currently attached with cable ties which work better than the fasteners.
Most of your pols are lawyers, most of ours are PPE graduates (Philosophy. Politics and Economics) There appears to be a correlation.
The undergrad degrees of the US pols are often from those “PPE” categories. Law degrees in the US are doctorate level diplomas.
A law degree is required to sit for the bar and practice law in most states. The legal profession and education are both rackets in the US, with student loans now funding the government-provided portions of Obamacare.
wrt Covid 19 testing: My test kit came yesterday via Fedex. I filled the sample container with saliva, container placed in supplied return package and dropped off at local Fedex facility. Expect results via email within a week.
https://ambrygen.com/covidkit
Several of my wife’s cars had those. She’d occasionally get the oil changed at a shop, usually when getting other work done. More than once they forgot to put the skid plate back on and when I pointed that out a day or two later they’d say there was no plate on the car when it came in. And when I then went into their shop area (against state law, I believe, and their company policy for sure) and pointed to the skid plate from her car they hemmed and hawed and not a single time admitted to any fault. And they always, I think, put the plate on wrong, either missing some of the bolts or cross-threading them. Dishonenst, incompetent scum. Big-name shops, too, like Goodyear. Never had that kind of problem with any of the small, local shops.
(I’ll point out that I never advise my wife to go to any of those shops. She goes there because something needs to be done and she’s pissed off at me and doesn’t want to ask me to do it, or she got a “$10 oil change” coupon which somehow never comes out as a mere $10 charge, or similar.)
That’s what the degree is called, but the work to get an LLD/JD more closely resembles an MA in some field which requires a lot of reading, preparing a number of papers in a specified format, and a few presentations. Amusingly, I’ve encountered a number of lawyers who wish to be addressed as “Doctor”. That’s even funnier than the lawyers who wish to be called “Attorney So-and-so” as a title of respect. Nope, sorry, you’re a divorce lawyer, you’re a scumbag, and you’ll likely be a scumbag until you die. No respect from me, bottom-feeder.
@MrAtoz
Trump needs to submit it to the Senate so they can vote the pos down.
Then we can watch them try to put some modified pos in place, bunch of senators can file suit, and Traitor Roberts can claim no standing.
I’ll display my ignorance. I ain’t skeered. I look stupid naturally.
So, the external drive hasn’t mounted or booted or whatever fast enough and the OS just starts writing files. Can you piss around with something like .htaccess in autoexec.bat to redirect? Or tell the NVR software to wait a couple of minutes?
Problem might be the external drive needs USB3? The blue jack.
Then again, “We just had a power blink” says you need new batteries in your UPS.
Ignorance is curable, stupidity is forever.
Well, I got a lot of sleep last night, most of it this morning technically. Woke early to massive thunder, realized I wasn’t going to my secondary to pull stuff out into the parking lot for hours with the rain falling, and went back to bed.
We got 6 of 8 inches of rain this morning, mostly during church. My front ditch has three foot of water in it.
You’re mounting an NTFS drive? IIRC, mounting on startup requires a manual edit of /etc/fstab.
The marriage of NTFS and Linux was a shotgun affair.
Doing more renovation today on my primary desktop, I noted that my Windows 10 partition still won’t mount RW under Linux Mint 20.
“You’re mounting an NTFS drive? IIRC, mounting on startup requires a manual edit of /etc/fstab.”
–nope this is the linux native ext or whatever, it’s internal to the pc, not the boot drive.
The drive that will only mount read only is possibly ntfs can’t remember, can’t remember how to find out. also an internal sata drive.
The drive that doesn’t actually mount is the ext, shows up in the graphical filemanager but no matter how long you wait, it doesn’t seem to be actually mounted until you access it.
in other words, doesn’t matter how long I wait before starting the NVR software. It can’t find the drive if I haven’t accessed it with something else first.
n
wrt ups, yeah, need to plug the pc into one…..
Don’t throw me in the briar patch!
I wonder of you can still find the Tales of Uncle Remus in public libraries? He’s probably been cancelled if I understand the use of that term.
The drive that will only mount read only is possibly ntfs can’t remember, can’t remember how to find out. also an internal sata drive.
So, you have a primary boot drive with Linux, a drive with an ext format partition used for video files from the security camera software, and a third NTFS formatted drive which currently only mounts read-only?
Look in /etc/fstab, the field after “ext4”, does it have auto or noauto? If noauto, change it to auto and reboot.
Actually, just paste the entire line into this…
“As Texas talks secession, how many states would support such a move?”
https://thelibertyloft.com/as-texas-talks-secession-how-many-states-would-support-such-a-move/
“Soon after, the Texas GOP, led by Allen West, suggested that perhaps it was time to start talking about secession. In an official statement, the Texas GOP leader said, “Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution.””
Not gonna happen.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
@markw, this is what is says currently
I don’t see noauto anywhere.
F69ARA….. is the drive I want to use for video storage, the one that doesn’t mount on reboot, when mounted it mounts to /media/username/NVR_DATA (that name is the volume name when I formatted it.)
C266C…. is the one that mounts read only, and doesn’t mount to /media/username/xxx It mounts to /mnt/C266C…….
n
not positive it’s ntfs, but it’s likely
n
For years I’ve been hearing bravado from conservatives about “fighting” for this that or the other thing, and other similar rhetoric.
Most of these creatures think “fighting” is taking an important stand like for fabric softener in the laundry.
In college we used to call them PWMF.
The topic has been raised here before. I have not read nor endorse them (heh, I do not use Linux) but at least it should give some ideas for those that are considering the issue.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/centos-linux-is-gone-but-its-refugees-have-alternatives/
Has the ‘crackdown’ already started?
https://bearingarms.com/cam-e/2020/12/12/cnn-narrative-polymer80/
Service at many of the chains will wind up on your vehicle’s CarFax report, which data is also available to your insurance company, who can/will check it against your stated yearly mileage you provided for your policy and can adjust your rates accordingly if you’ve understated.
Than the cretins that will take office on 01/20/2021, yes. But just marginally. Politicians are liars, thieves and
generallyscum.There, fixed that for you.
If you thought getting caught attending a Zoom meeting in your boxers was bad…
https://bearingarms.com/cam-e/2020/12/07/school-board-suspension-home-bb-gun/
“Why are they asking Bill Gates”
https://gunfreezone.net/why-are-they-asking-bill-gates/
“.@BillGates on Covid: “Even through 2022” we should be prepared for life to not return to “normal””
“Never forget that Bill Gates and the kid taking your order at the drive thru at McDonalds went to the same school of medicine”
I wonder if Bill Gates has a clue that he is destroying his good name with his crap.
I just realized that Christmas is on Friday next week. How in the world did we get this far into 2021 ? And more importantly, I need to do an inventory and wrap my presents.
It’s actually the same for the MD degree, at least here. Graduate as a medical doctor, and you do not have an academic doctorate. There’s a bit of a racket, whereby medical students can write a kind of pretend dissertation, to top up their medical degree so they are academic doctors as well.
Medical doctors never were academic doctors. The title was basically stolen by quacks selling snake oil in the 19th century. In addition to the academic meaning, it was generally used to refer to learned folks, including physicians. Sometime in the early 20th century, the practice of calling a physician “doctor” was made official, basically codifying what everyone was already doing.
Anyway, I find it amusing: A few people have fussed at us academics using the title “doctor” when we aren’t physicians. But it’s really the other way around: it’s our title, which physicians misappropriated.
Hey, slow down, cowboy! Don’t make time fly any faster than it already does!
It’s not really a management failure until there is a failure. Take a week or two off to use up those days. Really take those days off and make it clear you will not (or cannot) answer emails or phone calls. (Back-country skiing in Alaska should suffice). Of course, just leaving will also lead to a similar management failure.
In my company, when circumstances cause you to carry-over too many vacation days (or time off in lieu of pay for overtime), they will eventually cough-up full pay for those unused days. That really messes-up budgets so they ensure this does not happen, or happens very rarely.