Cold. Clear. Gusty. Starting in the mid 30s and getting warmer throughout the day. I hope.
It was a nice day, if a bit gusty and cool yesterday. 36F when I went to bed, down from mid-40s.
I basically took the day off. Didn’t even look at my phone until midnight. Left it on the charger in the other room. I did make a nice dinner for New Year’s Day.
I started with five pounds of bone on ribeye roast from the sale last week. Mashed potatoes with cream and bacon crumbles. Steamed broccoli from the garden. Biscuits from a roll, and key lime pie from a can. Yup. A can of pie filling, some whipped cream, and a graham cracker crust, a few hours in the freezer, and a delicious treat was served. I even garnished it with a thin slice of lime, heavily sugared.
Canned pie filling is one of my stored food staples. Cheap, quick, easy, and very satisfying. I’ve got everything from key lime to chocolate, with dark cherry and apple being two favorites. Some you bake, some you freeze, but all have been good and the dark cherry is great. Crusts are either pre-made graham cracker (which keeps forever in the fridge) or the rolled up pilsbury, also in the fridge, or from some premade mixes. My wife will make pie crust from scratch. I don’t. The other way I use it is to make little ‘mini’ pies in small ramekins. A circle of pie crust, a scoop of canned filling, another circle to cover, et viola! Personal sized pies. I sometimes roll the pre-made crust a bit thinner to be sure I have enough. Or use the mini pre-made graham crusts, and some jello pudding mix to make little pies… Everyone is cheered by the sight of a pie.
Which transitions nicely into the idea of morale, and the importance of keeping it up. Even though we’re not fully locked down and isolated, we were in the early days. I’d planned for a long time on our lifeboat, and did several things to hopefully improve morale. Firstly I stocked a variety of food. I stock a bunch of stuff we don’t eat regularly and some we’ve never eaten as a family. I figure that coming up with new meals and tastes is important to keep people interested in eating. I stock a bunch of different canned pie fillings. They can be used as pie filling, served over icecream, or used in other ways to keep things interesting. I have some freeze dried “astronaut ice cream” as a special treat. I have a lot of cake and cookie mixes too. I figure a nice dessert goes a long way to helping with morale as does good food.
I stocked up on gifts for special occasions. We were able to augment the stored gifts for birthdays and anniversaries, but I had SOME things ready if needed. It had been handy pre-covid, to grab a gift from the closet for the ‘pop up’ birthday party the kid forgot about until the last minute.
I have lots of movies and tv shows on DVD that the kids and even my wife and I have never seen. We’ve got old favorites too. I’ve got puzzles, games, and art supplies. Books of course, but also books with activities for kids – like how to draw horses, or making paper airplanes, or how to make origami animals. I’ve even got a couple of books on learning to play instruments we have. The idea was not just to have stuff to do, but also some novelty. A couple of decks of cards and a Hoyles book of card games is a DEEP fallback position.
I stored books and supplies for traditional crafts and handiwork too-needlework and leather-crafting in particular, as there are practical applications as well as busy work. Keeping hands occupied and accomplishing something usually raises peoples’ spirits.
Lego and Vex kits also keep them busy. I’ve got other educational kits in reserve too.
Throughout the last 9 months, as the kids were looking for something to do, or needed project materials for classes, I was able to just tap into the stuff I had stored. When they would get a bit ‘down’ we’d whip out something novel they hadn’t seen or done before. Sometimes it didn’t work. But usually it did.
For us here in Texas, and other states that didn’t go full jackboot, the covid restrictions have been a bit of a dry run for the zombie apocalypse or a really bad plague. Mostly stuff worked well. There were some gaps, and I’m working to fill those. Being able to keep prepping and adding to preps during the pandemic has been helpful. Still a long way to go to prep for civil war, economic collapse, civil unrest/race riots, the Greatest Depression, global cooling, alien invasion, ebola, chicken AIDS, or whatever is coming next to plague us.
People and relationships are important, both virtually and in real life. Skills are important. Knowledge is important. Having the stuff to USE those skills and that knowledge on, or to help out a friend, or build a relationship, is important too. So keep stackin’, you don’t want to be lackin’…
nick
I really need to move to the WD 500 GB sitting on my desk from the 1 TB Caviar Black. That will get me some speed.
Downsizing Windows partitions makes me nervous. Of course, I’m cheap and do those kinds of things with the Gparted ISO and a set of SATA-USB cables.
It was the Sapphire AMD video board. It had toasted itself but was still partially running if you did not mind the 2 inch wide vertical orange stripes. And Winders blue screened almost immediately with it. I am back up and running on my main pc at the house now. And the cheap video board works great with my 27 inch LG monitor running in 1080p. Firefox works great and spider solitaire work great.
I’ve never seen a video card go bad. When we cleaned out my father-in-law’s house in Orlando in 2000, he had ISA CGA cards which I assumed still worked but were obsolete even if you could find an ISA bus PC.
Filed for future reference.
2 GB being the realistic minimum for video card memory seems insane to me.
I did not watch, but clicked through just to see what it was. A farrier. My dad raises some cattle, and they check & trim their hooves whenever they “work” them (round them up a few times a year to give them vaccines and medicines and tag the calves etc) This is not something I know anything about or have ever been involved in (nor ever will be!), but he has more cattle now so it is more work – he used to just raise one or two calves, now he has a small herd, and I listen to him talk.
He has one cow that her hoof got infected and the vet had to amputate one of her toes. They were afraid she was going to die (cattle do just get sick and die, even healthy ones). She had a real rough time for a while, and still limps and walks slower than the others. But she is determined and she keeps going and making calves that she takes good care of. So my dad likes her, and makes efforts to see that she gets extra food.
There was an episode of Andy Griffith that dealt with that very thing! 😀
Today’s is a great post, one worth bookmarking and referring back to from time to time, just to be sure we keep all our most important bases covered. I think we tend to forget about the desert island aspect of prepping: the need to stave off boredom by keeping busy, and keeping cheerful. I like both versions of Flight of the Phoenix, but there is a line in the new one that could be framed, it is so important:
“Haven’t I heard stories of the government redeeming Civil War bonds, or is that just a myth?”
There was an episode of Andy Griffith that dealt with that very thing!
IIRC, Civil War bonds came up once on “Pawn Stars”. In theory, the Treasury could redeem the bond, but the expert suggested that the paper was far more valuable on the collectible market.
New York is sitting on 2/3 of the vaccine doses it’s received
“What we’re seeing here is almost certainly a combination of a lack of planning and administrative bungling. One problem in New York is that the state has been directing the pharmacies, hospitals and clinics to hold back a second shot for everyone who receives their first dose. That means that they have to store half of the vials they receive for up to a month to ensure that a second dose is available for the patient after the required waiting period.”
“I don’t want to keep beating a dead horse here, but how was this not all worked out long before now? We knew months ahead of time that multiple pharmaceutical companies were nearing the finish line on developing vaccines and starting their testing trials. Even if every one of them had failed during testing, it should still have been common sense to be developing a fully-formed plan for distribution on the assumption that there would be a viable, approved vaccine at some point, right? The staggering incompetence of the bureaucracy appears to be fully on display here and it’s almost inevitable that some of our rank and file citizens will be paying for those screwups with their lives.”
https://hotair.com/archives/jazz-shaw/2021/01/02/new-york-sitting-2-3-vaccine-doses-received/
Maybe the math masters at NBC would like to “do the math” on this one:
1) what’s the rolling 30-day projection for the number of doses going to NY?
2) How much of available storage is going to be taken up by the stored second doses?
3) How long will it take for Cuomo’s mafia pals to “Do the math” and start jacking those second dose hoards?
And the final question:
How much of this incompetence and lack of preparedness is due to the chorus of “experts” that were paraded on NBC and the rest of the msm to claim that we wouldn’t have a vaccine by the end of the year?
Incompetance? Not at all.
I think it is also people scrambling for power they have never had before. Health departments with unbridled ability to restrict movement and trade. Unelected, no oath of office, but have now been moved into the role of lord’s over the serfs.
I see governors and mayors given the ability to restrict people’s activities with no legislative oversight. A governor declares a state of emergency thus giving that same governor the ability to establish draconian guidelines. There is no legislative oversight in that process.
Clueless officials and “experts” who really have no idea what is occurring. Afraid to say they don’t know because it may hurt their standing among their peers. Afraid to hurt their career paths. Thus making things up, guessing, predictions that never arise. “We’re all going to die”. SARS, Swine Flu, H1N1, HIV, etc. were all going to kill us all. The big difference this time is that it is an election year and political maneuvering is more important than honesty and actual facts. Make it all Trump’s fault is the primary agenda.
I have seen misinformation, incorrect information, guessing, pandering to the news media, and downright stupid reports and items regarding the pandemic. I cannot trust the government numbers. There is financial incentive for hospitals to declare a death COVID caused. Insurance companies have to pay 100% of the amount charged rather than the negotiated rate which may be as much as 50% less than what was charged.
There is money for the vaccine manufactures, a couple having already been paid millions. COVID tests are paid 100% of the cost by insurance companies thus everyone should get tested.
Any time large sums of money are involved I question the real motive for anything that happens.
There is also political rewards. Biden claimed to have a solution long before the election yet failed to disclose the solution. Why? If it would have saved thousands of lives then Biden is guilty of manslaughter. In reality Biden has no solution. It was just political talk to gain votes. Lying, misdirection, deception by obfuscation.
Add in the mainstream media, who get all giggly over any major disaster or event, reporters with visions of getting an award, their face on the news, your basic idiot who will say anything to make it sensational. Even to the point of stretching the truth and in some case downright lies.
The distribution pipeline is a lot of smoke and mirrors. The logistics too complex, too many rules about who get what, when. Black market has seen some doses disappear, other doses destroyed on purpose. The projections of supply were overwhelming incorrect.
People have jumped to the front of the line. Politicians not in a high risk group getting the vaccine before others in high risk groups. Supposedly to show the vaccine is safe. I cry foul. It is using their position to move to the front of the line. Lording over us mere serfs. The death of a few congress critters would not be a loss, but a benefit. I fail to see the government having problems operating with the death of a few dozen congressional leaches.
This entire COVID event has been a shambles from the start. It will only get worse.
I am supposed to get my vaccination from the VA. The VA will contact me for a date and time. I suspect the VA will enough hold back for second dose.
How much of this incompetence and lack of preparedness
At the last job, we had a large Northeastern metropolitan area transportation authority as a customer, and, pre-Covid, you could count on not getting anything out of the city worker administrative staff between Thanksgiving and a week after New Years.
Something as complex as vaccine distribution in December during a pandemic? Fuggedaboudit.
Maybe third or fourth week of January you’ll start to see movement, but you’ll have to make allowances for the MLK holiday. Heck, before President’s Day could be a stretch.
When is Passover/Good Friday this year? You might get some usable work out of them between President’s Day and the start of Passover. Then, Easter Sunday to Memorial Day.
And HMG has decided, in its semi-infinite wisdom, that they will stretch the interval between the first and second shots from 21 days to “up to 12 weeks” in order to make the limited supply of vaccine better able to vaccinate all those at risk. This despite the fact that there is no evidence that one shot provides “immunity” for longer than the 21 days tested during the trials.
Our politicals, who show no evidence of any knowledge at all, let alone scientific knowledge, are also prone to the grandstanding, “Look, I just got mine! It’s quite safe!” What am I bet that the lengthened intervals will not apply to them?
G.
edit: Cynic? Moi?
I am supposed to get my vaccination from the VA. The VA will contact me for a date and time. I suspect the VA will enough hold back for second dose.
The VA offered my wife a vaccination on Friday, but I wanted a holiday without the possibility of a trip to the hospital.
Nothing mandatory yet.
The VA is aware of the necessity of the second dose for effectiveness. Make sure to keep your appointment when it is scheduled.
Jenny, my 3rd and youngest daughter, reports possibly testing positive for the newest variant of CV-19.
She’s 32.
More when I know more.
G.
Daughter #2 and family tested positive for COVID. She is a teacher at a private school which went virtual. Husband is a RN at a local hospital (Philly area) and probably the infection vector. Mostly mild symptoms 5 days in. I’ll post if things go TU.
@geoff and mratoz, that sucks. You know we are all hoping for speedy recoveries for all involved.
n
Fuhrer Fauci says we won’t know until October if the vax works. I guess that implies face diapers, distancing and lockdowns for 10 months. Then every three weeks Ad Infinitum. While Wuhan pukes party into the night.
Just wait until the day we look around and realize there’s a chinese national standing next to every one of our bureaucrats keeping zer on a short leash.
Kinda like the way hispanic illegals are now everywhere, having taken places like Hartford Conn from majority black to a place where 80%of the pop doesn’t speak english in the home.
n
“In this case I’d listen to Anitfa”
https://gunfreezone.net/in-this-case-id-listen-to-anitfa/
“The police are retreating.”
“They are using large volume pepper spray and pepper balls against the crowd and the crowd keeps advancing.”
“After a year, these rioters are battle-hardened professionals. They are immune to pepper spray and pepper balls. They are not phased by it anymore. Shields, armor, masks, umbrellas, they know how to avoid being brought down by less-lethal munitions.”
“They are throwing Molotov cocktails and IEDs. They are bringing lethal mele weapons to the fight.”
This is not good.
“US Housing Enters 2021 In A Massive Bubble”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-housing-enters-2021-massive-bubble
Just wait until Beijing Biden opens the borders. The housing prices will zoom then.
“”I’m Choosing The Risk Of Getting COVID”: Over Half Of Health Care Workers At California Hospitals Refuse Vaccinations”
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/im-choosing-risk-getting-covid-over-half-health-care-workers-california-hospitals-refuse
More vaccine for the rest of us ?
“I believe the data in the US would be the same”
https://gunfreezone.net/i-believe-the-data-in-the-us-would-be-the-same/
“It took a Freedom of Information request but @Covid19DataUK acquired 2017-2019 averages for England hospitalizations.”
“2020 had 18% fewer hospitalizations than prior years.”
I have heard the same for Fort Bend County, if not worse.
I think housing prices in many neighborhoods will tank as the invaders turn the place into the shirt(-r)hole to match from which that left. Nothing like making a place feel like the ghetto.
It was the Sapphire AMD video board. It had toasted itself but was still partially running if you did not mind the 2 inch wide vertical orange stripes. And Winders blue screened almost immediately with it. I am back up and running on my main pc at the house now. And the cheap video board works great with my 27 inch LG monitor running in 1080p. Firefox works great and spider solitaire work great.
I’ve never seen a video card go bad. When we cleaned out my father-in-law’s house in Orlando in 2000, he had ISA CGA cards which I assumed still worked but were obsolete even if you could find an ISA bus PC.
This is my third ??? video card to go bad in 30+ years over hundreds of PCs. All AMD boards, you think that I would learn.
I really need to move to the WD 500 GB sitting on my desk from the 1 TB Caviar Black. That will get me some speed.
Downsizing Windows partitions makes me nervous. Of course, I’m cheap and do those kinds of things with the Gparted ISO and a set of SATA-USB cables.
I am going to rebuild from scratch as soon as I find my Windows 7 Pro x64 DVD. It has my Microsoft ID written on the case. It is around here … somewhere.
I have never had a disk to disk transfer work correctly. I always have weird crashes, etc.
“11 Best Retrofuturism Books” by Dan Livingston
https://best-sci-fi-books.com/11-best-retrofuturism-books/
I have read the “The Stars My Destination”, “The Naked Sun”, and “1984”. 3 out of 11.
This is my third ??? video card to go bad in 30+ years over hundreds of PCs. All AMD boards, you think that I would learn.
Nvidia had a huge problem with their chips ~ 14-15 years ago. Apple stopped trusting them for discrete graphics after that fiasco.
I have never had a disk to disk transfer work correctly. I always have weird crashes, etc.
I’ve done many disk upgrades with the Gparted ISO and “dd”. Most of the time, I don’t have a problem, but the process is semi dangerous.
Kids, don’t try Gparted at home.
I used the Western Digital version of Acronis when I replaced the hard drives with SSD. No problems taking a 2TB drive to a 1TB SSD.
Would Lynn’s $49 video card be worth it for me? I have six GB RAM, I think the directions/specs said that was the max. Three slots, maybe larger sticks? But the video is on-board and share the RAM. Adding a 2GB video card might be an improvement. Maybe.
Edit:
I just tried the Crucial Scanner. It says my DX4860 has 4 slots and can upgrade to 16 GB RAM. $86. I’m pretty sure I have 3 slots. I’ll have to open the case.
Tis the season … for head coach firings.
The boosters are out $40 million for this one by most estimates.
https://www.kxan.com/sports/tom-herman-out-as-longhorns-head-coach-after-4-seasons/
She has a temperature, how high I don’t know, and her GP prescribed an anti-nausea medicine by telephone. Jane, my wife, went out to get the script filled, which was a bit of fun for 2 reasons – first it’s late in the day, and pharmacies are closing, and second, the pharmacist questioned the dosage (it was higher than she(?) thought it should be) But meds were obtained, and delivered in a contact-free fashion.
And that’s where it stands at present.
G.
Would Lynn’s $49 video card be worth it for me? I have six GB RAM, I think the directions/specs said that was the max. Three slots, maybe larger sticks? But the video is on-board and share the RAM. Adding a 2GB video card might be an improvement. Maybe.
You would see an improvement freeing up the RAM, and all of the modern browsers take advantage of hardware acceleration on discrete graphics cards. Just don’t expect to do any serious gaming
How old is the motherboard/CPU?
Would Lynn’s $49 video card be worth it for me? I have six GB RAM, I think the directions/specs said that was the max. Three slots, maybe larger sticks? But the video is on-board and share the RAM. Adding a 2GB video card might be an improvement. Maybe.
You might get up to 2 GB more of ram. If, you can shut down the onboard video.
Two essential pieces of equipment in monitoring Wuhan flu:
non-contact IR thermometer
blood oximeter
It’s a good idea to establish a healthy baseline for both.
I have to say I’m a bit shocked to see that you can walk up to Mitch or the crazy old lady’s house and graffiti it. If you can do that, you can certainly burn it down. Are these properties they are never at?
Are they so beloved that they have no fear of violent reprisal? NO security systems or cameras? REALLY?
Mitch is clearly a hypocrite too, if we needed any more proof… “‘Vandalism and the politics of fear have no place in our society,’ McConnell said ” Oh Mitch, can you even hear yourself?
n
added- the pic of Mitch’s house shows a security company sticker. Time to upgrade that plan Mitch. And THANKS DM for showing everyone his home’s address. THAT won’t make a copycat more likely.
I used the Western Digital version of Acronis when I replaced the hard drives with SSD. No problems taking a 2TB drive to a 1TB SSD.
Would Lynn’s $49 video card be worth it for me? I have six GB RAM, I think the directions/specs said that was the max. Three slots, maybe larger sticks? But the video is on-board and share the RAM. Adding a 2GB video card might be an improvement. Maybe.
Edit:
I just tried the Crucial Scanner. It says my DX4860 has 4 slots and can upgrade to 16 GB RAM. $86. I’m pretty sure I have 3 slots. I’ll have to open the case.
Wait, what operating system are you running ? Is it 32 bit or 64 bit ?
From the Newegg e-mail, it’s a DT GATEWAY DX4860-UR10P RT
I bought two of them 1/28/2013.
Win7 Home Premium x64
_Glass Houses (Morganville Vampires, Book 1)_ by Rachel Caine
https://www.amazon.com/Glass-Houses-Rachel-Caine/dp/0451219945/?tag=ttgnet-20
Book number one of a fifteen book fantasy series. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Signet in 2006. I have ordered books 2, 3 and 4 in the series from Big River.
Ah, a vampire murder mystery series based in Texas, sweet ! I am wondering if Morganville is suppose to be Huntville, Texas ??? Sixteen year old Claire Danvers is starting college in a small town and things go wrong almost immediately.
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (783 reviews)
Win7 Home Premium x64
Any new ram should be usable then.
There will probably be a BIOS setting to turn off the onboard video. Probably.
Wife and daughters are playing a card game in the kitchen. 9yo just told 11yo to “go ahead and wallow in your misery then!”
n
A security system in a house doesn’t necessarily indicate video security. And you can buy fake security stickers of real companies. And security companies don’t take back their signs if you cancel service.
This is a good reminder to look at the ‘security posture’ of your domicile or business. What protection to you have for vandals that don’t enter the house? A doorbell cam might be the minimum addition to any ‘break-into-the-house’ monitor. They are not that expensive.
Even a WyzeCam ($20-30) is a good choice – stick it in a window, under the eaves (they have wireless outdoor models) is an inexpensive solution – and they work ‘good enough’. I’ve used them for a couple of years – various WyzeCam models.
And I got these stickers: https://amzn.to/3rKlqTU for the outside of my place. There are lots of similar choices. I liked this one because it is reflective and not a giant size (the HOA hasn’t complained yet).
I’ve got the new Wyze doorbell cam on pre-release order . In the meantime, there are cameras at front and rear entrances.
Twenty years ago I bought the board that RBT reccommended in BTPPC. No problems.
I don’t sleep, I have excellent hearing, and I can pull a throat open with my fingernails.
Aside from that, we have a few cameras, though there’s something wrong with the DVR software: it does record, but whenever it reboots it doesn’t automatically start recording. I have to carry over a monitor and go through the setup menu and turn recording back on. Cheap piece of Chinese crap — no brand name on the cardboard box, the electronics box, or the manual, not a good sign.
(Yes, a battery backup system would probably take care of the problem. I’ve been meaning to get one. Sometime this year, maybe.)
“GOP senators, led by Cruz, to object to Electoral College certification, demand emergency audit”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-senators-cruz-electoral-college-certification-audit
So now twelve senators are going to object to the Electoral College certification for very reasons. They only need thirty-nine more to make anything happen. And nothing is going to happen.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/police-keep-secret-list-kids-bad-grades-labelling-them-potential-criminals
They CLAIM they use the list for other more benign purposes, but there’s no evidence of those uses.
n
WRT the scifi list, the best scifi bookstore in Chicago is/was called The Stars My Destination. Too bad it reeked of cat p!ss.
I’ve read a few, but for the list author to say “Ideas from science fiction rarely make it into the public consciousness,” with a straight face calls everything he’s ever said or done into question…. clearly he’s not an idiot, but he certainly said an idiotic thing.
n
I’ve read a few, but for the list author to say “Ideas from science fiction rarely make it into the public consciousness,” with a straight face calls everything he’s ever said or done into question…. clearly he’s not an idiot, but he certainly said an idiotic thing.
Many of Robert Heinlein’s ideas have come to pass and are coming to pass. Even his social ideas, “The Crazy Years”. Line marriages have not come to pass but they are very close.
And Isaac Asimov’s ideas on computing have come to pass. Autonomous robots are very, very close. Maybe just ten years away.
The SFBC billed me for a batch of books and I paid. A couple of months later they said (and still say) I owe whatever. $1.35. So I stopped buying books. Meh. I was tired of dragons and wizards and magic stuff. I like things like spaceships.
All that to say I haven’t bought anything since ’08. And with 24 feet of shelving of un-read books with a flat layer on top for dust control plus a couple of knee high stacks and no telling what is on the Kindle, I have plenty of books to read.
Anyway.
I’ve read “The Stars My Destination”.
“The Sheep Look Up” sounds familiar.
“The Naked Sun”, of course…. Asimov.
“Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang” sounds familiar.
“Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said” by Philip K. Dick is iffy. Might have, I don’t recall it.
“Red Star” sounds interesting.
It’s the end of the year, I’m backing up computers, refreshing computers, and cleaning up the offices, shredding stuff until the shredder overheats.
Fiddled with the Devuan box today, finally got the wifi to work with a Think Penguin TPE-n150usb adapter.
The trick is to know that the wireless device is no longer wlan0 but a much longer name that is grabbed by the system from device. I sort of knew this, but forgot until poking around with lsusb and dmesg to figure out why networking wasn’t working I saw a mention of it. Copied and pasted the name into wicd instead of the old default wlan0 and everything worked. I guess the big dogs with huge data centers wanted it that way and the linux developers said “how high?”.
My linux/unix knowledge is years out of date.
Oh well.
Haven’t read any from the list written this century.
Never found Wilhelm or Brunner could hold my attention. Same with Dick, for about 80% of his work.
Clarke’s monolith evidently made it into the public consciousness 52 years ago, even though the recent comparison to the thing in Utah wasn’t even close.
Is Clarke’s geosynchronous satellite in the public consciousness, even though most of the public just get the benefit while being clueless about the concept?
Heinlein nailed the cell phone in a few words in 1951. The uncut version of Puppet Masters was published in 1990, and that was before cell phones attained the “pocket” form factor. No public consciousness. Waterbed–definitely.
Heck, the problem is that the public isn’t really conscious. How many people under 50 can list the 50 states, even with the help of a blank map?
Exactly! That’s why the public is unfit to rule themselves and needs a benevolent dictator. I nominate myself, though the “benevolent” part is subject to dispute.
If you want the job you aren’t qualified
FTL travel? Warp speed? Satellites, asteroid mining, interplanetary travel, colony ships, aliens?? cold sleep, robots, time travel, holodeck, rocket to the moon- verne and others….
cyberspace????
So many sf concepts in the consciousness.
n
what’s the line from Blackadder? “Sounds a bit overqualified to me.”
n
Agreed, but that’s bitten me in the butt before. People have encouraged me to run for office, either jokingly (SteveF for President! after I said I’d issue a proclamation declaring war on illegal aliens) or seriously (running for the state assembly). When I pointed out that I don’t want the damned job, the comeback was that that was my single best qualification. Consequently, I state my strong desire to hold office in order not to be saddled with it. Deceit within deceit!
Everything you say is a lie…
but….
Nelson! Coordinate!
Consequently, I state my strong desire to hold office in order not to be saddled with it. Deceit within deceit!
Fiendishly clever, sir!
“After Stacey Abrams secures 1 million mail in votes, Georgia Secretary of State suddenly sees the issue”
https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-01-02-stacey-abrams-secures-1-million-votes.html
Yup, the fix is in for the Georgia Senate election on Tuesday. Two more dum-bro-crats.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
“Enola Holmes (film)”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enola_Holmes_(film)
@Nick, the wife and I liked this movie and I suspect that your daughters would also. It is on Netflix. The girl from Stranger Things plays Enola Holmes, the young sister of Sherlock Holmes.
@lynn …. “Enola Holmes” … agree that it was an enjoyable film.
This is an unprecedented challenge. The States don’t have standby personnel with expertise in vaccine distribution in the middle of the pandemic fire. The Feds have washed their hands of it so now we have 50 states separately trying to invent the wheel with no people and little money. This all should have been a joint effort with all the best experts working together. The administration should have learned from the similar earlier PPE and testing debacles.
@nick; would be interesting to hear some about your indexing/storage system. Do you use standardized size boxes, all labelled and indexed in a ledger or something more like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9FGC68YcwM
I always seem to be ‘just not quite there’ and looking for improvements. Relying just on memory to find a specific widget for a project gets less satisfactory as the ole brain cells age.
The ‘fake?’ ADT yard sign I bought from the Big River even had the “Property of ADT” sticker on the back.
I believe they are protected by the Capitol Police equivalent of the Secret Service, but I’d guess not protecting their residences if they are not there.
Weren’t they paid millions to pre-produce the vaccine in parallel to the Phase 3 trials so they’d have millions of doses ready to ship once their particular vaccine was given EUA by the FDA?
Gparted? clonezilla ftw.
There is money for the vaccine manufactures, a couple having already been paid millions.
Weren’t they paid millions to pre-produce the vaccine in parallel to the Phase 3 trials so they’d have millions of doses ready to ship once their particular vaccine was given EUA by the FDA?
Pfizer and Moderna have already shipped twenty million doses to the US, Europe, and many other countries. The feddies in the USA and staties are stockpiling a lot of them for some weird reason.
Bureaucrats will always seek to control anything of value. That has to play into what’s going on. It certainly is affecting all the rule making.
In the end it would probably be more efficient to just have all the testing centers give it to anyone who shows up for it. There are enough front line people saying NO to provide doses for the others who for whatever reason want it now. Eventually there will be enough doses for everyone, right? That’s what we were told, and that’s never wrong…
IDK about other places but City of Houston did a trial run years ago. They tasked CERT members with both running the Point of Distribution centers, and playing the role of vaccine seekers mobbing the centers. I didn’t get the call to participate so I don’t know how it went, but I know that SOME people were planning and running drills even before ebola got here.
n
I guess when things get sporty enough, either the Capitol police will provide security or some extra houses are gonna burn. No one NEEDS multiple houses just in San Fran alone… right? Crazy cat lady will end up bunkered in DC on our dime most likely.
n
Hmmm. Maybe I should do a post about my organization technique.. . or lack there of.
Unlike Commander Zero (who everyone should be reading for prepping stuff anyway) I am not particularly organized. Or rather, not rigidly structured. I tend to keep stuff in ‘clusters’ or areas for lack of a better word. The plumbing parts are all in one place. The electrical parts are in their area. Bike stuff is in one spot, etc. I know what I have by going thru it every so often, usually while looking for something. That’s why it’s easy for me to have too much of something- I just keep stacking it with like stuff and don’t account for it very well until I realize “OH, I’ve got a LOT of coleman lanterns hanging from the rafters in that part of the garage.”
In fact I just took my own advice and moved most of what I wrote in this comment to a post for tomorrow. Because I needed a post for tomorrow anyway, and it was getting really long for a comment. So check back in the morning for more than you ever wanted to know about why my house looks like it does…
n
“The 2021 Quincy Adams Wagstaff Lecture”
http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-2021-quincy-adams-wagstaff-lecture.html
“What happens from the streets won’t be vigilantism, either. It will be street justice in a dirty war, until Leviathan collapses from the Death Of A Thousand Cuts. Some folks think the population isn’t built for that, but they’re about to find out firsthand how poorly the organs of government aren’t built for it either.”
I shouldn’t, but I worry about this. If Beijing Biden assumes the presidency, about 75 million people are going to be very unhappy. A very small percentage of them may decide to do something.
@Richard
“This is an unprecedented challenge. The States don’t have standby personnel with expertise in vaccine distribution in the middle of the pandemic fire. The Feds have washed their hands of it so now we have 50 states separately trying to invent the wheel with no people and little money. This all should have been a joint effort with all the best experts working together. The administration should have learned from the similar earlier PPE and testing debacles. “
No, it’s not an unprecedented challenge. It’s a failure of planning.
The boots on the ground part of an effort like this has always been organized at the state and local levels–the Feds have never been charged with that part of the response, and are hardly “washing their hands” of it. To expect bureaucrats in Washington DC to develop local plans for the nation, from NYC to West Texas to Montana, is beyond stupid.
The states got plenty of money in the first Wuhan lying Chinese no-face flu relief package.
The only PPE “debacle” was the failure of the Obama administration to replace the stores that they used, ignoring the repeated recommendations of the “best experts” and leaving the nation unprepared while they funneled billions to blue craphole states that are functionally bankrupt from decades of public employee plundering.
The only testing “debacle” was the CDC “experts” contaminating their own production facility.
The rest of the problems with PPE and testing are the normal difficulties you get with any enterprise that has to ramp up from scratch. It ain’t rocket science, it ain’t calculus. It’s simple pencil and paper arithmetic. Churchill recognized it more than 70 years ago, and he was far from the first.
We’ve known for months that the vaccines were coming.
There is no excuse:
Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance
Jerry P once said that Overlord was the biggest logistic operation of history, I doubt that distributing vaccine is worst, so I dont understand
The rest of the problems with PPE and testing are the normal difficulties you get with any enterprise that has to ramp up from scratch.
Most of the face shields I see around are still embarrassing indictments of US manufacturing capability. This is the best they came up with in nine months?
Hardly. What you see is extremely lightweight, cheap and disposable.
If you want quality check the Grainger or MSA catalogs.