We’re forecast to get rain and possibly thunderstorms today, but we’ll see. We had a similar forecast for yesterday and it stayed dry but overcast all day. Well, for me, and where I was. It looked like it was raining to my west, out in Katy. And I got the tiniest little bit of misty drizzle at one point… but mostly dry but humid, shirtsleeves weather.
Got my stuff dropped off at the auctioneer’s place, finally. Even made a small second trip. Didn’t get much done at my secondary location.
Got my china flu vaccination. I chose the J&J shot. One and done, traditional vaccine. The site was spacious, capacious, and well organized. The big church that was the host was also hosting a basketball tournament, so there was a lot of activity. I arrived on time with my paperwork filled out in advance. They confirmed my answers, passed me to the next gatekeeper, and then it was rinse and repeat. The girl who did my shot was very skilled. No pain. Small needle, small amount of fluid. Then passed to the next gatekeeper, and recovery room. Our Mayor stopped in to play host and glad hand the crowd for a bit. I couldn’t think of any reason to talk to him, so I left while he was still there. I noticed a wide range of masks on the patients and on the staff. Many of the staff had N95s but they had exhalation valves. Not supposed to use those. One person had a cloth mask over her exhalation valve, the one time a double mask actually does something useful.
I’m not sure if I had any reactions or if it was just the weirdness of the day and the disruption of my routine. If I did, they were mild. Felt some prickling itchiness in various parts of my body at different times. Felt ‘half a bubble off’ and fatigued. I wanted to go to be early, like right after dinner, but spent the time poking at my linux box.
Thanks to everyone who helped. I went to bed before the last thing I tried had completed, so I’ll update below. It would have been faster to reinstall than recover, if recovery is even possible. Tons of arcana were invoked. I feel the need to burn some sage after it’s all back up, just to clear the room of bad juju. If we’ve found the source of the last issue, then hopefully I’ll have a stable box for my NVR software. I’ll need it more than ever because things are getting sketchier.
On Thursday afternoon, a guy walking in my neighborhood was robbed at gunpoint of his phone by a black male in a car. I’m pretty sure that an armed robbery in my neighborhood was one of my setpoints for moving. I’m noticing an increase in street people, crazy acting strangers on the street, street vendors, and other inner city BS this last month, all closer to home than I’d like. Not good. Ironically, if the freeze did kill all my citrus trees, it will have removed one of my major mental blocks against moving out of this house. I’m not sure there is anywhere better within my wife’s ‘work radius’ though.
Holy cow I don’t want to even consider moving from this house at this point, but I do have to continually re-evaluate safety and security issues, balanced with work/life issues. Of note, if my neighborhood, statistically one of the safest in Houston, is having an increase in crime, I’d bet that pretty much everyone is. People say that your zip code won’t protect you, but it sure does impact LIKELIHOOD of something bad happening.
I’m sleeping late, blame it on the shot.
Lots of stuff in motion out there in the wide world, some of it is sure to affect you. Take what steps you can, and keep stacking.
n
“I always wondered, since the toll ticket was time-stamped when you received it, why the Turnpike Authority didn’t just look at the distance traveled between interchanges and your travel time and automatically determine if you were speeding and fine you.”
Because they really do not want to go out of their way to hinder their customers?
When The Real Life Tony Stark (TM) started delivering the Model 3 orders in Austin, Reddit users embarrassed the expressway authority by posting demand-variable tolling numbers indicating charges of more than $20 to go from the south part of Austin where all the hipsters live up to my part of town, where Apple Austin is located.
Of course everyone wanted to try “Ludicrous” mode, and the toll lanes on Mopac were the only way to do it on a direct route without a citation. Of course, the hipsters didn’t want to pay $20+ to do it either. Gotta keep the customer happy.
Another problem with using the old toll ticket timestamp is accuracy and the court challenge on nit picky technical issues. We saw “My Cousin Vinny” again last weekend, and the back and forth over the car differential that won the girl the Oscar is a classic example what was standard legal practice 30 years ago. The Internet and wider availability of information in general makes the challenges much tougher to overcome, with “experts” (as qualified in the court room) more common.
If it’s raining, take shelter under a tree. If the rain is heavy enough that you’re getting wet under the tree … just go to a different tree.
That is what eventually caused the demise of the speed/red light cameras in Oak Ridge. People realized that they could ask for the camera calibration records, if not the the specific camera, be presented in court. Others demanded that the algorithm used to calculate the speed be made available. That was something the vendor did not want to have released.
Eventually people realized they could just ignore the letters. There was no way for the city to establish that the person was actually presented with the “citation” unless expensive delivery services or process servers were used.
There was also the threat of voting all the city officials out of office who allowed the red light cameras to also become speed cameras. Like most local politicians the Oak Ridge officials are impressed by shiny baubles and a flashy PowerPoint presentation. Most of the officials are aged, and computer illiterate, with VCR’s still flashing 12:00.
That must have been a three day journey, or two very long days. My grandfather did some of the surface grading on some parts of the interstate when it was installed.
I remember as a youth of 7 years old traveling from Los Angeles to The Dalles Oregon using highway 99. A long journey involving three days of driving with my aunt and uncle. In a Renault Daulphine, probably the second worst car ever built. Four cylinders of heaving and wheezing with a 0-60 measured with a calendar. I think that is the main reason my aunt and uncle avoided the interstate. The vehicle was simply not up to the task.
Interesting post on WUWT:
2021 March 26
PAGES 12K: The Ice Age Goeth
David Middleton
Kaufman, Mckay, Routson, et al., 2020
“In my previous post, I noted a “funny pattern” in the latest Holocene climate reconstruction (Kaufman, McKay, Routson, et al., 2020). In this post, I will go into more detail as to why I chose the composite plus scale (CPS) method rather than the other four methods employed by the authors.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/03/26/pages-12k-the-ice-age-goeth/
Middleton argues that the paper being criticized uses four methods that violate signal-processing theory, and shows that only a fifth method, CPS (composite plus scale) resolves the warmer periods of the last 12,000 years and accounts for the changes in ice coverage in the Northern Hemisphere.
The post is worth looking at just for Figure 5, which incorporates the Figure 3 temperature reconstruction and adds maps of ice extent.
Middleton comments:
“CPS is the only one of the four methods consistent with the Holocene evolution of ice sheets and glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere.”
“Hockey sticks are usually the result of muting the amplitude of the low frequency climate signal and then splicing on the high resolution instrumental data. ”
That Detroit to LA trip was about 2300 miles. We usually took five days and did some tourist stuff to break the monotony, all preplanned.
CA and some other states reclassified many minor traffic misdemeanors to infractions decades ago. This removed the right to a jury trial and unburdened the courts. Another right removed.
Government will always act to maximize the power of the bureaucracy, prevent oversight, and maximize revenue.
RE: Childhood trips to LA
In the years between 1955 and 1962 we made regular yearly trips from Oklahoma City to LA with my Grandparents who, running 26 movie houses, needed to meet with studio heads and bid on the next years picture. I was between 3 and 10 and most of our trips were on old RT 66. We took three days and stopped at the WigWam motel in Holbrook AZ one year. Not as much fun to stay in as to look at. I can recall many nights on the road when I was small laying on the package shelf behind the rear seat and watching stars overhead. I always knew when we got to California because of the Fruits and Veggies checkpoint.
Anyways, I called ‘shotgun’.
“Elon doesn’t have to answer to many people, he can make decisions effectively, he doesn’t have to diver around and get permission,”
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-satellites-dominate-orbit-industry-experts-2021-3
I know that when I used to live in NYC both red light camera and speed camera tickets were civil violations mailed to whomever the car was registered to and not the driver since that would have been a lot harder to accomplish. Is that not the case elsewhere? These ‘tickets’, along with parking violations were adjudicated by the Department of Finance so it was obvious where the bias was. First level of appeal was within the same department, after that you had to file in civil court. I recall all too well that absence of the parking ticket under your windshield wiper was not an acceptable excuse. Since I’ve gone they’ve lowered the default speed limit on surface streets to 25 mph and speed cameras have proliferated, especially around schools.
Well,I’m up and conscious… bowl of cereal in me and a cup of coffee on its way down.
Speed cams and red light cams are only about revenue. That has been demonstrated many times. The city and the company split the money, usually 50/50, so there is a financial incentive to maximize fines. We fought them several times in San Diego, like the hydra they keep coming back. The lure of easy money is strong. Activist demonstrated that while T bone accidents go down, rear end accidents go up. Yellow light times are often shortened too far, so even legal speeders can’t stop in time.
We fought radar robots in Cave Creek when I was in AZ but last time thru I noticed they had them again.
n
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-should-not-use-ivermectin-treat-or-prevent-covid-19
https://www.yahoo.com/news/people-poisoning-themselves-trying-treat-175747968.html?guccounter=1
One of my public safety newsletters had this article with those links regarding invermectin. Their biggest issue seems to be people not doing the math on the dosing and the possibility that “inactive ingredients” could make a difference. THAT would be a pretty big admission and would have repercussions for the entire generic drug industry.
n
Ok, now I’m sure that just nuking and reinstalling would be faster.
It took over an hour to image the affected drive, and it looks like it was a bit for bit copy as the mounted img shows 0bytes free and is 500GB in size.
Just because, I’ve reformatted that drive, and I’m restoring the backed up image to see if at any point in the process it doesn’t copy the unreadable parts.
In the mean time, my three main cams are recording internally, so I have some recordings.
At two hours 30 minutes to restore, with pretty high expectations that the restore will just put the problem back, it def would have been faster to just reinstall everything.
n
and come on mint guys, you are supposed to be the easier friendlier distro, why in the heII would you put “Disks” under “Preferences” and not “System Tools” or “Administration”. Formatting hard drives and working with partitions are NOT user tasks, they are Admin tasks, and are certainly not on the same level as changing your screensaver or desktop background image.
in what healthy society do two teenage girls carjack and kill someone?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9410913/Graphic-video-shows-moment-teen-girls-carjack-Uber-Eats-driver-death.html
“suspects, aged 13 and 15”
n
Actually, the J&J vaccine is not a traditional vaccine. It’s a new tech, an adenovirus vaccine. You get infected with a virus that has no capability to reproduce, it causes your cells to produce a SARS-CoV-2 protein, that causes an immune response. The J&J and the Astra-Zeneca vaccines are the only two adenovirus vaccines in wide use. There is one for a specific type of TB also.
But, but, but it was mostly and accident.
Front and center is the deceased race, ethnicity. Not so much the teens. Both Black.
in what healthy society do two teenage girls carjack and kill someone?
This is just the sort of thing Fernando Aguirre describes in his book about the collapse in Argentina, kids and old women turning predators, armed robbery becoming the norm in every neighborhood, signs the collapse has begun. His advice on what has value in a collapse is interesting and counter the general narrative. For example he discourages purchase of gold or silver coinage to use in bad times. He says pulling a gold coin will paint a “I AM RICH PLEASE KIDNAP ME” sign on your back. Instead use “junk jewelry” of 14kt or 18kt gold you can trade for goods while looking like you are down to your last dollar. The one thing we DON’T have here in the US (yet) so we don’t think about it is organized kidnapping gangs. In post collapse Argentina, keeping below the radar of the kidnap gangs was a TOP priority.
But, but, but it was mostly and accident. – Or COVID
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9411609/Mexicos-true-COVID-19-death-toll-stands-321-000.html
—given the poverty, lack of health infrastructure, and other factors, I wouldn’t be surprised that the mexican numbers are still low. And the comparison to Brazil, with the millions in favelas, just means Brazil is massively undercounted.
Or you could just say they died because they were poor, since that was certainly the pre-existing condition.
n
There are other disasters ongoing…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9411753/Flash-flooding-Nashville-kills-two-men-traps-dozens-people-homes.html
Stay safe out there, and if you need help, ask.
n
It was 75F when I went to bed and it’s 62F atm and falling, with wet pavement, but no actual rain.
Forecast is still for rain/tstorms.
n
And come on mint guys, you are supposed to be the easier friendlier distro, why in the heII would you put “Disks” under “Preferences” and not “System Tools” or “Administration”. Formatting hard drives and working with partitions are NOT user tasks, they are Admin tasks, and are certainly not on the same level as changing your screensaver or desktop background image.
The selection of Mint for the NVR platform probably has less to do with being easier/friendlier than it does the distro’s more liberal approach to proprietary video codecs than the upstream vendor.
To be fair 19.3 is old, based on 18.04 Ubuntu. Three years is an eternity in Linux.
We took three days and stopped at the WigWam motel in Holbrook AZ one year.
I always stop for a while to stand on the corner on Winslow, AZ.
dang, 500 error wiped out my response, and there was no code or even code like stuff in it.
n
my response boiled down to ‘nothing in a new OSs is different from what I could do in win7 or earlier, except by degree. The last big change was multitheading and 64bit, and everything since then was just cosmetic, bug fix, or ‘more and faster’ improvements.’ so three years or 10, no real difference.
And tools belong with tools, today or three years ago.
n
(and you are likely right about why iSpy chose it, but getting cups wrong is just unforgivable.)
And the rain started about as soon as I said there was no rain.
n
We stopped there on our southwest trip a couple years ago. Obligatory pictures and tacky magnet purchased. I do feel sorry for the shop workers – non stop eagles music would get old after a day or two…
“non stop eagles music would get old after a
daySONG or two… ”–ha! FIFY
n
added- can’t do manual html in the ‘visual’ comment box.
Read yesterday that New York City Ends Qualified Immunity for Police Officers.
I’m no lawyer, but if this opens the gate for frivolous suits against cops for doing their daily duty, I can’t see how NYC can keep any officers on the streets.
As far as I’m aware there’s no statute that requires acceptance of payment in a particular format. She could have said, sorry, we don’t accept coins in amounts exceeding 99 cents.
quotes from brittanica online.
Does everyone see what is going on? How does changing the rules to discourage police fit? Class?
n
@alan, the paper money has printed right on the front “legal tender for all debts public and private” and so has to be accepted. Coins being part of the official currency of the US are covered under that same thing, I’m sure, although I can’t think of the reference off hand.
n
Destruction of confidence in police will generate more fear in the general population. It will cause the poor and middle class to distrust the government ability to fulfill it’s primary responsibility, protect the people.
This will leave a vacuum for a group willing to get the job done. We saw this in Germany when the distrusted brown shirt thugs were replaced by the SS. Does the administration have a national police force ready to step in an replace local cops?
The spread of terror also works against the push for gun control.
I am too dim to see the larger forces at play
Mint IS an easy distro. Don’t try a difficult one.
To be fair, I tried most of the major distros and some minor ones before settling on Mint. When I had problems that were minor compared to what you are having, I moved on. I found a couple that were fine, but they effectively disappeared. Meanwhile, Windows keeps rolling on. My last production system before Mint was W2k, and it was fine just like all my previous experiences. I didn’t want XP, so moved everything to Mint for six years. Now on W10, and it is fine. But remember, I want to be a desktop business user, and won’t tolerate flakiness or arcana. I still like Linux, but the application software has a long way to go. It appears to be getting worse. My wife fount it intolerable.
OS/2 had a similar problem: good enough (not perfect) OS, lack of apps. It remains one of the OSes I have never touched. I have a friend who “used” it much the same way he used his Amiga, as a hobby. Both had some greatness, but never reached critical mass. Everybody I know who uses another OS also uses Windows for work. They effectively have to.
Now that I am back on Windows, I feel at home. It is homely, but works. I still turn my Mint system on occasionally, because I have some thing to scan. Yesterday, I scanned something. I won’t move that scanner to Windows, because I want something new. If I had an assistant, I would keep several computers operational. Some would run Linux, just because. Linux put the fun back in computing.
I wouldn’t have used Mint for the NVR, probably Ubuntu server or something similar. I’ve heard the latest Ubuntu has a lot of phone-home, like Win10, which make me automatically distrust it. I always go into advanced and turn off stupid stuff like cups.
But I’m an ex-Linux-nerd, so YMMV.
Who releases a “user friendly” distro with sufficient logging turned on to fill up the root partition? We got into the super-nerd level yesterday. Absolutely should not have been necessary.
Linux should be perfect for ‘appliance’ applications. I know people use it for all kinds of things including desktop computing.
When I was doing work for the oil companies, everyone had a linux (or other *nix box) and a windows box on their desk. They have a long legacy of using *nix for scientific applications though. Since it’s been 10 years since I left that, I don’t know if they still do, but I suspect so.
I also can’t see win10 and all its spyware being a good fit for corporate use, nor a GUI based on a failed phone platform. But I’m sure there are economic incentives that I don’t get or see….
n
Who releases a “user friendly” distro with sufficient logging turned on to fill up the root partition?
–yes, this exactly, and ESPECIALLY as it seems to be complaining about a permissions setting which should have been set by the distro in the first place. Or blame cups for really stupid logging, and NO alerts to the user, but again, poor choices.
n
Who releases a “user friendly” distro with sufficient logging turned on to fill up the root partition? We got into the super-nerd level yesterday. Absolutely should not have been necessary.
Exactly. I had a similar problem with Mint about three years ago. Root was full, but there was no error message, just some corrupted files saved to the data partition. Here’s the difference, I spent two hours Googling to find the fix, which was a simple setting to clean up temporary update files. Mint help and forums were no help.
If this had been Windows, the fix probably would have been found in five minutes. Xxxx it probably wouldn’t have happened in the first place.
@nick; can be offered, yes – has to be accepted, no…
Legal Tender Status
I thought that United States currency was legal tender for all debts. Some businesses or governmental agencies say that they will only accept checks, money orders or credit cards as payment, and others will only accept currency notes in denominations of $20 or smaller. Isn’t this illegal?
The pertinent portion of law that applies to your question is the Coinage Act of 1965, specifically Section 31 U.S.C. 5103, entitled “Legal tender,” which states: “United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues.”
This statute means that all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise. For example, a bus line may prohibit payment of fares in pennies or dollar bills. In addition, movie theaters, convenience stores and gas stations may refuse to accept large denomination currency (usually notes above $20) as a matter of policy.
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/legal-tender.aspx
Similarly with Ray, the receiving agency didn’t have to accept his 50 checks, they could have returned them and stated their policy was one check per violation. Of course, if neither side capitulated, eventually a judge would decide who wins.
Note to the group – this was posted later today under yesterday’s entry…
@Harold; my thoughts are with you and your wife – please feel free to post if somehow we can help.
I would have demanded to see that policy and the date it was created. Just accepting a statement from someone would not have worked. Many times I have heard “it is against policy” and when questioned, it is simply word of mouth. Government agencies in particular cannot make policy at the spur of the moment because someone finds a way around the system. Except the IRS. They decide what they want and then make the taxpayer prove otherwise. At great expense.
Yes – best wishes for a good outcome.
One more Mint thought, Nick. It is, as you know, trivially easy to reinstall, except you lose all the settings changes you might have made. I never took the trouble to figure out how to preserve those. Anyone here know how? I especially would like to save and restore all the dozens of application settings that took me hours to figure out. Thunderbird was especially difficult to configure.
I also can’t see win10 and all its spyware being a good fit for corporate use, nor a GUI based on a failed phone platform.
The spyware is pretty easy to turn off at home, and corporate sites probably use Win policies to do it there.
The GUI is crazy, but I have changed mine to work close enough to how I work; for instance, I seldom use the Start button. I don’t like that some CUA stuff no longer works, such as ctrl-tabbing around dialog boxes. I’m a keyboard fanatic, and hate all pointing devices. As time goes on, I will find solutions.
One book and web site I liked was Windows Annoyances. Maybe it is still around. It used to be one of the best.
@jimb:
Are you sure about that? Everything I’ve read says that there may be some you can turn off, but there’s a hard core that is permanent. Except if you have 10 Enterprise, where the snooping is off by default. But you pay through the nose for that.
In any case, WIN10 appears to be in permanent early beta, and updates quite frequently break something basic – e.g. printing, for some. This is characteristic of software that has reached critical mass.
Because of this, I’ve decided win-10-nic (to use a Registerism) is not in my future.
Agreed about Windows Annoyances, which, regrettably, has not been updated beyond WIN7, AFAICT. I have the WIN95/NT edition, the”Toad” book.
G.
Keep a log as Jerry did? That way you just do silly things once so you don’t have to do them again. 🙂
Never have had a problem with Win10. Updates are installed as they happen. Printing and everything else Just Works.On all of the computers around here – last count: 4 laptop, 2 desktops, with ages ranging from 10 years to 1 year (older systems were upgraded from Win7).
Use my HP laptop every day, for over 8 hours a day. Programming, some image creation/editing, lots of browsing (Firefox, occasionally Chrome), file transfers (WinSCP), MS-Word (2019 Office/Home, not 365), and other stuff.
All of it Just Works. Never can understand why others have issues or concerns with Win10.
@Nick
Not surprised. I only do manual HTMLin text mode, or a text editor. Can’t do it in Word, either.
Wanna do manual HTML? Hit the ‘Text” tab up there. That’s why it’s there.
I also can’t see win10 and all its spyware being a good fit for corporate use, nor a GUI based on a failed phone platform. But I’m sure there are economic incentives that I don’t get or see….
A Fortune 50 company — or anyone willing to write a big enough check — has a different experience with Microsoft than an average consumer.
At least Redmond understands money. Apple has a totally different attitude, and recently obsoleted the last MacBooks acceptable to corporate IT departments.
I’ve seen plenty of issues with all versions of windows. Plenty of systems that just work as well.
For windows 10 issues, here’s a few from recent experiences. Windows update stops working, and you can’t even apply individual cumulative update manually. We still haven’t resolved that issue – ZERO error messages besides update failed to install.
Bitlocker loses its mind and starts requiring the recovery key on every reboot.
Power setting that usually work as set, but not always. That has been the case since 95 though…
Try to do a custom scan in windows defender and it instead scans every file on the drive, instead of only the desired folder.
Random default apps (calculator, for example) that stop working and give a permission denied error. No policies were put in place to do this.
I could go on…
Oh, okay, you’re talking about a postpaid plan, yes, since they will check your credit you will need ID. But unless something has changed, according to a friend you can still buy a prepaid phone and a prepaid minutes card for cash and then just activate it with no further info required. Of course remember that CCTV is everywhere.
Ok so reinstalling mint, and it is really fast. Then the update manager, so 400GB later, and half an hour and I’m up to date. On windows, after a fresh install, it’s HOURS of updates and multiple reboots. Good so far.
I decide to do all the ‘initial startup’ stuff as it’s presented and maybe I won’t have issues later.
Where is the “Setup Printers?” step? Doesn’t exist. Where is the “Configure samba so you can use windows networks?” Doesn’t exist.
Samba is installed, lots of samba folders on the filesystem but not one fucking clue how to actually use it or turn it on. NOTHING in the equivalent to control panel. “Network Settings?” that lets you change your host name, enter a domain name, or edit Hosts. Not helpful mint guys. “Network Connections?” Not really, lets you select a couple of things related to the internet and ip4 and 6.
and that’s it. list all software has zero entries for samba. It’s installed, the folders are everywhere…
Someone at the distro is making stupid choices.
On the plus side, the update process must have fixed cups’ issue, as it isn’t generating the never ending error log this time.
n
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/rocket-report-russia-developing-a-space-plane-europe-frets-about-spacex/
Routine like. I have a few houndred satellites I need put in place asap. Can you do that in a couple of weeks for less than 100 million?
Just 10/20 years ago that would have sounded ludicrous.
“Routine like. I have a few houndred satellites I need put in place asap. Can you do that in a couple of weeks for less than 100 million?”
–but that’s like the band that “suddenly” gets famous with their hit song. you don’t see the years of grinding away at gigs in sh!tty bars that got them to that point….
NASA tried to make spaceflight routine, and even boring. That was a critical mistake. Take the romance and adventure out of something, and you lose the support and talent of the romantics and the adventurers. Musk and the BO people have put that back and we’re making forward progress again.
n
Major problem at church this morning. Powered everything up, programmed the services into the graphics computer, started the pre-service PowerPoint, uh-oh, the two main sanctuary screens are not working. The projectors are powering on but have no signal. So a trip up to the attic, one flight of stairs, into the electrical room, up a service ladder, through a square metal access door, onto the catwalk, then into the enclosure when some speakers and the SDI to HDMI converters are located. Both boxes have power but a blinking green light. Uh-oh, no signal to the boxes.
Back into the studio. Swap one cable for one projector into a known good video source. Screen now has a display. Thus a signal problem in the 40×40 router. Jump on the computer and check the router and it looks good. Change the routing for the projectors to another source, no luck. So time to get out the special BNC tool and move the signal cables to different output ports. Now back on to the computer and change the source for the output ports to the source (AUX buss output on the switcher). Success, both projectors now have an image that is correct.
It seems that the two ports used have gone back. Probably from the storms. Longest cable run in the building so may be from induced voltage. I doubt a voltage surge would have caused it through the converters as they are on transformers.
I need to do more research and see if there is any signal on the defunct router outputs by connecting to a local monitor. I suspect it will prove that the outputs are really truly dead.
I really don’t want another router as a replacement is a smart router which will handle any video input signal. That adds a delay. The current router is simply a path connection with no conversion ability. Since everything in the system is run through the router, all inputs and outputs, that delay each direction become very noticeable. If I have to replace I may have to route the cameras directly to the switcher rather than the router to eliminate at least one leg of delay. The delay is about 1/20 of a second (500 milliseconds). Double that up and that 1/10 of a second becomes a problem. And the cost is about $4K to replace.
I currently have eight (8) unused outputs on the router. I will wait awhile and see how things progress.
@ray, three times now I have lost my client’s proj input card (at one end of the cable run) and the AV receiver output (at the other end) as the result of induced emi from lightning.
I replaced the AVR one time, and switched to the second output the others.
The proj, at $12K was totaled all three times as the card isn’t available and the repair service can’t repair it.
This time around, we are using fiber to connect the two peices of gear, no copper connection between them.
n
COVID vaccine types in the US:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/different-types-of-covid-19-vaccines/art-20506465
In EMEA they have a ‘whole virus’ vaccine in the works:
https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/emea/four-types-covid-19-vaccine-snapshot
So there is a graphical front end to samba, and I can and did install it. Typically though, LAUNCHING it does nothing. No error, nothing. Turns out you have to open a terminal and type two commands before it works. Even after setting up the share, it’s still not visible on the network from the windows side.
I’m going to reinstall the nvr stuff and just get back to where I was. I’ll be better off because the cups error log won’t be filling the disk. I guess that at SOME point I’ll get the freaking drive with the video stored on it shared.
n
Don’t forget about the 4,000 ft wide meteor crater there.
https://static.trip101.com/paragraph_media/pictures/002/265/908/large/800px-Meteorcrater.jpg?1603876423
https://meteorcrater.com/
I can’t express enough how much the support from this group means to us.
Harold, I wish you and your wife the best possible outcome. I would have posted earlier, but was posting blind from my phone, and just backtracked to find Alan’s repost. Be well.
We enjoyed it. It was REALLY windy when we visited.
“Why Is Everyone In Texas Not Dying?”
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/why-everyone-texas-not-dying
“I’m sitting at a bar in Texas, surrounded by maskless people, looking at folks on the streets walking around like life is normal, talking with nice and friendly faces, feeling like things in the world are more-or-less normal. Cases and deaths attributed to Covid are, like everywhere else, falling dramatically.”
“If you pay attention only to the media fear campaigns, you would find this confusing. More than two weeks ago, the governor of Texas completely reversed his devastating lockdown policies and repealed all his emergency powers, along with the egregious attacks on rights and liberties.”
Nice graphs.
Keep a log as Jerry did?
Oh, I do. But, when I set up my wife’s Windows 2k computer years ago, I simply cloned it from mine, settings and all. Then, I changed its network ID, and Bob was a relative. That’s how the pros do it. (Don’t worry, I owned two licenses for Windows and all apps.) Never could figure out how to do that on Linux. Now, I didn’t do that on Win 10, because the two computers are very different. I am encouraging my wife to do her own settings, with help if necessary. It is hard to keep two or more computers with the same everything. It would still be nice to be able to save all settings in a file and then apply it to the new installation.
Regarding Samba, I too had a GUI Samba setup tool, but it disappeared, probably during a Mint update. I had lots of trouble on an all Mint network until I used that tool. It allowed me to see and choose my own network password, which was opaque to me. Bet you didn’t know Samba has its own password?
I never could get my two Mint computers, and several other distros on other computers to network at all, except for the pre-cooked Share folder that comes with some distros. I know some Linux gurus, and one helped me through that. Now, in spite of keeping mostly meticulous logs, I somehow failed to record that Samba password, and have lost it forever. It’s OK, I simply log onto my Windows computer from Mint, and enter the Windows account password. Works every time. I have the same problem between Mint and Android, but Android to/from Win10 works fine. It has to be Samba.
I asked one of my guru friends if I should dump Samba on an all Linux network, and he suggested not doing that. He said Samba is the most reliable networking protocol even for all Linux networks. Shudder. I have used Windows local area networking ever since it came out, and never had any trouble with it.
@JimB:
Two weeks from today I will be taking a trip in my Jeep up Coyote Canyon north of Borrego Springs. I will record the trip with my Garmin Montana 750i GPSr. When I get back home I will send the recorded trail up to my MapShare site and post its link back here.
https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/690986
It will also record the trip on the site as I travel via Iridum satellites.
Looking forward to that. I only have experience with the GPS on my Android phone.
Samba is installed, lots of samba folders on the filesystem but not one fucking clue how to actually use it or turn it on. NOTHING in the equivalent to control panel. “Network Settings?” that lets you change your host name, enter a domain name, or edit Hosts. Not helpful mint guys. “Network Connections?” Not really, lets you select a couple of things related to the internet and ip4 and 6.
/etc/samba/smb.conf
About 15 years ago, I sat with the Samba O’Reilly book and worked out a config for each user on the system to have access to their home directory and four read-only shares for various things. I haven’t touched it much since then.
Prior to that, I used a commercial Linux distro whose name escapes me but had decent Samba configuration with a GUI.
What was a 10 minute setup has now become 2 hours. MS rolled a new version of dotnet, 5.0, a big jump from 3.1.
apt get can’t find a version of 3.1 where it used to be, and the startup script for ispy agent pukes because it’s looking for 3.1 not 5.0
This must have all just happened because there is nothing on the ispy site or the googles.
what a heaping pile with peanuts in it.
n
And I can’t just copy the folder with the dotnet framework to the place in /usr/share/dotnet/folder wehre the other folder lives, because I don’t have permissions to write to that folder. MY COMPUTER. MINE. Do not forget that you mewling pukes.
Mine. And there should ALWAYS be a way for me to do what I tell it to do.
n
The DC metro area has more than two dozen law enforcement departments for PE* Harris to pick from.
(* PE = President Elect tm )
why yes I am a bit frustrated. The message could just as easily be “Hey man, that’s a protected os folder, do you REALLY want to save a file there? y/n” and then proceed.
n
‘cuz it makes SO MUCH SENSE that a user can nuke a partition without sudo and a password, but I don’t even have the OPTION to add so much as an explanatory note to that other folder.
I would wager that you would never consider the ’50 checks’ approach with the IRS.
“Why Is Everyone In Texas Not Dying?”
The bodies aren’t stacked like cordwood in Florida this Spring.
Of course, they weren’t back in July either.
sudo
Only if you’re sure.
WRT anonymous burner phones, it’s much harder than you might think at first glance.
All the legit plans want a bank account with autopay. Some will take a credit card (that is a visa gift card you bought with cash, for example.) Getting your picture taken when buying the card, the phone, or the SIM isn’t the only risk. If your normal phone and the burner are ever co-located then they’ve got you.
https://lifehacker.com/how-to-buy-a-burner-phone-1843905326
has an overview, and the parts they leave out or gloss over are revealing too.
For that matter, you better have a pattern of not taking your phone with you some places or some times, or they’ll get you on traffic analysis. Someone with mischief on their mind is better off not carrying any phone at all, and developing the patterns you want EARLY rather than later. You don’t want to be the guy that has only ever turned his phone off for the 2 hours around the ‘incident’… Or hey, your phone showed it was sitting at home, but your truck pinged three traffic sensors, and the ALPR at the scary apartment building near the incident. Why’d you leave your phone home genius? What were you doing out in the truck?
It’s a rare privately owned camera system that keeps video more than 2 weeks. Even big stores only keep a few months (usually) for insurance purposes. I’ve read several things though that convince me the cash register transactions, especially for burner phones, are kept much longer. Your neighbor’s nest camera might store video of your every coming and going for a lot longer…
n
Phone is associated with an incident. LEO pulls the entire movement history of that phone. Starts cross checking, looks for patterns, looks who is nearby those locations. Figures out where the phone was sold and when. Now they look for every OTHER phone that was at that store at that time. How many hits are also near the known movements of that phone?
added- if they want you badly, they will spend the effort to get you
Only if you’re sure.
–or willing to burn it down again if you’re wrong. Or if rm * works outside the folder you’re in…
n
@rick, one odd thing about the Visual tab of the comment form, right click it, and it’s a link not a text entry box.
Really only matters because right click paste won’t work. I can click inside, then ctrl V when needed.
I do a lot of pasting…
n
@nick
Right-click inside the comment box message area will paste just fine, in visual and text mode. At least for me.
The tabs *are* links. That’s how the form changes from visual to text or text to visual. (They are actually buttons that do the switching with a bit of JS.) Right-clicking any button will do that.
There you go, I thought it was implied:
SUre, DO it at your own risk. 🙂
@rick, if I right click in the visual box even after I’ve started typing, I get the typical page menu, for any web page (not actually the links menu as I first thought) “save page as” “save page to pocket” “view page source”, etc.
no paste or other text options as FF 86.0 must not see it as a text entry place.
When I right click on the text comment box, I get text editing menu, copy paste, check spelling etc.
–if I go BACK to visual, after going to text, then I get the text menu on right click.
Weird, but not really an issue, behaviour. just one of the weirdness of different browsers etc.
n
@nick
Yeh, I can sort of duplicate that. But if you
I always use Ctrl+X to cut, Ctrl-C to copy, and Ctrl+V to paste. Usually. That works every time.
Actually, I would. If I owed them $50.00 to which I think they are not entitled.
@Harold
“I can’t express enough how much the support from this group means to us.”
My thoughts and prayers are with you. Please keep us up to date.
“Colorado Congressman Ranger Fudd wants to take your guns away”
https://gunfreezone.net/colorado-congressman-ranger-fudd-wants-to-take-your-guns-away/
“I’m going to come right out and say it:”
“If a Democrat says that they served in the military, I will not assume that they are a patriot. In fact, I will assume the opposite. That they joined the military so that they could lead troops against American Citizens during a gun-grab or some other political purge. That fighting in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan was just how they gained battlefield experience for fighting their true enemy, the American people.”
Yup. Just another REMF. I don’t care if this guy claims to be an Army Ranger, signing up to be a dumbocrat voided that.
Just another gun grabber.
Reporting back on a couple of things.
I’ve read two books that were on one of the lists @Lynn posted:
Claire North, <u>The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August</u> (Amazon 4.4/5)
I found the premise of self-reincarnation as presented here to be engaging. The pursuit of the villain was sufficiently dystopian that it cast a bit of a pall over the story. At 432 pages, the length was about right and I am relieved that it was not conceived as a by-the-pound project. A few apparent inconsistencies that would commend themselves to a sequel, perhaps by introducing another protagonist.
Robert Charles Wilson, <u>The Chronoliths</u> (Amazon 3.8/5)
At 324 pages, I was willing to finish. Had it been 400, I would have bailed after 60. As an PBO editor in the 1960’s, I would have cut it to 160pp without a problem. James Hogan could have made this an interesting book with a real protagonist. As written, we have a narrator moving in fits and starts like a dust bunny just out of the reach of the broom.
Rep, Jason Crow:
“I grew up a hunter and served as an Army Ranger. I didn’t take my deer hunting rifle to Afghanistan, nor did I take my assault rifle deer hunting. Don’t be fooled by the gun lobby. The type of gun matters. Weapons of war have no place in our communities.”
Unless and until one of these berks can show that the U.S. Military is issuing semi-auto AR-15’s or Ak-47’s to troops in combat, making statements like this is conclusive evidence that they are pernicious f*cking liars.
And given his last sentence, I’d like to see his excuses as to why any local, state, or federal polizei should have weapons of war in our communities.
“I’d like to see his excuses as to why any local, state, or federal polizei should have weapons of war in our communities.”
–especially as that would out them as the standing army our founders warned against.
n
Reporting back on a couple of things.
I’ve read two books that were on one of the lists @Lynn posted:
Claire North, <u>The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August</u> (Amazon 4.4/5)
I found the premise of self-reincarnation as presented here to be engaging. The pursuit of the villain was sufficiently dystopian that it cast a bit of a pall over the story. At 432 pages, the length was about right and I am relieved that it was not conceived as a by-the-pound project. A few apparent inconsistencies that would commend themselves to a sequel, perhaps by introducing another protagonist.
Have you read “Replay” ?
https://www.amazon.com/Replay-Ken-Grimwood/dp/068816112X/?tag=ttgnet-20
Didn’t care to finish REplay. Still sitting on the bookshelf a year? two? later and it completely slipped my mind. As the time gets shorter, and the girl is younger and younger, I lost any interest.
n
@Lynn
Thanks! I have not read it, but it sounds good.
Ken Grimwood’s wiki entry (sadly, he has passed) includes
“On the Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List, Replay was voted to the #43 position in 2000 but climbed to #19 by 2003.”
The entry also includes a reference to a Richard Lupoff’s, “12:01” written in 1973. When Groundhog Day came out I knew it was similar to something I had read, but never came up with a title. Looks like it didn’t get collected early on, so I must have seen it when it was first published.
Turns out that the ss was a 1993 tv movie with Martin Landau. That dvd is scarce on the ground.
Also added Blake Crouch’ Dark Matter, which popped up on the River page for Replay as “Frequently Bought Together”.
ok, out of the rabbit hole
Unless and until one of these berks can show that the U.S. Military is issuing semi-auto AR-15’s or Ak-47’s to troops in combat, making statements like this is conclusive evidence that they are pernicious f*cking liars.
On my son’s first government paid trip to Iraq, the US Marine Corps bought the single largest purchase of automatic AK-47s in history (three ??? million) and gave one to each family in the remote areas of Iraq along with a hundred ??? rounds of ammo. The Marines had noted that they were not able to protect remote villages and families from the insurgents and decided to fix the situation as Marines are noted to do.
When my son and his friends entered their homes, the automatic AK-47 was required to be unloaded and present on the kitchen table. There was a remarkable compliance with this according to my son. The Iraqis were allowed to do anything with the AK-47 when the Marines were not there.
My son related a story. They were driving into an Iraqi village in the middle of the night. Before they got there, they heard many AK-47s firing. They camped outside the village and entered in the morning. There was a dead burro just outside the village. Apparently the Iraqi night sentries had gotten scared, could not see, and shot the burro by mistake. My son and his buddies called it an “Iraqi Death Blossom”. This is in relation to the awesome documentary, “The Last Starfighter”.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597/
fell back in
Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List
https://sites.google.com/site/sftop100/
The link contains links to the list, the extended list, and several others. Click on the titles to get the past ranking and vote distribution.
Replay is currently #293 on the extended list. It does not show any record of ever being higher.
The Top 100 list currently has 5 titles by Guy Gavriel Kay, which I strongly suspect is just proof of what happens when a dedicated fanbase follows a link from listserv. Interesting, though, that the 100 has four by Heinlein and one by Dick. Also two by Martin, five by Zelazny and six by Jordan.
The category assignments of “Novel” and “Collection” are self-evident, but “SO1-5” are not. I would argue, though, for a series or world category with one entry for Zelany’s Amber, Lewis’ Narnia and Pratchett’s Discworld novels.
If I needed another project I would make a meta-list.
Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List
https://sites.google.com/site/sftop100/
The link contains links to the list, the extended list, and several others. Click on the titles to get the past ranking and vote distribution.
Replay is currently #293 on the extended list. It does not show any record of ever being higher.
Dude, nice list !
Unfortunately, in these reader driven lists, the older the books are, they tend to fall out of the list. Which, has probably happened to “Replay”.
Without spoilers is the ending of replay worth the slog to get there?
n
Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List
https://sites.google.com/site/sftop100/
The link contains links to the list, the extended list, and several others. Click on the titles to get the past ranking and vote distribution.
Replay is currently #293 on the extended list. It does not show any record of ever being higher.
Wow, “Mutineer’s Moon” by David Weber is not even on the top 500 list.
https://muon.cloudbubble.com.au/sftop100/sfextnd.php
and
https://www.amazon.com/Mutineers-Moon-Dahak-David-Weber/dp/0671720856/?tag=ttgnet-20
Without spoilers is the ending of replay worth the slog to get there?
n
Dude, yes. But, you have to remember that I love dreky SF. The drekier, the better.
Here is my review of “Replay” on Amazon: “instead of groundhog day, groundhog mid-life”, 4 out of 5 stars
“This is a totally intriguing and interesting book. The personas get to live their mid-lives over and over again. Imagine going back 25 years and living again, knowing what you know now. Money would not be a problem since you know what to bet on. You would not repeat your old mistakes. But, you would have a whole new set of mistakes. ON and on. The interesting kicker on this story is … I wont spoil it for you but it is an interesting kicker.”
https://www.amazon.com/Replay-Ken-Grimwood/dp/068816112X/
Is this the first domino of 2008 redux?
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/archegos-fallout-nomura-crashes-after-reporting-record-2bn-loss-transactions-us-client
n
A long ago friend of mine is building a huge external drive with eight shucked drives. “Syba 8 Bay Tool Less Tray Hot Swappabe 2.5″ 3.5″ SATA Non Raid External USB 3.0 Enclosure SY-ENC50119l”
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MD2LNYX?tag=ttgnet-20
Does anyone have experience with this beast ?
“Dude, yes. But, you have to remember that I love dreky SF. ”
–I almost put it inthe donate pile unfinished. Maybe I won’t now. When I stopped reading, I couldn’t see any ending for the characters, and didn’t care about them enough to continue. In fact I was a bit grossed out that they were so selfish and didn’t even try to do anything about the serial killer guy…
n
How soon we forget. In another time, I might have used a weapon of war to go deer hunting: an M1 Garand. I think I lost it over a cliff in an almost tragic accident. Tragic in the sense that I almost fell over the cliff. But seriously… I just don’t buy that WOW bit. Many early Colts and lots of earlier black powder pistols were once weapons of war, and you don’t hear people complaining about them. Most of them were great stoppers.
I have known many good people, at least one of which was almost fanatic about anything you care to mention. My favorite fanaticism is the M1903 Springfield. Knew a great guy who collected and restored them. Had several mounted on display stands. He used to tour the shows and show them off. First class stuff. He could tell perfectly accurate stories for hours. Also knew how to shoot. Miss the guy.
Also knew a guy who was a BAR operator in WWII. Never heard of anyone complaining about them, although probably should have been alive during the roaring twenties. Gangsters in search of improved firepower cut them down so they could be concealed under a trenchcoat. Those guys must have been apes.