Mon. June 28, 2021 – if you don’t practice it, you will never learn

Hot and humid, possible rain, and surely some sun. Or some variation on the theme. If you guys are getting tired of the repetition, imagine me living with it 🙂

Yesterday was mixed rain and sun, with plenty of humidity and heat. I did get a bit of work done outside anyway, namely most of the grass cutting.

A quick look at the garden had more tomatoes ripening, lots of green still on the vines. The potted lime has 5 nice fruits on it. The blueberries are still ripening, with at least another half cup of berries ready soon. I harvested the one tennis ball sized onion out of what I planted last year. The grape vines died back almost to the root stock, but one is sending out new growth. It’s about 3-4 feet so far. I need to prune out all the dead grapevine sometime in the future. The herbs are flourishing.

It didn’t take too long to harvest the few things, and pull a couple of weeds.

Really I spent most of the day catching up on my online reading. There is plenty going on in the world and little good in the news. There is continued progress in the new race to space, and that is good, but it’s not something I follow. Of course the news is rarely full of ‘good’ news. Even accounting for that bias, there is a lot of stuff going on. For example, someone in south Chicago shooting up a car in traffic with a full auto rifle and a 100 round Beta magazine, in broad daylight. That is an escalation in the security situation in the city. Likewise, there was yet another daytime shooting in NYFC Times Square.

Nationally, we’ve now got the sitting President telling us rifles aren’t enough to keep the FedGov from killing us, we’ll need F-15s and nukes. It was bad enough when some nobody jerkoff from Cali said almost the exact thing, but now it’s the President? The president who seems more bizarre every day? Who does some sort of scary whisper voice during press conferences and talks about getting in trouble if he doesn’t do what ‘they’ say? THAT president? The same president who’s own party doesn’t trust him with nuclear launch codes?

Nationally, in big cities, and locally we have bad things getting worse. Yeah, doom and gloom. The end is nigh-er… but. Can you make the case it’s not?

And if not, then I hope you’re stacking it high.

nick

73 Comments and discussion on "Mon. June 28, 2021 – if you don’t practice it, you will never learn"

  1. drwilliams says:

    Second no-go area in Minneapolis commemorates where career criminal Winston “Boogie” Smith was killed after being cornered in a parking garage by a U.S. Marshal task force and he opened fire…

    from …

    his…

    Maserati.

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/06/when-city-officials-are-pro-crime.php

     

  2. Greg Norton says:

    I haven’t found any reason to watch Dr Who in the last five years and I don’t think I’ll be introducing my kids to the franchise any time soon either.

    That is a freak. Well outside the norms for society.

    Clickbait.

  3. ITGuy1998 says:

    I haven’t found any reason to watch Dr Who in the last five years and I don’t think I’ll be introducing my kids to the franchise any time soon either.

    We tried to get into Capaldi as the Doctor but we just didn’t care for his style. Or the turn the writing took. There were a couple good episodes, with the only exceptional one being the Christmas special with River Song. We also tried to watch Jodie’s Doctor. I think she did an ok job, but the companions, and the writing, were awful. We stopped after her first series.

    I just finished re-watching from #9 thru #11. I had forgotten how much I really disliked Clara as a companion, and she really brought Matt Smith down. The 10 seconds Karen Gillan appeared in Matt’s final episode eclipsed everything Clara had done to that point.

    I have zero desire to watch any new Doctor Who. In my mind, the series ended when Amelia and Rory died.

    Added: I also am amazed how much more I like Catherine Tate since the first time watching her series.

  4. dkreck says:

    Three days in Santa Barbara. Beautiful weather, overpriced hotel, well overpriced everything, crowded and very few masks. What restrictions?
    105F predicted here for next three days. Ouch on the PGE bill.

  5. Mark W says:

    ERCOT have mad a website update and the nice graph on the home page is gone 🙁

  6. Mark W says:

    We also tried to watch Jodie’s Doctor. I think she did an ok job, but the companions, and the writing, were awful. We stopped after her first series.

    The political overtones, the boring stories, and the cheap visual effects were all enough to make me stop watching half way through her first season. I’ve been watching since Pertwee.

    There was something odd about how bbca actually transmitted it. No blacks, just grays, and it looked like it was encoded down to 480p and upscaled.

  7. Nick Flandrey says:

    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/major-fire-explosions-near-london-rail-station

    Local Metropolitan Police believe the incident was not terror-related.

    n

  8. Nick Flandrey says:

    https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/fda-adds-warning-about-heart-inflammation-covid-19-mrna-vaccines

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) added a warning about the risk of developing heart inflammation to information about the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines.

    The FDA announced earlier this month that it would add the warning after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had reported that more cases of heart inflammation—either myocarditis or pericarditis—were found in young adults and children after they received the vaccines, which use mRNA technology.

    The warning issued by the FDA says that there may be increased risks “particularly following the second dose and with [the] onset of symptoms within a few days after vaccination.”

    “Additionally, the Fact Sheets for Recipients and Caregivers for these vaccines note that vaccine recipients should seek medical attention right away if they have chest pain, shortness of breath, or feelings of having a fast-beating, fluttering, or pounding heart after vaccination,” the agency said. “The FDA and CDC are monitoring the reports, collecting more information, and will follow-up to assess longer-term outcomes over several months.”

    COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

    There have been more than 1,200 cases of pericarditis or myocarditis in individuals who are aged 30 or younger who have received the vaccine doses, according to the latest CDC findings last week.

    The case rate, based on submissions to the FDA- and CDC-operated Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, is higher than expected in young males.

    For males between the ages of 12 and 17, the expected number of cases of heart inflammation following dose one using a 21-day window were two to 21. The observed number of cases was 32 through June 11. For males between the age of 18 and 24, the expected number of cases using the same parameters were three to 34. The observed number of cases was 47.

    n

  9. Greg Norton says:

    There was something odd about how bbca actually transmitted it. No blacks, just grays, and it looked like it was encoded down to 480p and upscaled.

    Cinematography is another area where the series has taken a dive in the Whitaker era. Go back and watch “Spyfall Part 1”. At the moment The Doctor drops the riff on the Bond signature introduction line, the picture is complete cr*p, completely overblown exposure. If any moment called for perfection and multiple takes, it was that one.

    (Of course we won’t go into the waste of Stephen Fry or Lenny Henry in that two-parter.)

    Contrary to conventional wisdom, I suspect that a lot of the long-time LGBTQXYZ behind the scenes people who helped drive the shows revival through the Capaldi era quit in disgust when the new showrunner showed up in Cardiff from London and layed out the plan, starting with the wardrobe.

    Setting aside the brilliant job the the wardrobe people did with every new era Doctor prior to Whitaker, they pulled off the singular achievement of making Kylie Minogue look vulnerable for the “Titanic” Christmas special.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKEbG34auGs

    (I forgot about David Tennant’s tux and Converse. They made it look effortless.)

    Do you really think the same craft people who pulled off that scene would have been happy with Whitaker’s look when the sketches arrived?

    River Song and Missy are what you get when gay men are assigned to dress a female Time Lord.

    Jodie Whitaker’s Doctor is what you get when straight men make the decisions … by comittee.

  10. Mark W says:

    Go back and watch “Spyfall Part 1”

    I didn’t watch it the first time…

    Voyage of the Damned was a great episode.

  11. Mark W says:

    The viewing stats on wikipedia are interesting. Capaldi’s 2nd and 3rd seasons drop off dramatically. Whitaker does well in the 1st season but fall through the floor in the 2nd season.

    I would guess there was an element of virtue-signalling-watching at first.

  12. Greg Norton says:

    Voyage of the Damned was a great episode.

    Best scene in the modern era IMHO.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E33vAhs4bNs

    If Russel T. Davies comes back, can we get Murray Gold too?

  13. Mark W says:

    Kylie is underrated.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCYqdhGSWng

    Classic BBC R2.

  14. lynn says:

    ERCOT have mad a website update and the nice graph on the home page is gone

    Yup. I hate progress.

  15. Nick Flandrey says:

    I actually saw the Voyage episode. Alonze’ Alonzo!

    n

  16. MrAtoz says:

    Or shoving their lifestyle in coworkers faces and expecting them to endorse.

    Live how you want. Just don’t stick it in my face and then complain when you don’t get a high five.

    + googolplex

    Unfortunately, the most woke of these ProgLibTurds, get the most LameStreamMedia press as another shim used by the Deep State Commie Pinko Bastards to destroy the nuclear, independent family the FUSA was founded upon. Puppet plugsy McSpongeBrain is used to push this nonsense.

    /whispervoice
    C’mon, man, wake up sheeple. These abnormals are a smaller minority than Blacks. Do you think they will ever rule over us? CWII is coming down the road.
    /whispervoice

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  17. Nick Flandrey says:

    An industrial supply auction just closed, and they had only 2 bids on ONE item in the whole auction. They had high starting bids, and reserves on all lots. NOTHING sold.

    Buyers hate opening bids, and reserves.

    n

  18. Greg Norton says:

    An industrial supply auction just closed, and they had only 2 bids on ONE item in the whole auction. They had high starting bids, and reserves on all lots. NOTHING sold.

    Buyers hate opening bids, and reserves.

    Most of the industrial states still have the emergency unemployment supplement in place.

    No one really believes the program will end in September. Heck, not that many people interviewed for local Faux News the other night believe Texas is serious about ending benefits early on Saturday.

  19. Greg Norton says:

    Unlike chicago–

    Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!

    Problem solved.

  20. Jenny says:

    Doctor Who – I liked the early seasons. They lost me pretty early, though. I love real science fiction, the hard core stuff that explores interesting questions with great writing (duh, who wouldn’t?). There were a couple of early episodes that were superb and pretty darn suspenseful. Loved the early Angels, and the ‘mommy’ episode. Don’t remember their names. The titanic was epic.

    Good weekend. Visiting with acquaintances -come- friends who live in a small town off the main road system. Interesting folks and we like them very much. More work at the old house. Rabbits – no kits from the does. Buck is shooting blanks or his falloffs aren’t indicative of a successful breeding. I’ve reached out to another acquaintance (working on building that to friendship) who has high quality rabbits. She’s willing to help me out with rabbit stud services with some good bucks, and will have a junior buck to place with me I hope.

    Anecdotes – the rabbit acquaintance / friend suddenly has more rabbits. Because a friend of hers died abruptly after receiving the second Covid shot. Correlation is not causation but one does go Hmmm. I see no reason to take a chance on the emergency authorized injection. I’d rather take my chances with Covid.

    Daughter is doing a full day camp this week at a farm, with horseback riding in the afternoon. Horses were my salvation through my tween / teen years. I don’t know that she’ll be horse crazy like I was – by her age I was reading every horse related thing I could find and begging for a pony.

    New job is more fun than work has any right to be. It’s been a long time since I enjoyed myself this much at work and I’m extremely grateful. I haven’t used SSIS before and I need to get a handle on it. I also need to get at least a novice level understanding of Visual Studio (2017 / 2019) and how it creates packages for SSIS. Currently beating my head against an Oracle driver problem. Oracle data provider odp.net installed on a MS SQL Server 2014 on a 2012 core server, so an SSIS package can hit an Oracle 12c server when a particular job runs. Right now the connection fails on our dev system but works on the programmers system where he wrote the SSIS package in Visual Studio. I don’t know what I don’t know and all of the components the programmer is working with are new to me. Fortunately everyone is patient with my self confessed ignorance and helping by answering questions and demo’ing their work to help me understand.

  21. lynn says:

    “The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August” by Claire North
    https://www.amazon.com/First-Fifteen-Lives-Harry-August/dp/0316399620/?tag=ttgnet-20

    A standalone fantasy science fiction book, no prequel, no sequel. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback published by Redhook in 2014.

    Meh. If you want to read a book about somebody living their life over and over again, read “Replay” again by Ken Grimwood. Much better book that I have read three or four times now.
    https://www.amazon.com/Replay-Ken-Grimwood/dp/068816112X/?tag=ttgnet-20

    My rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    Amazon rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (3,624 reviews)

  22. Nick Flandrey says:

    @jenny it is a joy to have work that you like and can do well…

    Interesting about the rabbits, I thought they bred, like, well, rabbits….

    WRT Dr Who, I grew up watching once I discovered the show. Tom Baker was my first and the only REAL Dr. I went back and watched all the older shows, and enjoyed it thorough the all creatures great and small guy. Then went away to college and found other interests (drinking and girls, mostly, although neither was new to me…) that took up my time.

    After a long hiatus I tried again, but just couldn’t get back into watching regularly. I did enjoy the spinoff with Capt Harkness…

    n

  23. Nick Flandrey says:

    read “Replay” again by Ken Grimwood.

    –really? I couldn’t finish it. I got as far as him coming back while she was a kid, and all the trying to convince her parents, put it down, and couldn’t be bothered to pick it up again.

    I thought the only really interesting part was the guy in the home for the insane.

    n

  24. MrAtoz says:

    MrsAtoz wanted to watch an episode of “Downton Abbey”, now we are binging every night. Damn that good British TV.

  25. MrAtoz says:

    The lulz never stop with the plugs administration:

    ‘Disconnected from reality’: Jen Psaki says 500,000 EV charging stations are needed for rural and disadvantaged communities

    plugs’ PuppetMaster believes us sheeple are too stupid to not believe this. Where’s my TonyMobile ™ foo! A chicken in every pot, too!

  26. Nick Flandrey says:

    Did I mention that it rained heavily last night and has been raining off and on all day?

    2.5 inches so far if my station is correct. Front lawn will be striped for a while longer I guess….
    n

  27. lynn says:

    New job is more fun than work has any right to be. It’s been a long time since I enjoyed myself this much at work and I’m extremely grateful. I haven’t used SSIS before and I need to get a handle on it. I also need to get at least a novice level understanding of Visual Studio (2017 / 2019) and how it creates packages for SSIS. Currently beating my head against an Oracle driver problem. Oracle data provider odp.net installed on a MS SQL Server 2014 on a 2012 core server, so an SSIS package can hit an Oracle 12c server when a particular job runs. Right now the connection fails on our dev system but works on the programmers system where he wrote the SSIS package in Visual Studio. I don’t know what I don’t know and all of the components the programmer is working with are new to me. Fortunately everyone is patient with my self confessed ignorance and helping by answering questions and demo’ing their work to help me understand.

    Everything works on the programmer systems because they tweak everything until it works. And then promptly forget what they tweaked.

    I took a support call from our installation guy in Japan back in 1991. He was in the middle of a bullpen of engineers with just desks, no walls, no cubicles. They were all staring at him. The Sun workstation was in the very middle of the room. He could not get our software to install. And of course it was a database installation problem. And our DBA was out that day. He and I finally got it working but it was more happenstance than actually finding out what the problem was.

  28. lynn says:

    The lulz never stop with the plugs administration:

    ‘Disconnected from reality’: Jen Psaki says 500,000 EV charging stations are needed for rural and disadvantaged communities

    plugs’ PuppetMaster believes us sheeple are too stupid to not believe this. Where’s my TonyMobile ™ foo! A chicken in every pot, too!

    And solar power plants with batteries covering 10+% of the land in the USA. Putting solar power plants and battery systems in the Rockies and Appalachians will be interesting. I don’t even want to talk about Alaska.

    One of my neighbors just got solar power panels on their roof. About 50 or 60 panels pointing east, south, and west. I guess they are fairly sure that the sun will never rise in the north because they covered everything else. I wondered if anyone bothered to calculate the load bearing ability of their roof, framing, and foundation to handle all of those solar panels. Me, I would have put the solar panels in their 3/4 acre back yard and cut down the 50 foot tall oak trees on the west side of their property.

  29. ~jim says:

    Nick, got the wicking t-shirt yesterday. Just in time, Seattle is slated for 111-113° today. For cooling, I should have gotten a size smaller so more of the shirt makes contact with the skin, but the difference between it and cotton is striking. Me like!

    I tried re-watching _Blake’s 7_ a while back but it had lost the appeal I had for it 30 years ago. Never could get into _Dr Who_.

  30. Nick Flandrey says:

    @~jim, to me the cotton t shirt feels like an insulator, and the wicking ones feel like the wind blows right thru them, like screen door vs solid door.

    The difference, even just sitting at my desk, is noticeable.

    n

  31. lynn says:

    “SpaceX’s Starlink Tops 69,420 Concurrent Users”
    https://www.pcmag.com/news/spacexs-starlink-tops-69420-concurrent-users

    “In February, SpaceX reported that Starlink was serving just over 10,000 users in the US and abroad.”

    Still working on their first million customers. That is sobering.

    And the USA military wants in on the action with a battery operated antenna. Of course they do.
    https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-mini-battery-powered-dish-us-military/

  32. Greg Norton says:

    MrsAtoz wanted to watch an episode of “Downton Abbey”, now we are binging every night. Damn that good British TV. 

    Don’t forget the movie. My wife saw it in a theater pre-Covid. A *packed* completely sold-out theater. All the showings that weekend at the local Alamo were sold out, including the last minute addition screening my wife attended at 9 AM on a Saturday morning!

    Who said people don’t want to go to theaters anymore.

    You’ve been through “Sherlock”, right?

    You may or may not like “Death in Paradise”, but it is among the biggest shows on the BBC right now.

  33. Paul+Hampson says:

    114 degrees f. at 1:30 pm in Salem OR – the last time I experienced this was surveying on a dry lake bed outside of Barstow CA in August about 30 years ago, fortunately I’m inside here with old but functioning AC.

  34. Greg Norton says:

    The best two minute summary of “Downton Abbey” that exists anywhere. A rare piece of true satire from the last decade of “Saturday Night Live”.

    “Hot. Way hot. Aaaaaaand the other one.”

    Someone in the writers’ room watched every single show, probably torrented to get them at the same time as the UK — a serious fanboy of the Chicken Lady.

    https://vimeo.com/36876238

  35. Nick Flandrey says:

    There will be investigations. From my daily FEMA digest…

    Partial Building Collapse – Surfside, FL
    National Watch Center
    Current Situation: The fire has been contained and search and rescue crews can now continue to work 24/7 with
    fewer limitations
    Lifeline Impacts: (FEMA Region IV )
    Safety & Security:
    ▪ 72 of the 156 units were involved in the collapse; remaining structure is compromised
    ▪ 152 (-4) individuals remain unaccounted for
    Food, Water, Shelter
    ▪ Residents in unaffected portions of the structure have been evacuated
    ▪ ARC is using 2 hotels to shelter 39 survivors (EM-3560 Daily Snapshot as of 3:00 p.m. ET, June 27)
    Health & Medical
    ▪ 12 injuries / 9 (+4) fatalities (EM-3560 Daily Snapshot as of 3:00 p.m. ET, June 27)
    FEMA / Federal Response
    ▪ Region IV IMAT-1 deployed; RRCC rostered
    ▪ Emergency Declaration FEMA-3560-EM-FL approved on June 25
    ▪ FEMA Administrator visited the site on June 27
    ▪ IOF will be operational today
    ▪ IA registration intake and help lines opened on June 26; IA staff onsite
    ▪ ESF 15: Team Leader deployed
    ▪ 3 FEMA LNOs deployed to FL; 1 each from US&R, FIMA, and Region IV
    ▪ MERS personnel/equipment deployed in support of Region IV IMAT
    ▪ US&R:
    ▪ VA-TF2, VA-TF1, & OH-TF1 assets on alert for national-level response
    ▪ Deploying 4 US&R structural engineers and 1 IST Mission Ready Package-Command IST to support the
    management of search and rescue operations (State Request)
    ▪ National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) deployed 6 subject matter experts (SMEs) to investigate
    under the National Construction Safety Team Act (NCST). NIST is operating under its own statutory authorities.
    ▪ USACE: ESF 3 Team Leader, 3 Geotechnical and Structural Safety Specialists, and 2 Debris SME en-route

    –looks like they were also prepping/prepped for it to not be an accident… “VA-TF2, VA-TF1, & OH-TF1 assets on alert for national-level response” because in the US, buildings don’t normally ‘just fall down.’
    n

  36. lynn says:

    “Yet More Olympics “Activism”: Medalist Turns Back To Flag During Anthem At Trials”
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/yet-more-olympics-activism-athlete-turns-back-flag-during-anthem-trials

    So what is this person going to do if she makes it to the Olympic games in Tokyo and they present her with a suit that says USA on the front and USA on the back ?

  37. Nick Flandrey says:

    Wonder who her sponsors are?

    n

  38. lynn says:

    –looks like they were also prepping/prepped for it to not be an accident… “VA-TF2, VA-TF1, & OH-TF1 assets on alert for national-level response” because in the US, buildings don’t normally ‘just fall down.’
    n

    You know, that is my thought. The building went down just too orderly. The chance of a sinkhole being perfectly centered under the foundation piers and everything falling down in a well ordered pile like that is very low.

    Yet, somebody dropping the building does not make sense. No one has come out and said “we did it !” that I have heard of.

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    1
  39. Nick Flandrey says:

    Note to olympic athletes, you are not there on YOUR behalf, you are there on OURS. The olympics are a celebration of nationalism. If you don’t love the nation that made it possible for you to be there, you shouldn’t be there.

    Do your own thing, ‘live your best life’, and make whatever ‘statement’ you want, on your own time. The olympics are OUR time. If you aren’t part of OUR, you have no business being there representing US.

    Period, full stop.
    n

  40. lynn says:

    “Judge dismisses FTC and state antitrust complaints against Facebook”
    https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/28/judge-dismisses-ftc-antitrust-complaint-against-facebook.html

    “A federal court on Monday dismissed the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust complaint against Facebook.
    The dismissal deals a major setback for the agency’s complaint that could have resulted in Facebook divesting Instagram and WhatsApp.
    In the filing, the court states that the FTC did not prove Facebook maintains a monopoly.”

    Well, that is interesting.

    Hat tip to:
    https://thelibertydaily.com/

  41. Greg Norton says:

    –looks like they were also prepping/prepped for it to not be an accident… “VA-TF2, VA-TF1, & OH-TF1 assets on alert for national-level response” because in the US, buildings don’t normally ‘just fall down.’

    I just saw a story that the pool deck was determined to be leaking into the parking garage below as far back as 2018.

    I saw the same thing at the Dobie Center at UT when we were there at the old job in WeWork space below the pool in 2019. However, the Dobie Center is built on solid ground whereas the barrier islands off the Florida peninusula like Miami Beach are just sandbars that got lucky.

  42. RickH says:

    The building went down just too orderly. The chance of a sinkhole being perfectly centered under the foundation piers and everything falling down in a well ordered pile like that is very low.

    …not according to this report, from structural engineers that know more about this than you and I.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/possible-failure-point-emerges-miami-115813207.html

    Evan Bentz, a professor of structural engineering at the University of Toronto, said that the best evidence so far had come from the video and some simple reasoning — pointing a finger of suspicion at the supporting columns in the underground parking garage.

    “The primary purpose of all the columns in the basement is to hold the structure up in the air,” he said. “Because the structure stopped being held up in the air, the simplest explanation is that the columns in the basement ceased to function.”

    Other theories expressed in comments here sound more like conspiracy theories to me.

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  43. dcp says:

    a size smaller

    Will it shrink in the wash?

    ———-

    Downton Abbey

    I liked Gosford Park very much.

  44. lynn says:

    “It happened to me, the value of a cable gun box – update”
    https://gunfreezone.net/it-happened-to-me-the-value-of-a-cable-gun-box/

    “We drove from Alabama to North Carolina yesterday. Got to the hotel last night at midnight.
    This morning, I get a call on my hotel phone from local police that my truck was broken into.”

    Bummer.

    Good prep.

  45. ~jim says:

    Will it shrink in the wash?

    I doubt it will shrink much 67/33% polyester/cotton.

    I loved _Gosford Park_ too.

    @Nick,

    Next time I go by JoAnn Fabrics I’ll see about knitting needles and wool. I figure making socks has to be pretty simple, no? Something to do with my hands while watching TV.

  46. Alan says:

    I saw an iD4 VW commercial on the TV at the pizza place last night.

    And last night I saw a commercial for the EV iX and i4 GGGs (German Grocery Getters).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBO-IUKUyoo

  47. Geoff Powell says:

    @all:

    Why are “grocery getters” always German? Surely any 4 wheel transport can serve that purpose?

    Please enlighten this non-USAian.

    G.

     

  48. SteveF says:

    from structural engineers that know more about this than you and I

    Now just slow down a minute there, cowboy. Are you implying that a degree from Twitter U does not convey the maximum possible level of expertise?

  49. SteveF says:

    Why are “grocery getters” always German?

    That’s Greg’s term, and evidence suggests that he is contagious.

  50. Alan says:

    Surfside…

    Let the finger-pointing begin:
    Surfside official was sent disturbing report. He told board condo was ‘in good shape’.
    https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/miami-beach/article252394393.html

    Eyewitness:
    Woman told husband on phone she saw pool cave in before building fell
    https://www.foxnews.com/us/miami-condo-collapse-woman-told-husband-pool-cave-in

    Greased palms?:
    Developers of doomed Fla. tower were once accused of paying off officials
    https://www.foxnews.com/us/developers-of-doomed-fla-tower-were-once-accused-of-paying-off-officials-report

  51. Alan says:

    Now just slow down a minute there, cowboy. Are you implying that a degree from Twitter U does not convey the maximum possible level of expertise?

    Twitter U only gets you a Masters. You need to apply to Facebook U for your PhD.

  52. lynn says:

    @all:

    Why are “grocery getters” always German? Surely any 4 wheel transport can serve that purpose?

    Please enlighten this non-USAian.

    G.

    We have three wheeled and two wheeled grocery getters here also. I used to go get groceries occasionally when I had a Honda Valkyrie with hard saddle bags. No cases of water then.
    https://slingshot.polaris.com/en-us/

  53. Alan says:

    Some Covid good news perhaps…

    Pfizer and Moderna Vaccines Likely to Produce Lasting Immunity, Study Finds.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/28/health/coronavirus-vaccines-immunity.html

  54. RickH says:

    “Remember – everything you read on the Internet is true” – Abraham Lincoln.

    10
  55. Nick Flandrey says:

    Pfizer and Moderna Vaccines Likely to Produce Lasting Immunity, Study Finds.

    –they’re not even providing TEMPORARY immunity for far too many people, let alone lasting….

    n

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  56. Nick Flandrey says:

    I’ve merely mentioned that the video of the collapse looks exactly like something from CDI, minus the flash of the demo charges.

    The mechanism is the same as a controlled demo, weaken the structure, pick up part of it and drop it on the rest, shock loading and overcoming the remaining structure.

    Pancake failures don’t stop. In this case, in the middle area, the bottom dropped out, the next layer came down, and then they all followed. The no longer supported tower started the same thing, one layer hammering into the other…. it’s remarkable that it all falls straight down, especially the second part to fall.

    n
    added- our CERT class discussed this briefly, in the context of urban search and rescue, with the idea that by understanding the failure, we’d understand where to look for voids. What I didn’t see in the pix were intact floor slabs stacked up. Seems to me the floor slabs should have stayed mostly intact.

  57. Greg Norton says:

    “Why are “grocery getters” always German?”

    That’s Greg’s term, and evidence suggests that he is contagious.

    They’re always German in the suburbs of DC and the tech hubs, preferably purchased at the factory as part of an extended Europe trip with the excuse being to save on the rental car. Or, at least, they used to be purchased that way pre-Covid.

    We’re on our second tech hub suburb. Tampa doesn’t count.

    However, Tampa was where I saw the ultimate German grocery getter back ~ 2000 — a Freightliner Unimog kitted out for the suburbs visiting at one of the neighbor’s houses one morning. Sadly, by the time I went back and got my camera (no iPhone back then), the monstrosity was gone.

    Who needs a G Wagon?

    Ah, the days of $1.05/gallon gas.

  58. lynn says:

    Surfside…

    Let the finger-pointing begin:
    Surfside official was sent disturbing report. He told board condo was ‘in good shape’.
    https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/miami-beach/article252394393.html

    Eyewitness:
    Woman told husband on phone she saw pool cave in before building fell
    https://www.foxnews.com/us/miami-condo-collapse-woman-told-husband-pool-cave-in

    Greased palms?:
    Developers of doomed Fla. tower were once accused of paying off officials
    https://www.foxnews.com/us/developers-of-doomed-fla-tower-were-once-accused-of-paying-off-officials-report

    Hopefully the cause of failure will be found and released.

    I watched a three hour special on the World Trade Center failure several years ago on the Discovery ??? channel. After the Twin Towers fell, the chief architect released his thoughts / findings and they interviewed him for three hours. I watched the special with total amazement, a disconcerting note was that the architect cried through most of it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center_(1973%E2%80%932001)#Destruction

    The first problem was extreme cost cutting throughout the project required that they innovate the methods of construction. The client was the New York Port Authority who was not subject to an overriding authority so they signed off on everything without a thought.

    The second problem was the floors were held up by slats in the Ibeam structure. The floors and the Ibeam structure were not bolted together. When the planes full of jet fuel slammed into the buildings, the extreme heat from the jet fuel fire melted the slats and the floors started dropping from the middle of the buildings. The cascading weight of the floors dropping through the buildings caused the Ibeam structures to fail.

    The third problem was that the stairways were not armored and were mislocated. The stairways were triple sheetrocked rather than cinder blocked so the plane debris went right through them. Also the stairways were located in the center portions of the buildings instead of the outside corners so the debris from just one plane took out both stairways.

    Even with the severely modified construction practices, the buildings were just fine until the 767s slammed into them. The thousands of gallons of burning jet fuel were the chief cause of the failure. Much of the fire retardant sprayed onto the Ibeam structure had fallen off over the years but was of questionable value even when still on.

  59. SteveF says:

    Asbestos insulation was used at the beginning of construction of the twin towers but was discontinued before completion. IIRC one tower had asbestos higher up than the other did but I couldn’t confirm in a quick search a minute ago. If I did remember correctly, that would explain some of the claim oddities in the burning and collapse.

  60. CowboySlim says:

    Now just slow down a minute there, cowboy. Are you implying that a degree from Twitter U does not convey the maximum possible level of expertise?

    It wasn’t me that said that.

  61. Nick Flandrey says:

    Consider that NYC is an earthquake zone, and the building code does not reflect that.

    A common practice is using common bolts to initially assemble the structure, and then they are supposed to be swapped out later for the actual rated bolts…. no one who knows NYC building practice believes that actually happens.

    In the middle east they combat the poor quality by making stuff massively oversized. I had 18 inch floors where in the US it would only be 6″. And it wasn’t just because the building was designed to resist tanks. That works most of the time…

    n

  62. Greg Norton says:

    Consider that NYC is an earthquake zone, and the building code does not reflect that.

    The former IBM building in Seattle uses the same structural design as the World Trade Center to maximize floor space.

    I still believe that the appropriate response would have been to build back exactly the same.

    We had to get SWAC cards at the last job to work on projects for the Port Authority, who run the tunnels and have big plans for tolling in the city. I never completed the credential process because, even to work remotely, activating the ID required picking up the card in person at … the new World Trade Center building. Even pre-Covid, that was a bit scary.

  63. Greg Norton says:

    The first problem was extreme cost cutting throughout the project required that they innovate the methods of construction. The client was the New York Port Authority who was not subject to an overriding authority so they signed off on everything without a thought.

    What? The Port Authority pinching pennies? I’m shocked! Shocked!

    My last assignment for the old job was at PANYNJ. The demo that failed was trying to satisfy their desire to pinch pennies by not adding some new metal to their plazas.

  64. drwilliams says:

    “I still believe that the appropriate response would have been to build back exactly the same.”

    Yup

  65. Greg Norton says:

    Right now the connection fails on our dev system but works on the programmers system where he wrote the SSIS package in Visual Studio. I don’t know what I don’t know and all of the components the programmer is working with are new to me. 

    The last time I touched Windows development was Visual C++ … 2007 (?) shortly before I left the Death Star.

    Integrating third party libraries without source code available was often a struggle due to the mismatch in Visual Studio runtimes used to link the DLLs since even version and point release values could match a wide number of builds from Redmond, further identified by … UUID … ? … resulting in crashes if one side alloced and the other side freed memory.

    I developed the black magic we used to embed Python since our developers got lazy in their scripts and called out to ctypes. Grrrr. The ultimate solution was to build everything with one devloper’s machine, binary EXE for the product and DLLS along with the shared libraries, PYDs, essentially renamed DLLs, for Python.

    Which machine didn’t really matter as long as everything got built there using the same Visual Studio installation and patch level.

    Surprisingly, I still see a lot of places getting Python embedding wrong, especially with game developers. They just grab the DLLs from Python.org and away they go.

  66. Mark W says:

    the extreme heat from the jet fuel fire melted the slats

    I think you mean softened, not melted. You’re playing right into the conspiracy theory with that.

  67. lynn says:

    Consider that NYC is an earthquake zone, and the building code does not reflect that.

    The former IBM building in Seattle uses the same structural design as the World Trade Center to maximize floor space.

    I still believe that the appropriate response would have been to build back exactly the same.

    We had to get SWAC cards at the last job to work on projects for the Port Authority, who run the tunnels and have big plans for tolling in the city. I never completed the credential process because, even to work remotely, activating the ID required picking up the card in person at … the new World Trade Center building. Even pre-Covid, that was a bit scary.

    No, the World Trade center has armored stairwells, three of them. Two at opposite outside corners and one in the center. Drove the cost of the building up by at least 20%. The only way the building would lose all three stairwells would be to lose the entire floor and at that point the top of the building falls off.

    I won’t work in any large building anymore. The days of running down a stairwell and having to flatten myself against the wall because the firefighters are coming up are gone for me. All their gear makes them about four foot wide and three foot deep. I did that twice, once from the 27th floor, once from the 6th floor. I want to be able to open a window and jump out if needful.

  68. Greg Norton says:

    No, the World Trade center has armored stairwells, three of them. Two at opposite outside corners and one in the center. Drove the cost of the building up by at least 20%. The only way the building would lose all three stairwells would be to lose the entire floor and at that point the top of the building falls off.

    Still, PANYNJ is the landlord. Corners were cut, guaranteed.

    And, once I had that credential, our group’s Wally would have been even more useless.

  69. lynn says:

    the extreme heat from the jet fuel fire melted the slats

    I think you mean softened, not melted. You’re playing right into the conspiracy theory with that.

    What conspiracy theory is that ? And yes, softened would be a better term than melted. An even better term would be inelastic deformation. As the temperature approached 1,500 F ? 1,700 F ? the slats got soft and bent over, allowing the floor to fall to the next floor according to the chief architect. Which then fell to the next floor, cascading. Horrible. He had an animation showing the process.

  70. Mark W says:

    What conspiracy theory is that ?

    The one where the only way for the floors to collapse is for the steel to have actually melted, but it couldn’t melt because jet fuel doesn’t burn hot enough, therefore it was a deliberate demolition.

    You can clearly see the flaw in that argument, but as Rick says, everything on the internet is true. Deliberate demolition.

     

  71. lynn says:

    I got the privilege of reactivating one of my Windows 10 PCs today. The Office Administrators new PC (the one with the Intel 480 GB SSD failure) refused to activate. She got lost in the process and called me over. I gave up and called the 855 number. First I used the automated attendant service which proceeded to fail. Then I got the guy in India / Pakistan / who the heck knows. After I read the 9 groups of numbers to him he asked me why I was reactivating. I told him new motherboard, new hard drive, etc. He then said ok and proceeded to give me the 60 numbers to confirm the reactivation. I then confirmed and it reactivated. What a pain !

    If the Windows 10 Pro x64 software had been $50 then I would have given up. But the $200 cost made me go through the entire process.

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