Wed. Apr. 13, 2022 – ya put your right foot in, ya put your right foot out…

By on April 13th, 2022 in culture, decline and fall, ebay, prepping

Warm and wet again.   It did rain on the plain in Spain yesterday, for values of ‘rain’ and ‘spain’ that are closer to ‘houston’ and ‘misty drizzle’.   Rounding error.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.   Today should be more of  the same, overcast, humid, rain in places.

Did my ‘south’ pickups.  Stuff for the BOL and gub accessories mostly.  “Why, no sir, I don’t have a single complete gub in the house….”   I might have a “few” parts in a box somewhere…

I’ve got my ‘north’ pickups to do today and tomorrow.   Looking at the map, I may not combine them with my trip to the BOL to meet the engineer.   One is WAY off the path.  It might make more sense to do the out of the way pickup today and just leave it all on the truck for the trip up tomorrow.  So many choices.

Americans are certainly used to an overabundance of choices.   We even have a branch of science* to study why having too many choices is bad in retail, and in life.   I’ve argued for a while that one of the main underlying and crucial differences between Americans and Europeans (well, really everyone else) is that we come from a culture of abundance and they come from a culture of scarcity.  It really does impact how you relate to almost everything.

With that in mind, the coming shortages and economic collapse are going to be very hard for Americans to accept and ‘deal with’.   I think there will be a lot of people whose brains just sort of vapor lock on the idea that there AREN’T any choices.  They are going to sputter, and deny, and b!tch, and fail to adapt to the new reality.

Don’t be one of them.  Get your head around the idea that things are not normal, won’t be normal, and it will be a long time before a new normal establishes itself.  This will free you to act accordingly.

Stacking up stuff so you personally still have choices might be a really good idea too.

nick

*well, not ‘science’ exactly, but SOCIAL science…

(and Friday the Thirteenth falls on a Wednesday this month)

89 Comments and discussion on "Wed. Apr. 13, 2022 – ya put your right foot in, ya put your right foot out…"

  1. Nick Flandrey says:

    74F and 92%RH.    We are well inside the national forecast’s “thunderstorms possible” area today.   I’m hoping that we don’t get poured on.

    n

  2. SteveF says:

    Alternatively, Friday the Thirteenth falls on the Fifteenth this month.

  3. Greg Norton says:

    Just got a invite to a “Server-Side Swift with Vapor” tutorial.

    I‘m old enough to remember when vapor-ware was a bad thing…

    Hot Skillz!

    And yet another group of language fans try to reinvent the Tcl wheel while Apple deprecates Expect/Tcl on Mac OS.

  4. Nick Flandrey says:

    Speaking of programming…

    D2’s gifted and talented supplemental program has been “coding” this semester.  They started with HTML, revisited Scratch, and moved into Python.    THIS WEEK they  introduced “commenting” your code to the kids.

    n

  5. Greg Norton says:

    The only mandate I support: Require vaccinations for all personnel working in health care. Vulnerable patients catching respiratory viruses in hospitals has always been a problem. Flu shots should have always been required, and now Covid as well.

    In the case of Covid, the jabs don’t prevent transmission. 

    From what I understand, everyone in my own doctor’s office had it in February after a patient came in the door concealing symptoms.

    My wife and her co-workers are over boosters to the point that they will find other jobs if necessary. That isn’t a problem in Texas. She also has a Florida license if it comes to that, where regulations have been even looser and bodies aren’t piling up in the streets.

  6. Ray Thompson says:

    Speaking of programming…

    I really despise Adobe and their attitude about their applications. Specifically the installation routines. The assumption made by Adobe is their stuff is more important than anything else on the computer. Overwriting settings, making their app always selected, deciding where to put files and the user be damned. They think they know what is best and users must abide by their decisions.de

    But I suspect that many applications developed by those who rarely see the sun are that narrow minded. Often clueless programmers with no concept of actual use of their software. Zit faced little cretins whose last date involved their right hand and a jar or Vaseline. Inept unkept snot muffins who have no concept of the real world yet consider themselves important contributors to society and without them the world would end.

  7. MrAtoz says:

    plugs is squawking about ”ghost guns”, high capacity mags, and assault weapons. I believe this is a ruse to push an all out ban, or tax, or restriction on all guns. Maybe he thinks SCOTUS will support it with “What’s A Woman” on the bench. The items he is yelling about have all been covered before and make no difference in gun violence. Banning cars would save more lives. Oh, wait, that is up next.

  8. Pecancorner says:

    I complained too soon about my crabapple tree. It IS blooming after all.  My experience is with stone fruits, which  bloom before the leaves come on. But apparently apple trees are different, and the leaves grow first, then the buds and blossoms appear. 

    So that was a nice surprise this morning. 

    And we got half an inch of rain yesterday afternoon, along with a bit of pea-sized hail. The rain was nice, gentle, and no wind. We sat on the porch during the storm and listened to the thunder and the birds. 

  9. Nick Flandrey says:

    We sat on the porch during the storm and listened to the thunder and the birds. 

    take your joy where you find it.

    n

  10. Greg Norton says:

    But I suspect that many applications developed by those who rarely see the sun are that narrow minded. Often clueless programmers with no concept of actual use of their software. Zit faced little cretins whose last date involved their right hand and a jar or Vaseline. Inept unkept snot muffins who have no concept of the real world yet consider themselves important contributors to society and without them the world would end.

    Does Adobe still put “Credits” buttons on the About window in the applications? If so, read the names. You’ll quickly understand the problem.

  11. Ray Thompson says:

    Does Adobe still put “Credits” buttons on the About window in the applications?

    Yep. Seems to be largely from a crowded, filthy, disgusting, polluted country where labor is cheap, and the support person is named “Dave” with English being a tertiary language.

  12. ITGuy1998 says:

    Yep. Seems to be largely from a crowded, filthy, disgusting, polluted country where labor is cheap, and the support person is named “Dave” with English being a tertiary language.

    Hey, you’re talked to “Dave from Texas” too? Small World!

    /sarcasm

  13. Greg Norton says:

    The Legend of Jeff may be dead, but MacKenzie drove the Bronco …

    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/business/mackenzie-scott-charity.html

    Paywalled.

    And, please, that woman never sweated making rent.

  14. Ray Thompson says:

    Hey, you’re talked to “Dave from Texas” too? Small World!

    My “Dave” was from Kansas. When I asked if he had ever been to Wichita, he said he had never been to Ohio.

  15. Greg Norton says:

    My “Dave” was from Kansas. When I asked if he had ever been to Wichita, he said he had never been to Ohio.

    “Dave” gets around. He was selling solar power systems by phone here in Texas last week.

    I hadn’t heard from “Dave” for a while. When he worked for the IRS, I gave him such a hard time on the phone that he promised to drive out to my house and shoot me in the face.

    That’s another knock on the door which I’m still waiting to hear.

  16. ITGuy1998 says:

    It’s been a while since I’ve messed with a telemarketer. We were waiting for hours at Vanderbilt for my son’s insulin prescription to be filled. I got a car warranty call, and I was already bored and frustrated. I made it all the way to a third person, supposedly a manager. He might have uttered a few obscenities before he hung up.

  17. Kenneth C Mitchell says:

    Nick sez: “ THIS WEEK they  introduced “commenting” your code to the kids.”

    My son writes: “Document my code? Why do you think they call it CODE?  It was hard to write; it ought to be hard to read!”

  18. Greg Norton says:

    Nick sez: “ THIS WEEK they  introduced “commenting” your code to the kids.”

    My lead on my last assignment at Death Star Labs spent his days working on his Patent idea and modifying the project code to his idea of perfection, which included stripping much of my comments and white space, sometimes introducing bugs carelessly moving semicolons and removing brackets.

    In the case of one *.c file which was critical to the proper operation of the VPN, handling the data arriving and departing on the secure link, I flat out told Patent Boy, “If you f*cking touch this file, I will direct the angry 3AM phone calls to you.”

    The file wasn’t touched, but Patent Boy was very P/A and found other ways to get even for that remark. He was also fond of using “admin” in Visual Source Safe and, later, Subversion when checking in his beautification changes to avoid getting blame.

    One upside of Git — it is very hard to fake credentials in source history with decentralized revision control.

  19. JimB says:

    Ray, I haven’t allowed any Adobe products on any of my devices for at least a decade, maybe two. Life is better.

  20. Greg Norton says:

    Ray, I haven’t allowed any Adobe products on any of my devices for at least a decade, maybe two. Life is better.

    I experimented with Photoshop Elements on Windows for a while as a  second platform for editing/archiving photos to avoid being dependent on iPhoto on Mac. I’m still paying the price for that experiment since some of my pics from the last five years have gone missing, and Elements is not as straightforward as iPhoto in terms of organizing archives.

    I miss Picasa’s Windows application, which was available up until Google bought the company. It was a true iPhoto alternative.

  21. Alan says:

    @Ray, you’ve got to stop suppressing your feelings, it can be bad for your health 😉 

  22. Alan says:

    On the other hand, Adobe Scan works great on my Android phone. No more running out to FedEx to scan a document when just a photo of it isn’t sufficient. And it’s free. 

  23. Alan says:

    @nick, have there been any of these new “bin stores” opened in your area? Apparently a few have opened here but I haven’t had a chance to check them out yet. Interesting alternative to the auction route. 

  24. Ray Thompson says:

    I haven’t allowed any Adobe products on any of my devices for at least a decade

    I really need Lightroom and Photoshop. I have tried alternatives and nothing really comes close unless there is significant cost involved. And learning curve. Photomechanic, ON1, etc. I have tried and all fell short in some sense. There are also some plugins that I need that only work on Lightroom or Photoshop.

    The products are good, almost the standard to which other products are compared. It is the installation assumptions and the manner that Adobe thinks they own the system.

    you’ve got to stop suppressing your feelings, it can be bad for your health

    Your right of course. I really suppressed my feelings about that third world country. Where pollution, filth, over crowding, horrible air, lack of space, and chinga, changa, dink, clink, yeen, screetch is the music of choice. One positive, at least the music is not rap or hip-hop.

  25. nick flandrey says:

    @alan,  the Goodwill ‘bins’ have 4 stores around houston.   Long Point Rd, Greenspoint mall, South Gessner, and Fuqua.  At least those are the ones I’ve been to.   They all have a distinct personality.

    One of the auctioneers I frequent for open box/returns has a couple of bins in the warehouse you can pick thru while waiting for your stuff, two items for $1.   I’ve gotten some good stuff.

    There are several storefront operations near me that buy bulk and then just shelve it in their stores.   I haven’t looked at their pricing, but one new one is right across from my storage facility.  I will pop in there when I have an extra bit of time.  

    Some of the auctioneers are clearly spending too much on sourcing, as they set high starting prices and the items go unsold for many auctions.    That’s a rookie mistake.    The stuff isn’t worth what you paid, it’s worth what someone will pay YOU for it.

    n

  26. Greg Norton says:

    @alan,  the Goodwill ‘bins’ have 4 stores around houston.   Long Point Rd, Greenspoint mall, South Gessner, and Fuqua.  At least those are the ones I’ve been to.   They all have a distinct personality.

    I think he means the stores where Amazon and other store returns end up available in smaller quantities, single item or closed mystery bags instead of bins. There is one in Cedar Park, but I haven’t been.

    A former co-worker went to work at Affirm last year, and it is amazing how much Amazon cr*p is being moved on payments via that “service”. Of course, that means more returns for the auctions and bin stores, and EBay uses Affirm as well now.

    This won’t end well.

  27. Paul Hampson says:

    And it’s free

    Cynic here.  They may not charge your credit card but they’ll get their piece of flesh somewhere down the line.

  28. nick flandrey says:

    One positive, at least the music is not rap or hip-hop.

    oh but there is my friend, there is… and I’m not linking because it sucks as hard as you might imagine.

    n

  29. MrAtoz says:

    LOL! The first of Abbott’s buses arrived in DC and dropped off crimmigrants. He says he has another 900 buses available. He should send the next load to plugs’ compound in Delaware.

    And, it’s rumored the CDC will extend masks mandates on planes/trains for another two weeks. Probably two week extensions until the end of October.

  30. Greg Norton says:

    On the other hand, Adobe Scan works great on my Android phone. No more running out to FedEx to scan a document when just a photo of it isn’t sufficient. And it’s free. 

    Of course, the EULA voids your right to privacy about whatever is on the scanned document, and the contents are data mined.

  31. Greg Norton says:

    LOL! The first of Abbott’s buses arrived in DC and dropped off crimmigrants. He says he has another 900 buses available. He should send the next load to plugs’ compound in Delaware.

    DeSantis booked the buses to Delaware back in November.

    https://www.newsmax.com/us/desantis-biden-jacksonville-delaware/2021/11/11/id/1044242/

    Abbott wants to be DeSantis but he still cares what the Texas press thinks.

    DeSantis faces a Florida press corps, including the newsroom at the last Warren Buffett owned TV station, who would still prefer “Party At Kitty And Studs” running in the Governor’s Mansion 24/7.

    Even Adam “Opie” Putnam, the Bush family’s lap poodle and designated dynasty heir in the state, would have been preferable.

  32. lynn says:

     And apropos of nothing, it is froggy mating season again, and the air is full of the mating calls.  REALLY FULL.   Like “keep you awake it’s so loud” full.

    n

    Get triple pane windows with a laminate insert to cut the noise.  I don’t hear the froggies at all and we have them in the front and side ditches to the max this year.  I still hear the train horn though since it is only three blocks away.  And your a/c / heating system / wallet will thank you also. I have these on my house, all 36 windows:

         http://valuewindowsdoorshouston.com/gs-series-windows/

  33. lynn says:

    plugs is squawking about ”ghost guns”, high capacity mags, and assault weapons. I believe this is a ruse to push an all out ban, or tax, or restriction on all guns. Maybe he thinks SCOTUS will support it with “What’s A Woman” on the bench. The items he is yelling about have all been covered before and make no difference in gun violence. Banning cars would save more lives. Oh, wait, that is up next.

    The crazies in California are trying to make all gun manufacturers microstamp the gun serial number onto each cartridge fired through a pistol.  This is a Kamala Harris (yup, the VP) program from 2007.  “California bill aims to jumpstart ‘microstamps’ on handguns”

         https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/california-bill-aims-jumpstart-microstamps-handguns-76628368

    There is an article about microstamping in my latest Guns and Ammo magazine.  It is incredibly easy to defeat.

  34. lynn says:

    Pearls Before Swine: Wait Staff Tips

       https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2022/04/13

    OK, that is gross.  And scary.

  35. lynn says:

    “First bus with migrants sent by Gov. Greg Abbott arrives in Washington, D.C.”

        https://www.chron.com/politics/article/Migrants-buses-Washington-DC-Texas-Greg-Abbott-17077777.php

    Promises made, promises kept.

  36. lynn says:

    “’Udderly heinous’: Wharton pranked with fake ‘Chick-Fil-A coming soon’ sign, cops looking for culprit”

        https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Wharton-Chick-Fil-A-sign-prank-Houston-location-17074963.php

    “Police also shared a photo of a hooved individual they say was spotted near the scene of the crime.”

    I have been thinking about escaping to Wharton, TX (where my mother is from) but the wife wants more civilization than the 8,711 population offers.  They do have a Whatburger, a MacDonalds, and a great BBW joint.

  37. Ray Thompson says:

    They do have a Whataburger, a MacDonalds, and a great BBW joint.

    Add a Taco Cabana and that place is golden.

  38. ech says:

    but this vaccine doesn’t prevent you from getting or spreading the virus. 

    Yes and no. It does provide good protection from serious illness and death. It provides some protection from infection. It also shortens the time you are infectious by many days, plus you get symptoms before the viral load peaks so you can isolate. Kinda like the flu vaccine does.

  39. RickH says:

    Re: frog noise….it is mating season, and …

    Male Frogs “wanna-do-it?”

    Female Frogs “gotta headache!” 

  40. MrAtoz says:

    Yes and no. It does provide good protection from serious illness and death. It provides some protection from infection. It also shortens the time you are infectious by many days, plus you get symptoms before the viral load peaks so you can isolate. Kinda like the flu vaccine does.

    Well does it or does it not do what Mr. Nick said?

  41. lynn says:

    Uh, “They do have a Whatburger, a MacDonalds, and a great BBW joint.” should be “They do have a hatburger, a MacDonalds, and a great BBQ joint.”.

    Sigh.  Fat clumsy fingers and doing eight things at once.

  42. lynn says:

    “Brooklyn shooting suspect Frank James arrested while strolling NYC street; terror-related charges expected”

        https://nypost.com/2022/04/13/brooklyn-shooting-suspect-frank-james-in-police-custody/

    Wanna bet they will release him on personal recognizance ?

    Hat tip to:

        https://www.drudgereport.com/

  43. lpdbw says:

    Remember, approving of a  mandate for health care workers means you approve of me losing my 100% remote job, no patient contact.  My livelihood, my sense of mission, and 3 years of salary and other losses, because you THINK this mandate supports patients.  Which in all likelihood they do not, even for direct-care employees.  And accepting the people giving you those statistics aren’t lying this time, like they lied before.

    This is personal.  You hate me, and you feel you have the right to dictate to me what experimental procedures I submit to, for the nebulous “general good”.  You support those people who harmed me and my coworkers.

    Can’t decide between Karen, Nazi, Fascist, or just plain jack-booted thug, but you can figure out pretty well how I feel.

    12
    3
  44. ech says:

    A look at last year’s mortality data from my actuary friend.

    https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/2021-us-mortality-news-explainer

  45. ech says:

    Remember, approving of a  mandate for health care workers means you approve of me losing my 100% remote job, no patient contact.  

    I don’t consider you a health care worker. Only those with patient contact should be included in a vaccination mandate.

  46. Alan says:

    >> The products are good, almost the standard to which other products are compared. It is the installation assumptions and the manner that Adobe thinks they own the system.

    In a perfect world you could have a stand-alone high-end system just for your photo processing. 

  47. Alan says:

    >> Wanna bet they will release him on personal recognizance? 

    Speaking of that, there’s this: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/7294599001

  48. SteveF says:

    Is anyone interested in a betting pool about when consumer price inflation rate will go higher than *resident Biden’s approval numbers?

  49. Greg Norton says:

    This is personal.  You hate me, and you feel you have the right to dictate to me what experimental procedures I submit to, for the nebulous “general good”.  You support those people who harmed me and my coworkers.

    I doubt it was personal. There is a lot of irrational fear about the virus which motivates people to trust that the authorities really do have their best interests at heart and going along with it is the fastest way back to “normal”.

  50. Ray Thompson says:

    In a perfect world you could have a stand-alone high-end system just for your photo processing.

    In a perfect world software companies and coders would be more willing to NOT dictate what they do to my system. Such as NOT modifying my customizations and settings to their liking while ignoring my settings.

  51. Ray Thompson says:

    Is anyone interested in a betting pool about when consumer price inflation rate will go higher than *resident Biden’s approval numbers?

    Is anyone interested in a betting pool about when *resident Biden’s approval numbers go below the consumer price inflation rate?

    Fixed it for you. Perspective.

  52. Alan says:

    >> I think he means the stores where Amazon and other store returns end up available in smaller quantities, single item or closed mystery bags instead of bins. There is one in Cedar Park, but I haven’t been.

    Yes, what @Greg said. 

  53. Greg Norton says:

    Is anyone interested in a betting pool about when *resident Biden’s approval numbers go below the consumer price inflation rate?

    You’ll always have 30% of the population supporting the Dems. 20% inflation would see pitchforks and torches in Washington DC.

    Rule of thumb — divide 72 by the inflation integer to get the length of time before prices double.

    20% = 72/20, a little more than 3 1/2 years.

    The Fed would move to tank the housing and stock markets long before inflation got that high.

  54. Alan says:

    >> They do have a Whatburger, a MacDonalds, and a great BBW joint.

    Whatever floats your boat, we’re all open-minded here 🙂 

    Oh, and tell those MacDonald people to be expecting a trademark infringement complaint real soon now. 

  55. SteveF says:

    You’ll always have 30% of the population supporting the Dems.

    It was a trick question. Approval number is “favorable” minus “unfavorable” and the *resident has been underwater since late last Summer. Even on the most cooked poll, his net approval is only fractionally above 0.

    4
    1
  56. Greg Norton says:

    Hot Skillz News!

    At the previous previous job, we depended on Jira to track time, with 32 hours per week having to be documented on tickets related to various projects. An outage is a serious problem.

    Jira wasn’t ideal, but it was cool. Someone got a gold star for writing the script which reconciled the time on the tickets against projects tracked in Workday, another Hot Skillz cloud service.

    https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/atlassian-jira-outage-week?share_id=7005312

    BTW, from what I understand, Workday has vaccination/booster status ready to roll out to all customers accounts.

  57. lynn says:

    “Elon Musk ‘profited $150 million against the backs of common shareholders,’ lawyer says”

         https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-profited-150-million-twitter-lawyer-says-191823910.html

    “A lawyer suing Elon Musk on behalf of former Twitter (TWTR) shareholders says the Tesla CEO illegally saved about $150 million by delaying his disclosure of a major stake in the social media company.”

    “On Tuesday, attorney Jacob Walker filed a proposed class action in Manhattan federal district court, alleging Musk’s untimely notice to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission caused certain Twitter shareholders to miss out on a gain of $10.66 per share.”

    “The law requires investors to disclose stock purchases worth at least 5% of a company’s stock within 10 days. Musk missed the deadline by 11 days, arguably at the expense of investors who sold their stock before the Tesla CEO’s announcement pumped up its value.”

    Yup, the lawyers are going to make a lot of money.

  58. SteveF says:

    Oh, and tell those MacDonald people to be expecting a trademark infringement complaint real soon now.

    Way back in the early days of the Internet, when only .com, .org, and .net domains were available to ordinary people, a guy named McDonald registered mcdonalds dot com and set up a web page for his extended family. The corporation went after the domain a good while after that, more than a year IIRC, and got ICANN to seize it on the grounds of bad faith domain squatting. IIRC the corporation didn’t even offer the family money to turn it over, just went the quasi-legal route.

  59. Pecancorner says:

    >> They do have a Whatburger, a MacDonalds, and a great BBW joint.

    Oh, and tell those MacDonald people to be expecting a trademark infringement complaint real soon now. 

    Midland used to have a second hand furniture store named “Better Homes and Bargains”.   They got away with it until one of the local realtors got the BH&G real estate franchise, then the consortium forced a name change. 

  60. lynn says:

    “Amazon adds 5% ‘fuel and inflation surcharge’ to seller fees”

        https://apnews.com/article/business-inflation-prices-4ae9ab8b6dd28652672f3e2615149de0

    “Amazon.com said Wednesday it will add a 5% “fuel and inflation surcharge” to fees it charges third-party sellers who use the retailer’s fulfillment services as the company faces rising costs.”

    Hat tip to:

       https://www.drudgereport.com/

  61. ITGuy1998 says:

    BTW, from what I understand, Workday has vaccination/booster status ready to roll out to all customers accounts.

    We are forced to tolerate, I mean use Workday and have had that since late last year. November maybe?

  62. paul says:

    I doubt it was personal. There is a lot of irrational fear about the virus which motivates people to trust that the authorities really do have their best interests at heart and going along with it is the fastest way back to “normal”.

    Trust the authorities?  When 99.5% of everything they say is a lie?

    “Southern Engineer”, please. 

  63. lynn says:

    I have a 79 year old friend with ALS.  She is now using a trackball on her PC instead of a mouse but her right thumb no longer works to click the select button.  She moves her left hand over to click the buttons on her trackball and is getting very tired. Any thoughts ?

    I told her if her computer has a open USB port then she can add another trackball for her left hand where the thumb does work.

    Her first symptom of ALS was a general weakness of her entire body where she could not climb stairs anymore.  Big problem since she and her husband live in the basement of their daughter’s house outside San Fransisco.  Then her legs quit working altogether.  Now her right thumb quit working.  She will be 80 in June, she is wondering if she will make it.

  64. SteveF says:

    Lynn, your friend might try Dragon NaturallySpeaking or equivalent. In addition to transcribing speech it allows one to open applications, perform menu operations, and IIRC say “click” to execute a mouse click.

    Using it would require that she have a few hundred dollars to buy it (possibly less on sale or if they have a handicap discount), a beefy enough Windows PC to run it (i7 with 8GB RAM is fine), and the ability to speak clearly and consistently. (And, most likely, someone to set it up for her. It’s not difficult … for a gearhead with decades of messing with computers. I don’t assume that most people can install and configure anything.)

    She might also look for alternative pointing devices, or maybe a stand-alone touchpad which she can use with both hands, one to “point” and one to click.

  65. Alan says:

    >> I really need Lightroom and Photoshop. I have tried alternatives and nothing really comes close unless there is significant cost involved.

    So it comes down to are to willing to ‘vote’ with your wallet and take your business away from Adobe and give it to a competitor AND pay any additional cost be it money and/or time). Of course Adobe won’t miss your business, but as your fortune cookie may one day say, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

  66. RickH says:

    I really need Lightroom and Photoshop. I have tried alternatives and nothing really comes close unless there is significant cost involved.

    Have you tried the Affinity products? https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ . A good suite of products. They sometimes run 30% off sales. They have a Designer, Photo, and Publisher products, regular price of $60.  Each product has a 30-day free trial. 

    I’ve used the Affinity Photo product, and it’s a lot like Photoshop. Scroll down this page to see features list.

  67. Alan says:

    >> Cynic here.  They may not charge your credit card but they’ll get their piece of flesh somewhere down the line.

    >> Of course, the EULA voids your right to privacy about whatever is on the scanned document, and the contents are data mined.

    Between FAANG and the various ,gub TLAs, I figure all my privacy is already gone. Credit freezes/locks at the three major credit bureaus hopefully keep most of the nefarious stuff in check.

    ADDED: I guess it should be MAANG now, not FAANG?!

  68. lynn says:

    ADDED: I guess it should be MAANG now, not FAANG?!

    MANGA !

  69. Alan says:

    @Rick, are you aware of any issues in CKE5 with the Italics button? When I turn Italics on the button turns gray and has a border, sometimes though when I click it to turn Italics off the border goes away and the button turns a lighter shade of gray instead of no gray.

  70. lynn says:

    “$2,121,987,000,000: Federal Tax Collections Set Record Through March”

        https://www.cnsnews.com/article/washington/terence-p-jeffrey/2121987000000-federal-tax-collections-set-record-through-march

    “The record $2,121,987,000,000 in total taxes that the Treasury collected in the first half of this fiscal year included $1,124,485,000,000 in individual income taxes; $697,779,000,999 in social insurance and retirement taxes; $127,259,000,000 in corporation income taxes; $48,559,000,000 in customs duties; $38,712,000,000 in excise taxes; $14,275,000,000 in estate and gift taxes; and $70,917,000,000 in what the Treasury calls “miscellaneous receipts.””

    “Even while collecting this record $2,121,987,000,000 in taxes through the first half of this federal year, the federal government ran a deficit of $668,267,000,000. That is because the government spent $2,790,254,000,000 during the period.”

    It will never be enough for the progressives.

    Hat tip to:

      https://www.drudgereport.com/

  71. Alan says:

    >> Way back in the early days of the Internet, when only .com, .org, and .net domains were available to ordinary people, a guy named McDonald registered mcdonalds dot com and set up a web page for his extended family. The corporation went after the domain a good while after that, more than a year IIRC, and got ICANN to seize it on the grounds of bad faith domain squatting. IIRC the corporation didn’t even offer the family money to turn it over, just went the quasi-legal route.

    Sometimes the little guy wins.

  72. nick flandrey says:

    @lynn, there are adaptive devices that are essentially foot pedals and you tell a driver what the switch means.   She could put it on the desk and hit it with a fist.

    https://www.amazon.com/USB-Foot-Pedal/s?k=USB+Foot+Pedal&tag=ttgnet-20 

    Those look like they have the USB and driver included.   I’ve got some little boxes that plug into a ps/2 port and you can configure switches to do anything you can do with a keyboard.  Can’t remember the name…

    These guys will take your money too.   https://www.inclusivetlc.com/ 

    n

  73. nick flandrey says:

    And I’ve got a couple of ‘sip and puff’ switches.  madentec wisp 2000   but they are pretty old tech.

    n

  74. RickH says:

    @Rick, are you aware of any issues in CKE5 with the Italics button? When I turn Italics on the button turns gray and has a border, sometimes though when I click it to turn Italics off the border goes away and the button turns a lighter shade of gray instead of no gray.

    A quick test. Clicking the Italic button turns it ‘on’, and subsequent words will be italicized until you click it again to turn it off.

    If you highlight a word/phrase, clicking the button makes that word/phrase italic.

    If you want to un-italicize after doing the above, you have to highlight the italicized words/phrase (which causes the button to be ‘pressed’) and then click the button. 

    The bold button works the same way. I don’t see the lighter shade of gray after turning it off.

    This is on my laptop with Firefox.

  75. nick flandrey says:

    Well, if people have stopped caring about Ukranians, maybe they’ll care about this PUPPY!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10715443/Puppy-pulled-rubble-reunited-Ukrainian-master-77-Russian-shelling-wrecked-home.html 

    n

  76. nick flandrey says:

    And remember kids, weather is not climate, unless it’s HOT temperatures and warm weather storms…

    Montana and North Dakota are hit by ‘one-in-a-century’ blizzard that has already dumped 47 INCHES of snow and closed I-94: Fears 20-foot tall snowdrifts will bury homes

    • A historic blizzard has pummeled much of the central U.S.
    • Meteorologists predict snow to continue piling up in Montana and North Dakota until Thursday, as well as in some of the neighboring states 
    • Many communities will be hit with a deep freeze reaching single digit and sub-zero temperatures 
    • The midwest and southern states will face tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, high winds, heavy rain and hail
    • Some communities expecting tornadoes were already struck by damaging storms on Tuesday
    • 23 people were injured after a twister rolled through Texas 
  77. Kenneth C Mitchell says:

    MrAtoz says:

    LOL! The first of Abbott’s buses arrived in DC and dropped off crimmigrants. He says he has another 900 buses available. He should send the next load to plugs’ compound in Delaware.

    DeSantis is already covering Delaware. 

  78. lynn says:

    And remember kids, weather is not climate, unless it’s HOT temperatures and warm weather storms…

    Montana and North Dakota are hit by ‘one-in-a-century’ blizzard that has already dumped 47 INCHES of snow and closed I-94: Fears 20-foot tall snowdrifts will bury homes

    A historic blizzard has pummeled much of the central U.S.
    Meteorologists predict snow to continue piling up in Montana and North Dakota until Thursday, as well as in some of the neighboring states
    Many communities will be hit with a deep freeze reaching single digit and sub-zero temperatures
    The midwest and southern states will face tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, high winds, heavy rain and hail
    Some communities expecting tornadoes were already struck by damaging storms on Tuesday
    23 people were injured after a twister rolled through Texas

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10715789/Montana-North-Dakota-hit-one-century-blizzard.html

    Lots of once in a century weather lately.

  79. drwilliams says:

    so “spontaneous pneumomediastinum” is a thing

  80. lynn says:

    @lynn, there are adaptive devices that are essentially foot pedals and you tell a driver what the switch means.   She could put it on the desk and hit it with a fist.

    https://www.amazon.com/USB-Foot-Pedal/s?k=USB+Foot+Pedal&tag=ttgnet-20 

    Those look like they have the USB and driver included.   I’ve got some little boxes that plug into a ps/2 port and you can configure switches to do anything you can do with a keyboard.  Can’t remember the name…

    These guys will take your money too.   https://www.inclusivetlc.com/ 

    n

    “Fortunately, my left hand is the dominant.  Unfortunately, there isn’t room on the tray for the keyboard and *two* trackballs. (It’s your standard rolling hospital-type tray table.)  And I don’t know if I could retrain my left hand to trackball use. I’ve used the trackball with my right hand ever since the 1990s, when I worked for a professor of molecular biology, in whose lab all the graduate students and postdocs used Macs, and the secretary had to do the same.  They all used mice.  There wasn’t room on my desk for a mousepad, but there was a trackball sitting around in a storage room.  That went under my right hand, leaving my left hand free to take messages.  That was a long time ago.”

  81. nick flandrey says:

    It is indeed, but why?

    Spontaneous pneumomediastinum (SPM) was reported in 1939 by Hamman, for whom the Hamman sign (see Physical) is named.

    n

  82. lynn says:

    OK, I am being moderated again.  I did not violate the three URL max rule this time.

  83. Ray Thompson says:

    Have you tried the Affinity products?

    I really need Lightroom. I take around a thousand, or more, pictures at a sporting event. Using Lightroom I can slim down to 100 to 150 images in an hour. Initial crop, color balance, exposure compensate the remains images in less than a minute. The next 30 minutes is spent adjusting the crop on each image. Then export two different sets, one for FB with a watermark, another to keep. Finally upload to my website for delivery to the local papers. That final three steps take less than 5 minutes.

  84. Rick H says:

    @lynn     OK, I am being moderated again.  I did not violate the three URL max rule this time.

    Released. But I counted five of them.

  85. Rick H says:

    @Ray: a quick search found some Affinity users using this: https://www.darktable.org/ .

    Lots of requests in the Affinity forum for a Lightroom replacement.

  86. nick flandrey says:

    Well f me.   server error ate a really detailed comment about my grocery shopping.  back button returned to the empty comment form.   THAT is a change I do not like.

    Long and detailed comment summarized- prices for almost everything were up, way up.  Some packaging was visibly smaller.   Beef was crazy, $17.99 for select grade ribeye.  Beef was packaged on smaller trays to keep the package price below $10.

    The trend is not our friend, buy it, and stack it.   Inflation is killing us, and so are supply issues.

    n

  87. Nick Flandrey says:

    This post over at Peter’s blog makes a LOT of sense.

    https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2022/04/disney-profits-from-sexualizing-our.html 

    I think Daniel Greenfield has the right of it.

    Disney isn’t for kids anymore. Its movie business is dominated by Marvel blockbusters. Half of Disney+ subscribers, its big bet on the home streaming future, are adults with no children.

    What about the theme parks?

    60% of Disneyland visitors were adults with no children. Only 36.7% of Disney World visitors had children under 18. The largest demographic for the theme parks, like the movies, are millennials. They are also members of the fandoms who are likeliest to spend money on licensed merchandise, and on toys and movie tie-ins that are Disney’s bread and butter.

    Walt did not want to own all the things.   He wanted to create all the things.  And he specifically wanted a place where adults could be as engaged as their kids, not where adults went on their own.  The emphasis was always on FAMILY.

    n

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