Hot and humid in Houston. Probably nicer at the BOL. I’ll deal, as long as it isn’t raining.
Did a long day at the lake yesterday. Met with the A/C guy, got the compressor motor capacitor swapped out and the refrigerant level checked. Worked on the garden. Got a sprinkler set up, but not on a timer yet. Did more cleanup and filled the pickup for the dumpster run. Swapped out a couple more light fixtures. Put some privacy film on the garage door windows.
That one was on the list from the first day. It makes the door look better from the outside (there isn’t a row of black windows in the white door) and it makes it much harder to see into the garage and decide if there is anything you want to steal.
I also put up a new mailbox, and weed whacked… even put a couple of plants in pots out front.
All little things but all important for curb appeal (lets the neighbors know we’re committing to the neighborhood) and to make the house look occupied. They haven’t had issues with breakins or theft, but I don’t want to be the nuisance house either. I do need about 4 entry doors though, between the garage, outbuildings, and dockhouse. Even a soyboy could kick through the garage man door.
—
Today is for catching up on things around the house here.
There is plenty on that list. Boy howdy.
If you can’t stack, organize, or maintain.
But if you can, stack it high.
nick
72F and 96%RH. Since it usually warms significantly that opening day’s RH isn’t that useful actually, because it’s usually pretty close to saturation. Whether it stays there or not, or is significantly different from saturation is useful. Habit and tradition. I do sometimes check a year or two ago to see if the day’s weather is out of line with history. Usually I just think it is or think it SHOULD be.
n
Unfortunately, Linux is still a Guru Full Employment Act.
I still see IBM employees posting requests for help regarding their VPN client port I did for Linux over 14 years ago. The software still runs on modern Linux with the right supporting libraries installed, but the Death Star and IBM deprecated the 1024 bit SSL keys so the client cannot complete that part of the connection.
If they call the support desk for the product, they get the standard line that the Linux VPN client is no longer supported.
The wife half of the Colonel Bat Guano neighbors immediately behind me would have been right at home in the cast of a new “Dr. Strangelove”. She was so pale that she was borderline albino, and Googling revealed that she worked for Admiral Poindexter on his pre-crime type system, Able Danger.
Her day job, according to neighborhood legend, was running the snake torture at Gitmo on the payroll of one of the big consulting firms clustered around DC.
The freak show commands in Tampa need an enema.
I’d like comments and Gravatars back.
PLT = ProgLibTurd
Oof. Slow post, refresh and a ISE this time.
That’s what it looks like. English MF, do you speak it?
Watch it yourself, otherwise I don’t want to hear another word demanding proof. Or have you forgotten the response to one of your very first comments? What proof would you consider sufficient?
Tell me in advance so I can have the alt media fake hundreds of hours of live newscasts, security camera video, and whatever else STILL wouldn’t be sufficient, since you have already determined the truth, rejecting all and any evidence that doesn’t fit your predetermined world view, just as you project onto others.
n
Nick, please stop playing with him. You know that no evidence will be enough to satisfy him, not even the convictions.
It is enough that most of us believe there is enough evidence that it should be investigated. Too bad it, mostly, hasn’t been.
Yep, he’s not willing to participate, despite lots of opportunity. And he’s got a hard on for me personally, which is interesting. First time that’s happened.
Who knew he’d be a grammar nazi too?
n
I know a guy who seriously screwed up his academic career running off to Kent State from Florida to pursue some narrow subspecialty for a PhD in one of the areas for which our late host didn’t believe doctorates should be granted. The university cut the funding for the program slots in the first year.
@Rick, moving is hard, especially long distance moves. We were fortunate to have chosen this location fifty years ago. I know people complain about California’s high costs, but some of that doesn’t apply here, away from the coast. Our combined state income tax and real estate tax is lower than many of our friends and family who live in other states. This is mainly due to careful investing and Prop 13, which favors staying put. I am surprised Prop 13 is still alive, although the state does claim a big surplus.
I just saw an acquaintance who wants to leave for a different climate. They have looked at a lot of places over the past five years, and have found them unaffordable. He mentioned the Pacific NW. I know nothing about their finances or what kind of community they desire, but the first thing they mention is the higher home costs, followed by property tax. They say every place they have considered is unaffordable. You are not alone.
Latest Linux and/open source deprecation problem: curl no longer allows specifying “unsafe” versions of SSL/TLS in the build installed with Fedora. All of my homebrew toys for pulling video off of my TiVo depend on curl being able to access the HTTPS connection.
No biggie, but another thing to fix in my own software.
I wanted to pull last night’s NCIS off of the TiVo to get a better look at the “Top Gun” commercial.
Another sign “woke” might be dead – a brief clip of a scene shot inside Kansas City BBQ, complete with what appears to be the bar’s infamous bra collection hanging from the ceiling.
If there are less than 50 comments, things are as before.
On the 50th (or maybe 51st), if you are on the first comment page, and there are more, there is a link at the end of the last comment to get ‘newer comments’.
If you are on comment page 2, and refresh the page, you are still on comment page 2, and probably at the point you were before the refresh.
If you are on comment page 2, and want to go back to page 1, there is a link at the end of the comments for ‘older comments’.
Not hard to figure out, IMHO. Easy enough to use. Assuming you are not resistant to change.
It’s all an effort to make response times faster. Although the comments table is not the only problem
Yes, I understand what I read on the page, and how it works. I don’t like it. It breaks my workflow.
It’s all an effort to make response times faster
–but does it do so?
Our problem with response time isn’t the time it takes for a normal page load, it’s the time it takes when something unusual causes a big delay. Normal page load is a few seconds, down to almost instant. Normal page load is normal.
n
and yes, I’m a bit short and grumpy today.
re: moving –
My last two moves (CA to UT, then UT to WA) I used the “UPack” service. A semi trailer gets dropped off at your house. You fill it up, lock it up, and they transport to the new place. They will hold it for a time period if needed. (I was ‘homeless’ for about a month on the UT to WA move; the UPack company just stored my trailer until the new place was ready.)
A future move (if any) will use UPack service. The hard part is putting everything in boxes. On the last move, I’d box up everything in a room, and then I’d turn around and see some more things in that room to box up. The prospect of boxing up all of that scrapbook stuff (about two rooms worth, including literally a ton of paper products) was daunting.
As for loading/unloading the truck, I am fortunate to have the help of church members in the old and new locations. Loading and unloading time with that volunteer help (about 5-8 helpers) was only about two hours each. A moving company will take much longer than that.
CA’s Prop 13 is good if you have been there a while. A new purchaser gets a new property tax valuation based on the purchase price of the home. A quick calculation saw a $10K annual state income tax. And since it is a new purchase, the property tax will increase.
With the current interest rates, even in this seller’s market, the finances aren’t right. Would have been 6 months ago – same seller’s market, but lower mortgage rates (under 3%, now they are 5%+).
Got the bannister fixed, the new deadbolt installed, band practice for the children happened. Started my first batch of feta in years.
Cheese making is a useful skill. Hard part is obtaining suitable milk. Best is milk from your own critters. That’s a heck of a lot of work. Next best is milk from your friends critters. After that you’re looking at grocery store milk and that gets tricky and potentially frustrating.
In Alaska it is virtually illegal for farmers to sell their excess milk. And raw milk is completely illegal, unless tinted blue or charcoaled, as animal feed only. Yet in California you can easily buy raw milk in the grocery stores.
So, I no longer have access to raw goats milk, best for making really good cheese. for a long time the only milk I could find in grocery stores was ultra-pasteurized. Good for shelf life and barging to Alaska. Breaks the milk proteins and destroys it for making cheese.
A local dairy started in Delta junction and is producing gallon jugs of non-homogenized low temp pasteurized while milk. It’s as perfect as commercial milk gets fir cheese making.
I warmed the milk to 88 F, added mesophilic culture and lipase, let it sit an hour. Added rennet, let is sit 45 minutes. Cut the curds nine ways to Sunday, rest five minutes. Hold the curds at 88 f in sink of water for another hour. Gently gently poured through cheese cloth with interested ten year old helping. Let it drain fir half an hour or so then gently knotted the cloth and hung. Weight shift caused an initial increase in whey draining. After about three hours flipped the curd mass, now looking cheese like, and it’ll hang another 24 hours.
Thats where I left it late last night.
Late tonight I’ll cut the cheese mass into uniform 2” cubes and dry salt fir a couple days. When they feel firm I’ll put them in a brine in the fridge.
While the feta cheese can be eaten at that point it will taste better in a month, and taste really good in six months. If it lasts a year it’ll start losing form and flavor.
Cheese making isn’t complex or mysterious. It’s edible chemistry. The equipment isnt expensive and for many cheeses your kitchen is already stocked. The cultures can be obtained online, from a brewing store, and often from a natural foods focused grocery store.
Timing can take a bit of practice. Tolerance for ruining a couple gallons of milk helps. I ruined probably 20 gallons of milk before I was successful with cheddar cheese. And we don’t talk about my flirtation with blue cheese.
We don’t always drink our milk before it is set to expire. I turn that milk into paneer to avoid waste. Bring to boil, dump in lemon juice, drain and press between two plates in fridge for a day. Cut and fry in butter. Yum.
Just wait.
I’m old enough to remember my college girlfriend’s parents having to get a mortgage with a rate in the mid teens to buy their house. 14%? The house was $90k new in the mid 80s and only sold for $104k in 1994.
Stucco shack in Florida – a place to live, not invest money into.
That’s the kind of interest rate environment which will be necessary to kill the inflation we are currently experiencing, and PPI is much worse now than when Volker took over the Fed in the 80s with a 16% Fed funds rate being insufficient to squelch the Carter inflation.
Of course, houses will have to sell for a lot less. As Warren Buffett occasionally complains/gloats, Prop. 13 means that he pays less in taxes for his Pebble Beach house he’s owned since 1979 than he does on his Omaha house which he’s lived in since the 50s.
Everyone can now order 4 more covid tests per family member. I have not used the ones I had before. This is third batch that people can order at no cost. Some company is making a lot of money from the government on this “free” home tests.
I’ve used three different test kits, one from CVS and two different brands from my employer, since the beginning of the year, and, inside the box, all three look like they came from the same factory.
I’m not sure what kind of chemicals are on the swabs, but all three screwed up my sinuses for days afterwards in the exact same way.
@jenny, my buddy used the milk he got from the food bank to make cheese at home, and I’m pretty sure it was powdered…
if not it was some sort of bulk pack.
n
I took a look at the Server Status on Dreamhost for this place. Everything is marked as ‘operational’. Yesterday, there were some performance issues reported, but today is ‘all green’.
I got a response for the support ticket I entered yesterday. In the email:
Still looking at access logs, but the System Status report is all green, an improvement over yesterday. And Analytics shows the usual activity – about 3K visitors/day.
My current analysis of all this is that things are improving – shared hosting status and WordPress settings have improved. Still possible to get 500 errors (or 418, which is the mod-security response), but don’t think they are happening as often.
>> If you are on comment page 2, and want to go back to page 1, there is a link at the end of the comments for ‘older comments’.
@RickH; should going back from page 2 to page 1 take you to comment #50 rather than comment #1 as it currently does?
And absent the gravatars, could we make the posters’ names bold italics rather than just italics? Makes it easier to skip a certain person.
>> Each comment with avatars enabled requires a request to the avatar site (gravitar.com), and the wait for that response
@RickH, probably more effort than necessary, but could you once a day go to the Gravitar site and pull down all the current images for all the saved email addresses into your local DB and then get them locally when posting a comment?
Not how it works, as the ‘older’ (or ‘newer’) link reloads the page, loading the group of 50 comments for that page. Don’t think there is a way to get to the last comment on a previous page, without some fancy JS code.
If you have clicked on a comment link, then later refresh the page, it should bring you to that comment, with newer comments since your last page load shown below that ‘current’ comment. That is as it was before comment paging. I make it a practice to click on the comment date link so that I don’t have to scroll after a page refresh (I refresh the page several times a day).
I’ve changed the commenter’s name to bold and non-italic. That better?
Can only do that for registered users that comment. Then they have to edit their user profile and add their desired avatar.
Since we don’t require commenters to register (nor do I want to, as it would create more work for me), enabling the display of gravitar would require each gravitar to be requested and loaded from the remove gravitar site.
There isn’t a way to store a person’s avatar in a cookie to be used during the comment list display. The external gravitar request might be cached in your browser, but that wouldn’t improve (lower) the page load time.
Grabbing gravatars and storing/using locally is a programming exercise that wouldn’t be worth the time involved. Not to mention the effect of queries of the database. That would increase the load on the site.
I want Gravatars back. I need my pussyhat.
LMGTFY. Now, try it yourself, substituting whichever county or State you want. Let me know when you find evidence of anything meaningful.
NBC News, I’ll pass. Those are the guys who proved that a truck could catch fire by shoving a firecracker into the gas tank.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-02-10-mn-1335-story.html
xkcd: Heath Data
https://xkcd.com/2620/
“Causality is the leading cause of death in this country”.
Yup, the world too.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2620:_Health_Data
To be fair, a variety of news organizations (left/right/middle) have reported the same thing from the Arizona election folks.
And a new story today about the 20,000 ‘ballot mules’ (in GA, I think) – also discredited in in stories quoting election officials by a variety of news organizations. The one I read included a comment from a Republican in that state discrediting the mule theory.
It would seem that, if the 20K ballot mules were true, there would be actual people claiming they were a ‘mule’. Even with alleged payments and NDAs.
Another conspiracy theory, IMHO. Show me facts, not conjectures.
Impossible, when facts, affidavits, and even video of crimes taking place are denied, “explained”, hand-waved away, or simply ignored.
I haven’t seen any verified facts (not conjectures) that would indicate voter fraud on a scale that would affect outcomes (national or regional or local). I have seen allegations (written, videos, etc) that have been disproved by careful research and/or a good understanding of the processes involved.
I think there are unproven conspiracy theories that state election officials are allowing fraud, or ‘hand-waving’ away allegations. I stand by my earlier comment.
“I lost, so it’s a conspiracy that made me lose.”
Dumbocrats, Redumblicans, and the LameStreamMedia in a nutshell.
I LOL’d after Musk tweeted his response to the Twit CEOs screed on spam. A turd emoji. The stock is imploding. Less than 5% bots? Right.
We know there was voter fraud, as there have been convictions. We know the rules were broken, as the courts ordered counting locations to stop interfering with the observers. We know the rules were changed, illegally, on the eve of the election. The courts have ruled such.
We strongly suspect other fraud, such as the apartments with more than a dozen registered voters. We also know some locations had more ballots than voters (NOT registered voters, so it could just be improper record keeping).
We don’t know how widespread it was. And there is NO way to back out any fraud even if it was proven beyond any doubt. President Biden is our President and will remain so.
I just want the roles, procedures, and counters to be under some sort of process that we can all believe. I want the counting locations under 100% video surveillance. I want all materials brought into a counting location to have proper chain of custody evidence and no extra boxes stored under the tables.
No, we cannot prove there was enough fraud to effect the outcome, but there certainly were enough anomalies to question it, and I don’t want that to happen during the next election.
Whether or not mules were involved in the state, 300,000 Republicans stayed home on January 4 in Georgia. Dr. Pournelle stated on multiple occasions that the key to winning was to generate turnout in large enough numbers to overcome any potential fraud.
The “Stupid Party” lived up to that name.
“Into the Light (Out of the Dark, 2)” by David Weber and Chris Kennedy
https://www.amazon.com/Into-Light-Out-Dark-2/dp/0765366924?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number two of a two book series of an alien invasion science fiction series. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Tor in 2021. I suspect that there will be a third book in the series as the book ends on a cliffhanger, which, I plan to purchase and read.
I’ve got vampires in my alien invasion science fiction book !
The first book in the series detailed an invasion by the Shongairi in which they used multiple kinetic weapons on every city on Earth of 100,000+ people and all military bases. Three quarters of the human population of Earth died in a matter of minutes. Due to the fact that the Shongairi space ships could only attain six times the speed of light, their understanding of Earth technology was very outdated and they did not know that we had progressed from an agrarian society into a very industrialized society.
As the first Shongairi troop ships were landing on the Earth, they were destroyed by F-22 stealth fighter jets. As soon as the F-22 jets landed at their hidden airfields, those were also destroyed using kinetic weapons. After the Shongairi troops rampaged through the Earth population remnants, the vampires appeared out of Eastern Europe. The vampires were virtually indestructible and rode back up on the outside of their landers to the Shongairi space ships in Earth orbit. They then boarded the space ships and proceed to kill all the Shongairi in orbit.
Now the horribly damaged human population on Earth has to rebuild, both the population and the facilities. But they have an advantage, the now empty Shongairi space ships and several Galactic Hegemony neural educators. Vlad Dracula has taken one of the interstellar space ships with a crew of several hundred and is headed 200+ light years to the Shongairi home planet to pay back some of the damage that they did to Earth. And one of the few remaining state governors of the USA has become the USA President and is planning on creating a one world government to fight the Galactic Hegemony.
David Weber has an excellent website at:
http://www.davidweber.net/
Chris Kennedy has a website at:
https://chriskennedypublishing.com
My rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (1,733 reviews)
>> I’ve changed the commenter’s name to bold and non-italic. That better?
Yup, thanks.
Out of the Dark was the only book in recent memory I’ve walled. Because vampires.
I got it off the remainder table in hardcover, and wish I’d left it alone.
It’s safe to say that early Weber is some of my favorite work, but as the later volumes of Honor Harrington and Safehold wore on, I just couldn’t take another 8000 word description of the political nuance involved in the decision to stock left-handed widgets instead of right-handed ones.
alright, space vampires sounds cool…
n
>> Whether or not mules were involved in the state, 300,000 Republicans stayed home on January 4 in Georgia.
How about the 80 million(??) eligible voters who took a pass in 2020. Things could have turned out differently and we wouldn’t be arguing with you-know-who about voter fraud. And Joe would still be in his Delaware basement.
My Shell station close to my house jumped their prices all above $4.00/gallon today. The cash price for regular unleaded gasoline is now $4.19/gallon. The price for diesel is still $4.99/gallon though. Since I live out in the sticks, my station operator does not charge the freeway prices, he discounts about 20 cents/gallon. So the freeway Shell is much higher.
I repeat, the USA is built on cheap energy. The cost of energy has doubled since Biden took the presidency. Much of the rise is due to his doublespeak and active interference in the crude oil and natural gas markets.
When the price of diesel hits $6.00/gallon, watch out. Many of the truckers are going to park their vehicles as they are already losing money since they have long term contracts without fuel adders. At 6 mpg, they will be at a dollar of diesel for every mile. Many of the schools will not be able to afford the diesel for their school buses. And since diesel, jet fuel, kerosene, and home heating oil come from the same cut in crude oil refining, industries and homes dependent on those products will not be able to afford them at $6.00/gallon.
alright, space vampires sounds cool…
n
All is not what it seems …
When I drove home last night I passed the Buckie’s (not the beaver) on the corner and thought it said $3.89, and a block later passed the HEB and thought it said $4.19…
Both of them are about the cheapest around, without a membership.
Today I see that the $3.89 was for E15, and has gone up to $3.99 today.
HEB is still $4.19. It was $3.85 two weeks ago.
n
well that last comment took almost a minute to post.
n
I have personally been a victim of voter anomalies. When I went to vote I was told I could not vote again because I had already voted. Not true said I, “prove it”. There was a signature in my space on the voting roles indicating I had voted but it was not my signature. I demand a ballot. I was instead given a provisional ballot.
That provisional ballot was never counted because it was stated there were not enough to affect the outcome. I asked for proof of the numbers and was told I could not have those numbers. Probably did not make a difference in the presidential race, but what about the regional and local races, some won by less than 10 votes. If there were more than 10 provisional ballots that were not counted those may have made a difference in local races.
LBJ, remember that criminal clown, had registered voters, that voted, that exactly matched the sequence of names in the local cemetery. I am certain that at one time they were truly voters but having long been dead were still allowed to vote. I saw the voter registry, I saw the names in the cemetery, some being dead for more than 20 years at the time.
Voter fraud has always existed. People will cheat to gain an advantage. The people running the polls are volunteers, rank amateurs, with minimal training. Most are clueless as is evidenced when I use my passport card or VA card for voting ID. Several have told me it is not a valid ID when both are in fact federally issued IDs with photographs. A supervisor was needed.
Have these anomalies been enough to swing an election. In local elections there is a much higher probability than national elections as the numbers in local elections are smaller, margins of victory slimmer.
I have a real problem with boxes of votes being suddenly “found” and the counting deadline extended to count the votes. The chain of custody cannot be confirmed and validated. That is a real problem. I understand wanting to make every vote be counted, but violating, or ignoring other rules to make it happen is not the correct procedure. These mysterious, late find, boxes where heavily reported in the last presidential election.
Democrats have never been known to play fair. Republicans have never been known to play fair. I don’t trust the voting system and the numbers. In this age of computers to not know the results within minutes after the polls close is absurd. Taking 24 hours to finalize the counts is just asinine.
I have also never been a fan of TV stations reporting results on the east coast before the west coast polls close. Depending on the numbers, depending on how the TV stations report, could affect people showing up at the polls. A candidate losing by large numbers may encourage people to not vote because it won’t make a difference. The media can swing an election by biasing their reporting. I would advocate that no numbers, no results, no exit polls, nothing on the outcome be reported until all polls are closed and all voters have voted.
–it’s all TRUMP’S FAULT! I don’t even like the guy, but I love the effect he has. DON’T CLIMB THE FREAKING WALL. That is all you have to do to avoid injuring yourself climbing the wall…
n
That‘s because there are no Gravatars.
It’s been a while so now we have two alien stories!
Pentagon shows Congress declassified videos of mysterious objects flashing past pilots and reveal 400 ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ reports in recent years – including 11 ‘near-misses’
‘Keep your mouth shut!’ Army vets recount how they were told to stay quiet after spotting ‘alien craft’ in Sinai Desert as Congress holds first hearings into UFOs in more than 50 years
n
I don’t like the 50 comment cut off.
I also put up a new mailbox, and weed whacked… even put a couple of plants in pots out front.
The wife mentioned that somebody should clean the spanish moss off the mailbox last night. I wonder if she was suggesting that to me ?
Re gas prices: I think I’ve posted here that we’ve begun attending the little church 3 blocks down the street, as opposed to the big one 18 miles away. Our change was mostly for health and lifestyle changes, but it does also save gas.
Yesterday, I spoke to friends who also belong to the same big church, who live in a different small community about 26 miles from the church, and they said they visited their little local Baptist church this past Sunday – purely in order to try to use less gasoline.
They are ranchers, with livestock, so they have a certain amount of driving that’s essential and they can’t cut back on. Like us, they aren’t “leaving” the big church, they are simply retreating into their own neighborhood for economy.
Out of the Dark was the only book in recent memory I’ve walled. Because vampires.
I got it off the remainder table in hardcover, and wish I’d left it alone.
It’s safe to say that early Weber is some of my favorite work, but as the later volumes of Honor Harrington and Safehold wore on, I just couldn’t take another 8000 word description of the political nuance involved in the decision to stock left-handed widgets instead of right-handed ones.
I have found that people either really like David Weber or not. At his sales level (8 million books) and age (69), he is not change his habits. I ignore when he gets too technical or espouses too much about missiles bigger than the space shuttle. Of course, I am a mechanical engineer and like technical so I am biased.
“Why Would US Give a War Guarantee — to Finland?”
https://buchanan.org/blog/why-would-us-give-a-war-guarantee-to-finland-159385
“A basic question needs answering: Why, 30 years after the Cold War ended, are we still expanding NATO? Russia does not threaten the United States. As for any threat that it poses to its European neighbors, let them deal with it.”
It is time for the USA to leave NATO.
You aren’t kidding. President Trump tried, and the GOP-controlled Senate threw a wall-eyed fit. It may have even been one of those things they passed an emergency law to stymie him on.
So, instead, we ended up with Kay Bailey Ptttttttttuuuuuuuuiiiiiiiiii Hutchinson as US Ambassador to NATO. There were never any news reports about her tenure, much less her trademark traitorous back room shenanigans there, but “Let’s get Finland in” was probably one of them.
I don’t like the feature either, and I’m hardly resistant to change.
Just for you.
Keep saying that, and someone will do something. Hold your breath and beat your fists …. that might help.
The latency in initial response that happens to me randomly-but-frequently seems like a third-party interfering or something, ie Cloudflare or DNS or that “handshake” business. Since the gravitars come from a 3rd party site, it’s possible they could contribute, but since it occurs as often when there are no gravitars due to no comments, I don’t think so. When it happens, 9 times out of 10 if I close that tab after waiting 30 seconds, and click the link to the day’s post again, it responds immediately, as expected.
But the comments are not the problem. I have as many slow responses first thing in the morning when there are zero comments as later in the day when there are 50+.
@PecanCorner
It’s not how many comments are on a particular post, it’s the query that happens against the large comment table. The query has to extract that day’s comments, which requires accessing the comments table. There isn’t a time penalty based on the number of rows (that day’s comments) that are found/returned. A query that results in 3 comments is almost the same time (under a second) as a query that returns 50 comments (or more).
I’m still investigating, though. It’s hard to figure out, as the response time on my access has been much better lately.
Thank you for the broader explanation, Rick!
I LOL’d after Musk tweeted his response to the Twit CEOs screed on spam. A turd emoji. The stock is imploding. Less than 5% bots? Right.
So the number of bots is somewhere between 5% and 90% on Twitter ? That has got to be a deal breaker if the number is 2/3rds. And drops their stock to the $10 range ?
No whispering “Enron” !
plugs in Buffalo:
It’s WHITE Redumblicans fault! And Faux News!
Beau…Beau…
McSpongeBrain. I don’t like tRump either, but I’ll take him over plugs any day.
OK, I don’t like the 50 comment cut off.
I don’t like the 50 comment cut off.
I don’t like the 50 comment cut off.
Not holding my breath. Not beating my fists.
🙂
OK, groomer.
Rick, you are a saint to put up with all this WordPress (?) stuff, but oh how I long for the good old days.
I just paid $4.839. I could have saved 2c per gallon by fighting my way across several lanes of traffic to the station across the street, which normally has prices at least a nickel cheaper than the competition but didn’t today. Even at that 2-cents-lower price, it’s a 119% increase in 16 months. FJB.
What?? And starve those poor, helpless defense contractors and the lobbyists and politicians who depend on them? What kind of a monster are you?
What about a firmly-worded letter to his senators?
“How about the 80 million(??) eligible voters who took a pass in 2020. Things could have turned out differently and we wouldn’t be arguing with you-know-who about voter fraud. And Joe would still be in his Delaware basement.”
More than the counted votes for either candidate in an election with the highest participation evah. And the continued Stalin-esque stink of the count goes a long way to the perception that the system is rigged. What happens when there is an election and the majority stays home?
>> Depending on the numbers, depending on how the TV stations report, could affect people showing up at the polls.
Hmm, maybe we’re better off not having people voting who decide whether or not to do their civic duty based on what they see on TV.
Do your own research and then send in (or go to your polling place) your choices.
@NaN
Or, that almost half the time, Bob didn’t bother to mention the event, in any way, because there were more important things going on.
If nothing else, Musk’s head fake at buying twatster is causing a shakeup in management….
Bloomberg reported:
@rick
This is my perspective only; I can’t quite understand the logic of the comment paging setup. I’d expect that if you have comments split into 2 pages, you should start at the top of the 1st page by default, rather than the start of the 2nd page, so that you see the first comment rather than the middle.
Not a complaint, as I’ll get used to whatever setup is ongoing, just a comment.
Re: May 4th and RBT – I took a quick look at his journal entries for 2012 – 2017 (6 entries). RBT mentioned the Kent State shootings only on two of those entries. I didn’t look at subsequent entries to see a ‘day after’ mention.
If you want to look yourself; here’s a link to start https://www.ttgnet.com/journal/2012/05/04/ . Just change the year to look at other posts.
No entries for 2018+, as RBT had passed by then. Prior to 2012, this site was using a hand-built site (not WordPress), with comments in a separate area.
@Gavin
If you start at the day’s post (so you see the post entry, then the comments after that), comments are displayed in the order entered. When the number of comments for a day reach 51, there will be a “newer comments” link after the 50th comment. That will take you to ‘page 2’ of the comments, with the comments starting with comment # 51. And so on.
If you are reading the 2nd page of comments and are at comment 63, and wait a bit, then do a refresh, you will be shown the same page and position as before (comment 63), with newer comments below it.
So you do start with the 1st comment (and the post text at the top) when you first load the page. If you reload (rather than closing that tab then opening up the site again), you will be at the spot you were before. The positioning of the page viewed is dependent on how the browser works.
It’s a browser function, not a function of any code here on the site. That’s because the server can only present you with information – a page built according to the code on the server (in this case, WordPress core code, plus plugins, then stylized and presented by the theme). Any interaction with a page afterwards (scrolling, clicking, etc) is client-side, and not under the control of the site server.
A page can have some client-side code (like Javascript or jQuery or whatever) that responds to events on the client side. That’s how the ‘submit’ button on the comment box here works….it is only displayed after a certain timeout. That is because of the anti-spam-bot code I included in this theme – my “FormSpammerTrap” code that blocks bots from auto-submitting a form such as the comment box.
@RickH
Howsabout you just put the old stuff behind a paywall?
Charge vetted users $5 a year to access, but give them credits for each comment that has 50% or better thumbs up by the end of the day.
All account balances drop to $5 at the end of each month, and the overage goes to buy Powerball tickets with numbers randomly selected from non-calendar-date (>31) numbers.
Barbara gets half of all winnings.
I think the comment cutoff is fine, but it should be at 100.
Oh, yeah! I want animated gifs instead of gravatars.
No egg in my beer, but a side of bloody mary mix.
Let me know if I can hold your beer.
Because I don’t have the time to write and test and implement and fix the code to do that. Along with setting up a payment process, payment payouts. And the tax implications of that income.
I got enough projects that don’t get enough of my time.
https://salemnow.com/
https://dinesh.locals.com/post/2083099/2000-mules
pay per view sites. Turns out you don’t have to fraud everywhere, only in places where it makes a difference.
Which matches with my theory that soon it will be mathematically impossible to win if you don’t win the 4 or 5 blue cities. Haven’t done the math, but if you look at voting by county, the nation is a sea of red with a few blue cities. At some point, the population of the cities will be enough to guarantee a win. Then we’re done.
n
@RickH
Well, shoot.
Howsabout if I hold your beer for the other projects, too?
Not likely to happen if we refuse to bail them out:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/05/17/can-california-really-achieve-85-carbon-free-electricity-by-2030/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/05/17/the-esg-community-lacks-an-understanding-of-what-crude-oil-is-used-for/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/05/17/air-conditioning-a-human-right-because-climate-change/
in other news:
Seventeen States File Lawsuit Against EPA Because it Allowed California to Set Vehicle Standards
The lawsuit claims that Michael Regan, the agency’s administrator, violated a doctrine in the U.S. Constitution granting states equal sovereignty.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/05/seventeen-states-file-lawsuit-against-epa-because-it-allowed-california-to-set-vehicle-standards/
Toss the illegals out of CA and the immediate results would be a population decline, but since they tend to be driving beaters without the benefit of insurance, the impact will be disproportionate improvement of vehicle emissions.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/bad_touch_biden_was_at_it_again_obsessively_stroking_a_child_in_public.html
That Hunter Biden is quite a mess, eh?
Was there something traumatic in his childhood?
A couple of comments:
Fraud or not, everyone is slowly realizing that Brandon has no clue what he’s doing. Inflation is crazy and the only solution I’ve heard him put forward was to “make big companies pay their fair share”. Like they don’t already pay taxes, and anyway, how does increasing a company’s costs reduce prices? Answer: it doesn’t. Elon said whoever controls the teleprompter controls the presidency. Can’t argue with that.
An interesting part of the PV videos on Twitter was the employee stating that the right welcomes discussion, whereas the left won’t listen to contrary opinions. Given that you can’t think clearly without free speech and contrary opinions, I’m glad I’m not on the left.
After fifty years of leftist revisionism, the public memory of Kent State has been reduced to the deaths of four students without any knowledge of background or subsequent events.
It’s worse than that.
https://then24.com/2021/11/06/diary-leak-biden-daughter-ashley-describes-inappropriate-shower-with-joe/
n
Re: May 4 posts:
I read them all (1999 to 2017). Bob commented in one that he observed 13 seconds of silence every May 4, and several times that he had lost all trust in the government as a result of those deaths.
He still did not comment on the event in 9 out of 19 years he could have. I don’t think “May the 4th be with you” would have been a concern to him.
Gavin
Yeah, I’m not Bob. Couldn’t be if I wanted to be. Would like to be well thought of, but I’m not him.
Kent State was not one of my formative events. Jonestown, Grenada, Waco, 9-11, Rodney King Riots, those much more impactful for me.
I count on the commentariat to let me know when there is something to be remembered, brought to mind, or given a second look.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve discovered I like the occasional word play. Not PUNS mind you, I’m not John Wilder, but movie quotes, internet memes, song lyrics, pop culture references, and sometimes general silliness…
Something tragic happened on every day. Something funny and something joyous too. FWIW, I wouldn’t mind being reminded of the funny or joyous some times.
And ya know, there are a lot of clever people here. Sometimes I enjoy trying to be clever.
n
>> The lawsuit claims that Michael Regan, the agency’s administrator, violated a doctrine in the U.S. Constitution granting states equal sovereignty.
I remember the days of California cars and 49-state cars. I’m sure the auto manufacturers would love to revisit that. Not.
Cheese observations for those following along at home
-grin-
Feta. Salted. Will sit until Friday, then into the brine.
Plus hopeful dog, begging for a morsel.
——
The store bought milk formed a reasonable curd. More fragile curd than raw goat or raw cow milk. Used the strong lipase rather than mild lipase as the lipase and culture has been sitting in the deep freeze. The odor at 24 hours is mild and appropriate. Fresh rennet. The culture and lipase are over five years old, i made most of my cheese when my ten year old was a toddler and younger.
The whey hadn’t drained as completely at the 24 hour mark as I prefer. Mass was larger than previous masses, I handled it more gently and didn’t put as much pressure in deference to the fragile curds. Next time I can increase the pressure when I flip it at the 4 hour mark, I think. Trying a slight tilt to the glass pan to direct the whey from the feta as the salt releases more whey.
I suspect this will be an overall softer feta and probably won’t last as well.
@nightraker:
This is almost invariably the case in local (i.e. non-general) elections here in UK. Turnout for these elections can be as low as 30%, whereas general elections show a turnout of around 70%. Not sure of exact figures, but there is a noticeable disparity.
They are still considered valid elections, and the pontificators still try to generalise from local elections, with the 30% turnout, to general elections, with twice that turnout. I suspect that there’s a lot of apathy among the electorate, and significant numbers just cannot be bothered to turn out to vote.
If that’s true, I admit to some sympathy, because of my opinion of politicians, at any level.
But I follow RAH’s maxim – If in doubt, vote against. There may be nothing you approve of, but there’s sure to be something you dislike.
G.