Tues. May 24, 2022 – pickups, shelves, more pickups, and repairs

By on May 24th, 2022 in decline and fall, personal, prepping

Hot and humid.   Maybe not TERRIBLY hot, but pretty hot.   Yesterday stayed cooler than the previous few days, but it was still instant soaked shirt in the sun.

Spent a bit of time on the gennie, but couldn’t keep the rust out of the tank.  Had the idea I could use Evaporust to kill it once and for all, but couldn’t find any in the garage.   Problem sorted when I picked up D2 from school.  We went to harbor freight.   I got Evaporust, one of the fuel transfer pumps (they’ll be on sale next month, 2$ off, so I’ll stock up then) and a cheap set of woodcarving tools.   D2 wants to learn to carve and whittle.

When we got home, I put the Evaporust in the tank, and got out some wood, the cut proof glove, and the self healing mat and we got started.

As expected the cheap tools were almost entirely unsuited to actually carving wood.   All the bevel angles are wrong for carving.   It’s as if they were all set up as lathe tools.  More disappointing was the Barlow knife I got out for her to use for the whittling.  I bought it new for $3 in the auction, and it turns out it is made in Pakistan.  Real cr@p.   Don’t know if they are counterfeit or if Barlow sold out.   Almost impossible to get an edge on the blade.  My dad got hundreds of Barlow pocket knives as ‘gimme’ trinkets from a sales guy way back in the day.  I lost almost all of them.   I was an idiot.  New ones are NOTHING like the old ones, except in appearance. If you squint.

Anyway… we ended up carving soap bars.   MUCH easier to work with, much safer for starting out.  We did a bas relief daisy, and a nose.    She had fun, got way more confident with the tools, and it was about the right length of time for a project.

I’ll know if my Evaporust experiment worked later today.  Other people online have had success.

Rust never sleeps.   Gear needs maintenance.

I’ll be doing pickups today.  I’ve got a big loop planned, and then pulling stuff from storage and building some Metro rack shelves.   I will use them as I move stuff around and sort it for sale, and eventually put some or all at the BOL or in my garage.  The work at my storage unit is contingent on a lack of rain though.   We’re still in the “could get thunderstorms” area of the weather map today and tomorrow, even though it got sunny and nice eventually yesterday.  Weather liars. Pttt.

Fix some of your broken stuff.   Check to be sure your stuff isn’t actually broken.   And stack some of the stuff you need to get it running again next time.  Because there will be a next time.

nick

71 Comments and discussion on "Tues. May 24, 2022 – pickups, shelves, more pickups, and repairs"

  1. Nick Flandrey says:

    73F with only 92%RH  and 0%THC…

    Hah.

    n

  2. Greg Norton says:

    One of these days, I am going to read a programming manual past the second chapter.  I’ve got about 80 or 90 programming books, I use them as reference manuals when I have a question about a language or a procedure.  So, I have no formal training in programming, just doing since the age of 15.  I am not including the class at TAMU on IBM 370 Assembly Language that I surprisingly made a B in.

    A lot of CS books are useless for anything but a reference.

    Cough … Stroustrup … Cough.

    Even Bjarne couldn’t teach undergrads out of his own book when he was at TAMU after deciding that pole climbing classes at the Death Star for strike duty were not for him.

    I also think the Death Star logo on the copyright page of the book grates. He attempted to develop a new book at TAMU with little success beyond as a means of washing out undergrads.

    I had to laugh when I saw the latest book from Shai Simonson, arguably one of the best CS theory lecturers in the US still active. Even Shai got bored with the material … and old.

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/1704842166

  3. Greg Norton says:

    I returned a defective case to Newegg a few weeks ago, but I neglected to remove the motherboard IO shield before boxing and shipping the case back.

    I finally received a response to my inquiry about whether the returns processing could find the shield when the depot received and inspected the shipment. Nope. They refunded the cost to my card and simply sent the case for destruction at the direction of the manufacturer, without even opening the box.

    One stuck screw. Amazing. Hecho en China.

    I ordered a Universal IO shield from EBay — not a great solution, but it should work.

  4. MrAtoz says:

    But, I’ll apologize for the perceived snark. Not that there are other instances of snark around here.

    It’s the Gravatars.

    It’s the Gravatars.

    It’s the Gravatars.

    Snark? Moi?

  5. Ray Thompson says:

    I ordered a Universal IO shield from EBay

    Contact the MB manufacturer. Say the shield was damaged and would not stay in the case. They will probably send another shield. May not be worth the time delay.

  6. Greg Norton says:

    Contact the MB manufacturer. Say the shield was damaged and would not stay in the case. They will probably send another shield. May not be worth the time delay.

    Intel. A decade old easily. 

    Intel doesn’t even provide drivers for the board from their website anymore.

    I’ve never done a universal shield cut out before. Another learning experience.

  7. Nick Flandrey says:

    I’m telling you guys, it’s all about food.  

    Russian ships ‘load up with stolen Ukrainian grain’ in satellite images – amid warnings Europe faces ‘huge migration problem’ from Africa as Putin weaponizes food supplies

    • Satellite images taken this month show two Russian carrier ships docking in Crimea next to huge silos
    • Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Putin of ‘gradually stealing’ supplies during the invasion 
    • Polish president said food shortages could cause huge European migration wave from northern Africa
    • Ursula von der Leyen accused Putin of using ‘blackmail’ over food supplies
    • The invasion has sent the price of grain, cooking oil, fertiliser and energy soaring amid shortages

    By Jack Newman For Mailonline

    Published: 06:34 EDT, 24 May 2022 | Updated: 08:33 EDT, 24 May 2022 

    Russian ships have been loading up with stolen Ukrainian grain while Vladimir Putin continues to ‘blackmail’ the world by causing deliberate food shortages, satellite images suggest.

    Aerial photos taken of the Crimean port of Sevastopol show two Russian-flagged carrier ships docking and loading next to huge silos.

    The photos, taken by Maxar Technologies this month, show the Matros Pozynich and the Matros Koshka at the port as the silos pour the food off a belt into an open hold. Both ships have now left the port.

    While the grain transport has not been confirmed, Crimea produces little grain itself compared to Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, regions which are largely under Russian control.

    Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of ‘gradually stealing’ food supplies, despite many in Ukraine starving and fears of a global famine as a result of the shortages.

    There are fears that such a crisis could cause another migration wave as Africans desperately try to move to Europe to escape the dwindling supplies, European leaders said at Davos today. 

    –and I think it’s funny that  TPTB had no real interest in the war until they realized that africa was going to move to europe…   and europe would let them because that has been the policy for a decade.

    n

  8. Nick Flandrey says:

    without even opening the box.

    this is what enables all the ‘returns fraud’ that I see.   The online retailers are just dumping the returns to auction, without ever verifying what’s in the box.    Auctioneers I’ve raised the issue with tell me they have gotten whole pallets where EVERYTHING is returns fraud, ie. empty boxes, boxes with the old part inside, or boxes filled with stuff that is not the item listed.

    It’s not a new thing, Fry’s used to have a big issue with marked down ‘open box’ merch on the shelves.   You’d get it home and what was inside was either non-working or not the item listed on the box.   Fry’s used to take back everything, then some minimum wage guy would glance at it, and reseal the box, slap a new price sticker on it, and re-stock the item.   They had a bench full of stuff to ‘test’ the returns, but I never saw the test anything.

    The SCALE of the fraud is what’s new, and it goes way beyond returning a party dress after wearing it to  the party.

    n

  9. Pecancorner says:

    The SCALE of the fraud is what’s new, and it goes way beyond returning a party dress after wearing it to  the party.

    And that is disgusting. I wash every item of  “new” clothing before we wear it. Used to do that because of chemicals in the manufacturing process, but now I do it because dishonest people are probably filthy too.    I no longer buy clothing on Amazon, nor any “clearance” clothing from any source. 

    I’ve begun trying to buy direct from the manufacturer as much as possible, but especially for shoes, undergarments, hats, etc.    Where not the manufacturer, I try for specialty shops that limit returns and/or charge for returns.   Much better chance of getting things that are truly new and unworn.     

  10. Greg Norton says:

    this is what enables all the ‘returns fraud’ that I see.   The online retailers are just dumping the returns to auction, without ever verifying what’s in the box.    Auctioneers I’ve raised the issue with tell me they have gotten whole pallets where EVERYTHING is returns fraud, ie. empty boxes, boxes with the old part inside, or boxes filled with stuff that is not the item listed.

    The volume is simply too overwhelming. IIRC, Amazon gets nearly half of everything they sell back in returns.

    Still, the case wasn’t even sent to a reseller — straight to the crusher.

    The fraud isn’t new. I saw some crazy stuff even 30 years ago working at the Egghead Software Ponzi, the chain itself a questionably legal scheme to launder some ill begotten funny money by a member of one of Seattle’s most prominent families.

    My favorite fraud was the local used book dealer to whom one functionally illiterate store manager issued a poorly worded open-ended raincheck to buy any book Egghead stocked at 50% off shelf price, already a steep discount from list.

    Give an old Cuban guy in Tampa an inch and he’ll take 1000 miles. He would come in once a week with his raincheck and clean out anything he didn’t already have to sell at his shop near the university and, on Wednesdays, the flea market on campus.

  11. EdH says:

    Russian ships ‘load up with stolen Ukrainian grain’ in satellite images…

    This is contrary to the Geneva Convention, as was stealing farm equipment … but since the UN refuses to call it a war …

    There was a book, whose title I’ve forgotten, about the vast and deliberate looting by the Nazi’s in WW2. It wasn’t just artwork here and there. This is reminiscent of that – theft on an national scale.

  12. MrAtoz says:

    This is contrary to the Geneva Convention, as was stealing farm equipment … but since the UN refuses to call it a war …

    Yah, the UN is useless. As is plugs. Why isn’t he traveling to every NATO member to form a coalition against Russian aggression? Let’s just spend about $50 billion. I know other countries are chipping in, but Ukraine isn’t in our back yard. NATO backyard countries need to chip in A LOT more. “Well, Ukraine isn’t in NATO so too bad.”

  13. Nick Flandrey says:

    Anyone else having general trouble with identifying yourself online?

    I restarted my pc a couple days ago, and EVERY place that used to recognize me now asks me to log in, authenticate myself, or use a device I’ve used before.

    All I can find is that during the work on my A/c system I used my wifi from this desktop for the first time, and now I see that windows has named my wired ethernet connection to be the same name as my wifi  connection…   I can’t get rid of the wifi (forget this connection  is not available, and every time I look the check box for ‘automatically connect’ is re-enabled.)   I can’t name my ethernet connection back to what it was (network2- named automatically).

    I get security notices that a new device has logged in, and freaking google won’t let me log in as my nick identity, when that used to be automatic and the default.   

    The issue looks like windows changed something locally that makes me look like something completely new online, in all the places I normally go.

    any ideas?

    n

  14. Chad says:

    With China and Russia as permanent members of the UN Security Council the UN will be a joke for some time to come. It should probably be broken up by region with each region choosing a country to be on the Security Council and no country can serve consecutive terms and no country that's been under UN sanction within the last 5 years can serve. Even then, it would probably still be a clusterfuck. Developed democratic nations that explore space sitting next to undeveloped dictatorships still struggling to get running water to their masses.

  15. Nick Flandrey says:

    Thank gnu that the UN is worthless.

    n

  16. SteveF says:

    Developed democratic nations that explore space sitting next to undeveloped dictatorships still struggling to get running water to their masses.

    That might need to be rephrased, what with the (big-D) Democratic city of Flint, Michigan being unable to provide potable water to the people.

  17. Alan says:

    >> this is what enables all the ‘returns fraud’ that I see. 

    And here I feel bad fudging the return reason so I don’t have to pay any return postage. 

  18. Alan says:

    Hmm, looks like @RickH has ‘unplugged’ the Edit comment plug-in again. 

  19. Alan says:

    >> any ideas? 

    Can you temporarily remove the wifi in Device Manager, connect via Ethernet and then readd the wifi? 

  20. Nick Flandrey says:

    Shoot, here comes the rain.

    n

  21. Alan says:

    >> Hmm, looks like @RickH has ‘unplugged’ the Edit comment plug-in again. 

    And now it’s back. 

  22. Alan says:

    >> And here I feel bad fudging the return reason so I don’t have to pay any return postage.  

    Good thing that AWS keeps the lights on or we’d have to go back to shopping at the mall. 

  23. Lynn says:

    f2c is an fugly mess. The lexer looks like humans hand coded it, but the parser is obvious yacc output.

    The yacc source is spread across the gram* files which were used to produce gram.c.

    All software code is a mess.  If it is useful then it has all kinds of bug fixes all over the place.  That Joel on Software dude wrote a long article on this topic alone about the rewrite of the first internet browser Netscape taking 8+ years.

    https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/

    BTW, we have a Fortran interpreter built into our software.  It was built using yacc and then converted to Fortran.  It is horrible code but it works extremely well.  Mainframe programmers !

  24. Rick H says:

    >> Hmm, looks like @RickH has ‘unplugged’ the Edit comment plug-in again. 

    And now it’s back. 

    Nope. Not me. Nothing done yesterday/today except to re-enable the “Classic Editor” plugin, which is only used in creating new pages/posts, not comments.

    There is a short delay before the edit link appears after submitting is done. Process is ‘submit, wait for page reload, your comment appears, short delay of a couple seconds, then edit link appears.

    Any changes to the edit function are in the plugin. 

  25. Rick H says:

    As for loss of name/email in the comments, or any other logins on other sites; those are usually done by cookies stored locally in your browser. 

    Although the new 2FA (two factor authentication) processes that sites are going to might be the cause. They require a numeric code to continue the login. Supposed to be more secure.

    But it’s not a Windows thing. It’s either your browser cookies being cleared (inside the browser), or the site doing something different with their logins – possibly the 2FA.

  26. CowboyStu says:

    Back in the ’70s, company at our request bought us a Fortran app for Steam Tables.  Worked great and came in a box of 80 column Hollerith cards from a company Southwest Research Institute, IIRC.  Used it to calculate perfotmance of the solar energy produced electricity by plant in Daggett, CA.

    In the ’90s our company  library bought for me a book, Visual Basic For Applications.  Wonderful, I was able to read main frame computer analytical outputs, transfer into Excel for last calculations, transfer those numerical data into MS Word document for transmittal to our launch folks at the Cape.  Included were quantities of propellants to load on the rockets prior to launch.  If your handheld GPS devices and the routing guidance in your vehicles work correctly, I made no fatal mistakes.

  27. nick flandrey says:

    I made no fatal mistakes.

    that haven’t been caught and fixed by others, or that haven’t been found YET!

    Although if they were launch related, I guess you’d know pretty dang quick when the unscheduled disassembly happened….

    n

  28. lynn says:

    Over The Hedge: George Is Homesick

        https://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge/2022/05/24

    Poor George.  But he did get to miss the screaming, shouting, and mayhem when the huge meteor hit the Earth.  And the long frozen Earth.

  29. CowboyStu says:

    Although if they were launch related, I guess you’d know pretty dang quick when the unscheduled disassembly happened….

    Exactly, the data were the quantities of both propellants, fuel and oxidizer, for both first and second stages to be loaded just prior to launch.  Actual performance, velocities, altitudes, are transmitted back during climb out.  We know concurrently as they fly.

  30. lynn says:

    Dilbert: Poison Pill

       https://dilbert.com/strip/2022-05-24

    That is not how the corporate poison pill works !

  31. lynn says:

    The punishment of Wall Street continues.  Or is is the punishment of the American populaces 401Ks and IRAs ?

        https://finance.yahoo.com/

  32. lynn says:

    Contact the MB manufacturer. Say the shield was damaged and would not stay in the case. They will probably send another shield. May not be worth the time delay.

    Intel. A decade old easily. 

    Intel doesn’t even provide drivers for the board from their website anymore.

    I’ve never done a universal shield cut out before. Another learning experience.

    Bummer, I think that I trashed all my PCs with Intel motherboards.  

    Of course, you can run I/O shieldless.

  33. SteveF says:

    For MrAtoz, adapted from something I just saw:

    My idea of “help from above” is an Apache, a Warthog, or a sniper on a roof.

  34. lynn says:

    “Analyst says it’s make or break time for Boeing”

        https://www.bizjournals.com/wichita/news/2022/05/24/analyst-says-it-s-make-or-break-time-for-boeing.html?utm_source=sy&utm_medium=nsyp&utm_campaign=yh

    “A leading aviation analyst says the Boeing Co. is heading into a critical stage, with research and development spending headed down after crisis-filled years in which it lost more market share.”

    “Since the onset of the 737 MAX crisis, when Boeing’s (NYSE: BA) most popular jet was grounded for 20 months starting in March 2019 after two deadly crashes, research and development spending at the company’s commercial airplanes division has declined every year, plunging by half from more than $2.2 billion in 2017 to just $1.14 billion in 2021.”

    I cannot imagine a world without Boeing.

    Hat tip to:

        https://finance.yahoo.com/m/bfa0c950-da2f-3414-9263-d590db4dc3e5/analyst-says-it%E2%80%99s-make-or.html

  35. lpdbw says:

    I’m currently at my farm in Illinois, preparing to sell it, and I’ve had to spend a lot of time at the courthouse gathering documents, deeds, maps, plats, tax bills – the whole works.   Not only Illinois, but a Democrat stronghold within Illinois.

    They still have plexiglass up and half of the drones who work for the county still wear masks.

    I needed to print a few pages out of the middle of a long probate case.  The clerk (who actually ran the scanning office of 3 employees) was getting frustrated searching for the pages I needed, and set me up at a computer to scroll through the document myself.

    Bear in mind, this is the guy in charge of scanning court documents.  I asked him if the scanned documents were OCR’d and searchable, and he said “I don’t know what that means.”

    I found and printed the necessary pages.  I should have asked if I could just put the images on a thumb drive and OCR’d them myself, using one of the 3 tools I have to do that.  He would have probably freaked out.

  36. Greg Norton says:

    All software code is a mess.  If it is useful then it has all kinds of bug fixes all over the place.  That Joel on Software dude wrote a long article on this topic alone about the rewrite of the first internet browser Netscape taking 8+ years.

    The urban legend was that the Netscape programmers had to remove all of the profanity which was embedded in places like variable and function names.

    If you are contemplating a rewrite in C++, I wouldn’t touch the lexer or parser in f2c beyond fixing the yacc source so it will work with “bison -y” to generate the gram.c file and token definitions in the .h.

    Trying to maintain/patch gram.c is a fast way to madness.

  37. lynn says:

    “Amazon Apparently Has a Big, Empty Warehouse Problem”

        https://www.pcmag.com/news/amazon-apparently-has-a-big-empty-warehouse-problem

    “As we exit the pandemic, Amazon is left with a lot of space and nothing to fill it with.”

    “As Bloomberg reports(Opens in a new window), people familiar with the situation claim Amazon needs to do something with over 10 million square feet of warehouse storage space (roughly the same size as 12 of the company’s largest fulfillment centers) it no longer needs. It may actually be triple that amount depending on which source you listen to.”

    “To put the size of this downscaling in context, and remind everyone just how big of an operation Amazon runs, at the end of last year Amazon was leasing 370 million square feet of industrial estate in the US. The excess space the company currently holds is expected to amount to $10 billion in additional costs, which makes it clear why Amazon really wants to sign some subleasing agreements or terminate existing lease agreements early.”

    370 million square feet of warehouse space !  That just boggles my mind.

  38. lynn says:

    Trying to maintain/patch gram.c is a fast way to madness.

    There is no gram.c file.

  39. Greg Norton says:

    “Analyst says it’s make or break time for Boeing”

    I cannot imagine a world without Boeing.

    As soon as the 747 line shuts down in Everett, the clock will start ticking for Boeing in WA State.

    Airbus is making A220 production work in Mobile, which will be a problem long term for Boeing unless they get serious about South Carolina.

    Delta is flying A321neo now, and they used to be Boeing only until the 757 and 767s started to reach end-of-life with nothing to replace them.

  40. MrAtoz says:

    My idea of “help from above” is an Apache, a Warthog, or a sniper on a roof.

    Our flight surgeon in Korea would wear a patch “Death From Behind” during flight physicals.

  41. paul says:

    I have had no problems with websites forgetting my ID.  I delete cookies except for here and facebook.  Firefox remembers for me.

    Paypal and eBay and Amazon randomly ask for my cell phone number.  “To keep you secure”.  Sure.  Let’s just stick with the secret question routine. 

    I fell for that with USAA and other than sending the vehicle proof of insurance as a PDF in e-mail, for everything else they want a code they text to my phone.  Nope nope nope.  I’m on my PC and the phone is in the dining room or in the truck.  Y’all can just mail the policy renewal stuff.   And besides, I’ve looked at the URL and it has tracking ID stuff there.  They know it’s me.  If I click the link on my phone, where’s the security if I’ve lost my phone? 

    It seems pointless.

  42. paul says:

    The rain keeps vanishing.  The forecast this morning said 40% chance of thunderstorms.  That’s gone.

    But by golly and cross our fingers, tonight is 100%.  With tomorrow at 30% in the morning and then sunny.

    Oh well.  I’d like it to rain to water things like trees and what cows and wild critters eat.  On the plus side, I don’t have to mow.  On the plusser side, no mosquitoes.

  43. MrAtoz says:

    I have to use 2FA on some .gov sites. Fortunately, 1Password has an authenticator built in and it works with them. 1P runs on my iDevices and Mac, so it is always with me.

  44. Greg Norton says:

    Trying to maintain/patch gram.c is a fast way to madness.

    There is no gram.c file.

    In the source directory to the library or the translator?

    http://www.netlib.org/f2c/src/index.html

    I built the translator cleanly on Linux.

  45. Rick H says:

    WordPress version 6.0 is out and installed here (and all of the other sites I manage). Most changes have to do with ‘blocks’. There are supposed to be some performance enhancements, but those are also mostly block-related.

    A quick test here doesn’t show any changes in page load time. And all the plugins – and the theme – work just fine in 6.0.

  46. Brad says:

    Have y’all heard the latest kerfuffle? At the Nebula awards, the SFWA named Mercedes Lackey to Grandmaster. Then she stumbled while praising a black writer, because she referred to him as “colored” instead of “of color”. The SFWA immediately kicked her out of the conference.

    The woke eat their own. More seriously, Nebula and Hugo awards have become anti-recommendations. Writers to avoid, because they have been selected for wokeness instead of good writing. 

  47. Ray Thompson says:

    Currently in Crossville TN at the RV at Spring Lake RV Resort, site 9. Look it up if you are bored. Have been here three times prior and like the place, one of our favorites. Not crowded, well maintained, pleasant location. This site has many trees around the pad providing a lot of shade. Have to use the lights in the RV to get enough brightness.

    Friday night we go to Cumberland County Playhouse to see “Murder on the Orient Express”. We have been to many productions put on by the theatre. All excellent, well-acted, well produced, never been disappointed. Leave for home on Saturday.

    We try and take the RV somewhere once a month. Next month it will not be possible. Former exchange student, her mother, and sister are arriving for 10 days. That is what motivated the push to get the basement apartment ceiling replaced. Should have been done years ago but no one really goes in that part of the house except for guests.

    Supposed to rain tonight and all day tomorrow. Will sit inside and watch movies freshly purchased and downloaded or maybe sit outside under the awning and listen to the rain.

    Took the wife and I 30 minutes to set up after arriving. That includes leveling the trailer, hooking up water, sewer, electricity, and cable TV. Place also has WiFi which is becoming really common. Electrical is through a safety box that avoids surges, dips, verifies the voltage, phase, ground, and polarity, before allowing power to flow. Expensive (north of $250.00) but saves stuff in the RV from power issues which are not exactly uncommon. We only need a 30-ampere connection. Runs the A/C, water heater, lights without a problem.

  48. Chad says:

    Elementary school shooting in Texas. Last version I read said 14 students and 1 teacher dead. 18yo shooter in custody.

  49. Rick H says:

    Elementary school shooting in Texas. Last version I read said 14 students and 1 teacher dead. 18yo shooter in custody.

    Latest: shooter is dead. 

    Story is all over the news and online.

  50. MrAtoz says:

    Terrible in Uvalde. I tried posting a link earlier, but I guess the electrons ate it.

    Tomorrow the PLTs will be dancing on the bodies screeching about gun control. We don’t even know what is going on yet.

    Just terrible.

  51. lynn says:

    “14 students killed, 1 teacher dead in elementary school shooting, Texas governor says: LIVE”

        https://abc13.com/uvalde-texas-robb-elementary-school-active-shooter-district-lockdown/11889693/

    “The suspect was identified as 18-year-old XXXXXXX XXXXX, a student at Uvalde High School.”

    “The 18-year-old suspect, a student at Uvalde High School, is also dead, he said.”

    “The suspect also allegedly shot his grandmother before entering the school and again opening fire, Abbott said. He did not say anything further about her condition.”

    “Two responding police officers were among those injured, Abbott said. They are expected to survive, he said.”

    The shooter was shot and killed by Border Patrol agents. I know that the shooter is also a child of God.  Hopefully God is judging him right now.

    Hat tip to:

       https://www.drudgereport.com/

    Also 

       https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10850557/Active-shooter-loose-Texas-elementary-school-campus-plunged-lockdown.html

  52. Ray Thompson says:

    Elementary school shooting in Texas. Last version I read said 14 students and 1 teacher dead.

    I have to wonder how the shooter got in the school. In the school district I sub everyone must enter through the front office. Stationed in that front office is a police officer (School Resource Office) who works for the county. All the rest of the doors are steel and are locked and cannot be opened from the outside. Even I, as a sub, must register if I got to a different school than I sub.

    It would be a shame if the shooter was an illegal immigrant, part of Sponge Brain’s invading hoard. If the shooter is illegal, it will be quickly downplayed, or hidden.

    I have to wonder if the teachers were allowed to be armed if the carnage would be less. Or would it be more due to indiscriminate  gunfire. Would guns in the school make it worse, or better?

    I do know there will be renewed calls for gun control, gun registration, further restrictions on assault weapons. Well, here is a clue. Any weapon used for assault is an assault weapon. Trying to control guns will work as well as the war on drugs. Law abiding people will be restricted, the criminals will continue to own and use guns. Only now with more abandon as they know citizens are probably not armed. A war on guns would be less effective than the war on drugs.

  53. Greg Norton says:

    The first PLT:

    Gov. Gavin Newsom wastes no time blaming the GOP after mass shooting at Texas elementary school

    Just despicable. Nobody can even grieve.

    California money runs Robert Francis’ campaigns, data mining the results state-wide. They won’t let the crisis go to waste.

    If Robert Francis actually won, he would immediately be in the VP calculus for 2024.

  54. lynn says:

    Trying to maintain/patch gram.c is a fast way to madness.

    There is no gram.c file.

    In the source directory to the library or the translator?

    http://www.netlib.org/f2c/src/index.html

    I built the translator cleanly on Linux.

    Thanks, you are correct.  I got confused between the f2c source and the libf2c source.

  55. MrAtoz says:

    Holy Gay Pox Batman:

    Yale Prof: Telling Gay Men to Stop Having Sex With Strangers to Halt Monkeypox Spread is Untenable

    Fauci needs to hit the bath houses to investigate…

  56. MrAtoz says:

    The CelbriTurds are out in force DEMANDING something be done. None of them have even read the US Constitution bird cage liner that our country is based on. No idea how to change it, just DEMAND PLTs do it. Constitution, nation of laws, what’s that got to do with anything. I can’t wait for plugs’ rambling comments. Probably take him a week to get it right and even then go off script and “Old Man Yells At Clouds.”

  57. MrAtoz says:

    We watched “Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers” on Disney+. Hilarious with so many Easter eggs, quips and references.

    The Wokesters want to cancel it because Peter Pan grows up to be a thug and scumbag. LOL.

  58. Paul Hampson says:

    My idea of “help from above” is an Apache, a Warthog, or a sniper on a roof.

    45 years ago I was dreaming of having the USS Enterprise and its resources at my beck and call.

  59. Greg Norton says:

    The Wokesters want to cancel it because Peter Pan grows up to be a thug and scumbag. LOL.

    Peter Pan’s voice actor was yet another Disney child star whose story was not “Happily Ever After …”

  60. nick flandrey says:

    @ray, Texas has a School Marshal program, where district employees can receive training in tactics and shooting, and then carry while on school grounds.   Paxton called for more use of the program today.

    It’s up to the district, and many rural districts  use the program although I don’t know if Uvalde does.   The reality for many of the districts is that there are one or two LEOs available with a half hour response time.

    In this case, BORDER PATROL looks like the first on scene.

    And that is modern doctrine, if the active shooter call goes out EVERYONE responds.   The only deviation so far has been reports that the one agent responded without backup.   The first two guys on scene are supposed to back each other up, ie wait for another… I can’t imagine doing that in real life while someone is shooting kids.

    School had active shooter drills because the teacher killed had a cop husband who led them.  No mention of Stop the Bleed training or bleeding control kits, our district has both now.

    Oh, and f#ck joe bidden.

    n

  61. lynn says:

    “Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton easily defeats George P. Bush in GOP primary runoff”

        https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/24/texas-attorney-general-runoff-results-ken-paxton-george-p-bush/

    Sweet ! My vote did count.

  62. drwilliams says:

    A typology of “scholarly bullshit” is proposed which includes the following archetypes: boring question scholarship, literature review of literature reviews, recycled research, master thesis madness, and activist rants.

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/05/24/bullshit-in-the-sustainability-and-transitions-literature-a-provocation/

    “Economic illiteracy” might be a candidate for addition.

  63. lynn says:

    “14 students killed, 1 teacher dead in elementary school shooting, Texas governor says: LIVE”

    It is now 18 students and 1 teacher dead.   Utterly freaking crazy.

       https://apnews.com/article/uvalde-texas-school-shooting-b4e4648ed0ae454897d540e787d092b2

    Hat tip to:

        https://www.drudgereport.com/

    We are living in Heinlein’s crazy years.

  64. lynn says:

    In the source directory to the library or the translator?

    http://www.netlib.org/f2c/src/index.html

    I built the translator cleanly on Linux.

    Thanks, you are correct.  I got confused between the f2c source and the libf2c source.

    I got f2c built using Visual Studio 2015.  I love it when three of the source code files include main’s and you have to guess which one is correct.

    I sent an email off to the maintainer asking if he knew if anyone had added support for Fortran structures converted to C structures (they are exactly alike).  If not, I plan to add an option for that translation plus an option for the input/output to directly use fprintf and fscanf instead of that gobbly gook that is in there right now.  Plus an option for include files not to be barfed into the code.  I figure that it is 50/50 if I get an answer.  If I am successful then I can always host the code on my web server if they do not want my hacks.

    The road to translate 5,000 Fortran subroutines to C++ code starts with a single step.  Heard that on the old Kung Fu TV show with David Carradine.

  65. lynn says:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10850557/Active-shooter-loose-Texas-elementary-school-campus-plunged-lockdown.html

    I went to an elementary school very much like that one in Oklahoma back in the 1960s.  Very difficult to protect with open walkways and individual buildings made out of cinder blocks and roll out windows.  Not air conditioned so the windows were open a lot unless it was winter time.

  66. Greg Norton says:

    I sent an email off to the maintainer asking if he knew if anyone had added support for Fortran structures converted to C structures (they are exactly alike).  If not, I plan to add an option for that translation plus an option for the input/output to directly use fprintf and fscanf instead of that gobbly gook that is in there right now.  Plus an option for include files not to be barfed into the code.  I figure that it is 50/50 if I get an answer.  If I am successful then I can always host the code on my web server if they do not want my hacks.

    The Labs guys will not be involved. A lot of them retired or found something else to do in the 00s, particularly 08-09. I’m not kidding about pole climbing classes. I got a health exception.

    The changes file is pretty sparse for the last 20 years.

  67. drwilliams says:

    Most people don’t remember that the Shaolin were butt-kicking programmers.

  68. drwilliams says:

    I needed something to counter the news today. I’m calling it: 

    The Lighter Side of Late-Night 5/25/22 

    The Association – Five Song Medley

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq5bUnvKq94

    These clips are from the Smothers Brothers tv show and have all of the defects of such appearances. Ignore the lip-synch and the bad outfits and watch what the boys are playing and who is singing. They were some of the most accomplished singers and musicians found anywhere, but the only way to know that was to actually attend a concert and watch them in action as they changed singers and instruments between songs.

    There are better videos of live performances. See Mike Douglas, the 1967 Monterrey Pop Festival* and Ravinia to start.

    *The Association did not appear in the original film [profanity redacted] despite being the openers. The Complete Monterrey Pop Festival has virtually everything but The Grape.

  69. brad says:

    Some thoughts about return fraud, and returns in general…

    For some things, like clothing, returns are important. Order a pair of shoes without having been able to try them on – if they don’t fit properly, it makes sense to be able to return them. People wouldn’t buy clothes online if they couldn’t return them.

    Other things, I have less understand for. Order an electronic gadget (phone, tablet, whatever). You already know what it is supposed to do, there are no surprises lurking. Unless there is a defect, I don’t see why you should be allowed to return it.

    As far as return fraud goes: Why is it not worth the online-shop’s time to check the returns? Shoes returned, having obviously been work for weeks or months? Electronics returned, only it’s actually just a brick? Don’t refund the money! Surely there’s a financial incentive here? Sure, you can’t catch everything, but you could stop the bulk of it.

    Elementary school shooting in Texas.

    Really sorry to hear about that. Stupid copy-cat crimes, but I find it impossible to imagine what kind of mental illness would lead to shooting up a bunch of little kids.

    Ray’s questions and observations are all good. Of course, the media and powers-that-be will not objectively discuss them; instead, this will be used for political purposes.

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