Hot and humid. ‘Natch… as it has been with little relief. But that’s Houston in the summer.
An observation. 8 more hours in the day to do things did not mean I got things done.
So, what happened, what has been learned?
1700 daily posts, with differing topics and amounts of effort over the course of more than four years. Over 12000 comments. When I last bothered to add it up, I figured over 1.5 million words on mostly prepping related stuff, mostly here but also in comment sections across the web. Add a few more hundred thousand since then. That’s a graduate degree, maybe two. That’s a dozen novels, maybe more. At 8 hours a day (while doing other things, and spread out across the day) it’s 13000+ hours- well past the mythical 10K hours needed for mastery, and I didn’t start from zero with the skills. All that is just to say that I’ve been doing this for a while now. In another year, I’ll have the same number of posts as Bob (in this iteration of the site).
When Bob first asked me to contribute, I was flattered, and a bit nervous, but also, it wasn’t that different from posting long comments. I liked it as I like sharing, teaching, and I think the material was and is important. When Bob suddenly got sick, I had the access and the desire to help keep the doors open, so we’d all have a place to wait for him to get better and return. So I did. Barbara and Bob were both well aware of what we were doing here. When Bob passed, and Barbara wanted to keep the site going, I was flattered and a bit awed that she let me continue, asking me to do more than just ‘open the door’ in the morning.
I felt a strong sense of duty as well, but I wasn’t just a caretaker for a memorial site, I felt a strong duty to contribute, to build on the knowledge, to keep the site as a living growing evolving site, so that new people could and would discover all the great stuff here, and the great group of people who hang out here. The depth and breadth of the knowledge held by this group is astounding. I felt, and still feel a strong sense of conservator-ship and I regularly re-read old posts and old comments to keep the continuity of tone and focus.
It’s Bob’s site. He brought most of us here, and the environment he fostered kept most of us here. I’m flattered that some people have joined us since I started daily duties, and have chosen to keep coming back and to contribute when they can, or to ask for help when they needed it. It’s inevitable that as I became more comfortable in the role, and had the ever increasing number of posts, that the daily blogging part of the site, the heart that is Daynotes Journal, should come to reflect me more than Bob. I hope that the style and tone have continued to reflect what readers and commentors enjoyed coming here for. I have made a conscious effort along those lines.
It was therefore quite a shock to discover that someone who I thought I understood seemed to think little of everything I’ve done and tried to do for the last 4 plus years. Not a certain troll. I don’t actually care about him at all, only the disruption he causes. But the stress on the system caused by the troll led to the revelation and it kinda blew my mind. How could I be so blind? Was I wrong about other things too? Why the F was I spending 8 hours or more a day on something that didn’t matter?
So I closed my browser and walked away.
It was a busy couple of days. School is starting today, new school for one kid, last year of Middle of the other. Friday was the 4th anniversary of my father’s death. Saturday was my non-prepping hobby meeting, and the last chance to plan for our yearly swapmeet/tradeshow/annual meeting which takes place in two weeks. Plus all the normal things and FINALLY making some progress with contractors at the BOL.
It was hard to stay away. I realized I miss my friends. I miss sharing ideas and the stuff I’m doing. I miss the collegiality, the conviviality of the group. I’m in the habit of thinking “oh, that’s something I can build a post off of”, or “oh, that story will get people talking”, or “holy cr@p that went badly, someone will enjoy hearing about that mess….” but I had no outlet for it. I also missed hearing about what you all were up to, what was happening in your lives.
I realized that the site is a labor of love, as well as a duty. I realized that there were LOTS of people who do think what I’m doing and trying to do has value. Barbara assured me that she is one of them and wants me to continue. So I will. The past few days have been longer than I’ve ever been away from the site, even as just a reader, since long before I started posting. I read through the past days comments and I’m gladdened by what I saw, people communicating and hanging out, sharing, and helping. Thank you to those of you who reached out privately too.
So, I will continue to feed my addiction by coming here every day and sharing my life with you, and sharing in yours as well.
To make that happen, I have reassurance from Barbara that Bob wouldn’t have tolerated the sort of disruption that we’ve seen lately. Anyone who claims to love Bob, or the way things were, has no standing to cause disruption as that is the OPPOSITE of what Bob would have wanted. I have Rick as a partner on the technical side. And I’ll deputize anyone willing and able to make things happen if that becomes necessary.
What does that mean? I’ll do whatever is needed to preserve the tone and atmosphere here as it has been for the last decade. It means that there might be some ‘rough and tumble’ as we are all (to the best of my knowledge) adults and sometimes adults have exchanges that they later regret. We’ve had those in the past and I expect we’ll have them again. I think everyone knows how to disagree without being disagreeable. It also means that most of us should “assume positive intent” when reacting to each other (as has been the case for almost 190K comments).
That does not apply to trolls. They have demonstrated negative intent consistently, repeatedly, and willfully. One will be deleted on sight. The other has acted in bad faith by my reckoning but has the tiniest sliver of possibility left. I have technical reasons to think they are not one in the same despite 90% or more congruence. I’m putting him on notice here. Do not push this. If your whole story isn’t a thin tissue of lies then you know how to behave here. Failure to do so will just prove your bad intent and ill will and we will all delete you on sight too. And that goes for any new trolls too, we’ll assume bad intent and just delete them.
For reasons that are wider than this site and what Rick can easily do, blocking trolls a priori has challenges. Therefore, Rick or I, or one of our deputies, will delete offenders and their comments as soon as we see them. I don’t want to leave even a note in their place, as that is disruptive too, and takes more time and effort than is worth spending on it. If there isn’t any interaction with them, removing them won’t leave anyone else scratching their heads wondering what they missed (hint)… and it may be that if I’ve deleted the original comment, I might delete the reply, especially if it quotes the original. Unless it’s particularly clever, then I might leave it. I’ve said before that I don’t need reasons other than my whim, and several of you have affirmed that. If you make a reply and I delete it too, please don’t take it personally, I’m just trying to reduce the value of attempting to disrupt us, and the rewards he receives for doing so. I definitely don’t want you guys competing for the cleverest response to a troll. Seriously. Engage as little as possible, and know it might all vanish.
If the trolls come around, our response won’t be seamless, but it will be final. Have patience as we work on it.
It has been my honor and privilege to continue walking the path that Bob started on, and I expect to continue doing so for some time.
nick flandrey
(oh, forget about the drama and get back to stacking!)
Thank you Nick. Your efforts are greatly appreciated. My work prevents me from following the conversation throughout the day. I had been reading the site on a 24 hour delay but I stopped partly because of the trolls (and dealing with other issues as well). Going forward I will go back to the 24 hour delay on the comments because of the wide breadth of knowledge resident here among all the contributors. This shared knowledge is extremely valuable in all the challenges we currently face.
JimM’s comments about brewing are good. Using prepared malt syrup saves a lot of work, but (of course) your recipes are limited to the kinds of syrup you can find. Still, it’s a good way to dabble.
Um…yes. Boilover will happen, or some other mess. Yesterday, draining from the Braumeister into the fermentation tank, I somehow had the funnel misaligned, had a different mess to clean up, and came back to find a couple liters of wort had missed the tank. Messes happen.
It’s interesting that JimM cheats here (whereas I cheat during the cooling). I use a proper fermenter with airlock. They’re not expensive. Of course, it is a big object that requires storage space.
Yep, that’s what I do. Or part of it. To get the second fermentation in the bottle, the yeast needs fed again. Many people just put a few grams of sugar in each bottle. I prefer to follow the German tradition of no added ingredients. So I save out some of the wort before fermentation, and add it to the secondary tank, before bottling.
Python 2 is already a bad sign for long term support. A lot of legacy Python projects have given up rather than face Python 2→3 conversion.
The last time I had some time, pre-July 4th, I took a look at running the f2c yacc code through modern Bison, but there were three gotchas which needed further research to determine if they were syntax errors in the .y source or some kind of Plan 9 Yacc extensions.
What f2c really needs is some serious regression test automation. Of course, the Labs guys on the mothership didn’t bother.
You haven’t read my code. Some of the best around, in my extremely biased opinion. Lots of comments, sometimes more lines than actual code. Never do in one statement what can be done in three statements if it makes the code more readable. I got burned on my own clever code. Lesson learned.
Very happy to read from nick again. I agree 100% with him.
77F and sun coming up. Humidity at 99% but that will drop as the temps increase, probably. We could see some weather from the system that came ashore down south.
I have brewed a couple of batches of really bad beer. Drank them, because BEER! but the neighbors didn’t ask for seconds…
I did one batch from a store bought kit, the other from a different syrup. Neither was very tasty. Timing turned out to be more important than I thought, and I wasn’t available at the right time for the steps.
WRT cost and equipment, there are kits readily available, in the US anyway. Most of the stuff fits inside the 6 gallon bucket for storage. I used Grolsh bottles a friend gave me so I didn’t need bottles or a capper, but they are pretty cheap. Like a lot of things, you don’t do it for economic reasons, unless you are trying to replace a high end craft beer, in bulk, and even then you’ll still buy beer, because you obviously love beer…
My dad made basement wine on more than one occasion. The best I can say about it is that it made really tasty vinegar, and grid down, you will want vinegar… He used grapes he collected himself at the Dunes in Indiana, and he used grapes he bought from someone local specifically for winemaking. He drank the result, mostly. Lots of people appreciated the vinegar, the wine, well… at the estate sale someone appreciated the glass 5 gallon water jugs.
—-
Kids are off to school. Short day today with fun activities. Waited for 25 minutes for their bus, watched the right number drive by, then my wife took them. Lot of buses thru the neighborhood, not a lot of riders. First day though.
It would be nice to have a bus tracker app, if they could keep it secure, which I don’t have any confidence they could.
—-
This story is the kind of thing you see when the authorities want to go on record, but don’t want the story to grow legs…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11102499/Brooklyn-man-dead-home-littered-biohazard-canisters-alarming-drawings.html
Dead in a chair, surrounded by OPEN canisters marked ‘biohazard’. It looks a lot like the stories of bomb makers blowing themselves up accidentally. Something to watch for in the news.
n
+1
On a related note – take more time away. When you go on vacation, just stub each day to open – no content needed. A break every now and then is a good thing.
Another semi related note to Nick’s post. Take an extra 5 minutes just for those kids. I swear you blink and suddenly they are off to college… The change isn’t bad, but it is change and takes time to adjust. I just hope it doesn’t take me too long…
Thank you Nick for all your efforts here.
So, I will continue to feed my addiction by coming here every day and sharing my life with you, and sharing in yours as well.
Thank you, Nick!
I read a lot here, and seldom comment. So, Nick, thanks for the explanation. For what it’s worth, I completely support your actions and intentions for the site. May we all keep things civilized for as long as posssible.
Glad to see you Nick -grin-
School bus – our local school district lost many of their drivers over vaccinations. They’ve got enough drivers for ⅓ the bus schedule.
There have been few takers for refilling their ranks.
Parents have been given a complicated schedule of when they’ll have bus service. There has been angst and turmoil.
Driving a school bus is an annoying task. The kids misbehave, they are disrespectful. and generally annoying creatures. Then deal with the parents whose child had to wait an extra five minutes because little Sally at the previous bus stop was late, and little jerk wad Tony decided to throw a fit on the bus causing delays.
Pay the drivers better and put security on the bus to stop the infractions. If the bus arrives within 10 minutes of the scheduled time, the bus is on time. Little Sally can suck it up in the sun or rain. TFB.
Welcome back, Nick. We missed you. The worst part was worrying that you might have met with some sort of accident. Not that you ever do anything risky. 🙂
I agree with @ITGuy1998 that you should stub when you are on vacation. I’ll add that you should do that whenever you need a break. We all need breaks at times. Please try to announce in advance so we don’t worry. We won’t burn the place down.
I agree with what you are doing with this site. It is civil and loaded with insights. Life wouldn’t be the same without it.
I just read a long essay by a physicist that does plasma research that laid out what funding profiles would get various approaches to a test plant that would prove/disprove the approach.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-future-of-fusion
OK, now let’s get MrAtoZ back.
Do I have to put back the avatars? 🙂
(Note: they were removed because a few of them [more than one] were borderline offensive or abusive.)
I will add the now open source Sky Map for Android, by the Sky Map Devs. I have been using this since near its inception as an Android app as a side project from Google developers. It has been neglected and kicked around, and now seems better supported after becoming open source. You can find its history, but I have not found one concise source. What I like best is that it has not changed much since its early days. It does exactly what I want and does it well. Elegant simplicity.
When I got my new phone last Fall, I started to install Google Sky Maps, and found several confusingly similar apps instead of the original. During my search, I read some reviews, and found a lot of negativity. A bit scared off, I decided to try Stellarium’s Android app. I could never get it to do what I wanted, although it is beautiful. Instead, I found and installed Sky Map. It was just like the original app, and perfect for my needs.
Since you mentioned Stellarium, I tried it again (it was still installed on my phone) with the same results. The free version is very limited, and I didn’t like the idea of paying $2 a month to use it occasionally ($20 lifetime.) Curious, I went to the Stellarium website. From there, I tried the web version, and it is much better. Beautiful, and a different take on the idea. I might go there occasionally, because the Android app is not good for me. Also, Sky Map has no Windows version. Sigh.
I really have a love-hate relationship with the open source concept. Some products are brilliant, and others demonstrate the problems with a volunteer team.
@ech
Thanks for the link. When the bunnies quit dying in the straw later today I will give it a look.
I would trade those thumbs up/down ratings things for avatars any day, but I seem to be in a distinct minority. The only offensive one I remember was one of the automatically-generated ones. Jenny pointed it out before I noticed. Most of the ones I remember were quite good.
If they ever come back, I might try to get mine here. It is a little boy about to stick a butter knife into a wall socket. I have used that for years, and wish I had a better version. All I have ever found are low res and fuzzy. Hmm, maybe I should look again… nope, need to get to work.
Some products are brilliant, and others demonstrate the problems with a volunteer team.
– while true, keep in mind that there wouldn’t be a project at all, love it or hate it, if not for the open source concept and the team. That in itself forgives a lot of ills.
n
Nick, welcome back, and thanks for coming back. This place is special, and I thank you, and Barbara, and Rick H, and the others who curate it and make it possible.
– 200% lending rate! “mopping up” liquidity… coming soon to a failed economy near you?
I like tenths, quarters, and halves no matter who the issuer, as they are physically small, but still worth enough to solve problems. My travel bag has $1000 in cash, various denominations, and $1000 in fractional ounce gold coins. Very compact, easy to exchange.
n
added- and don’t forget Ferfal’s observation that a gold chain doesn’t have to be sold all at once, but can be used 1 inch at a time.
Welcome back Nick, you were definitely missed. As I ease into retirement this place, and the great folks here, are more stimulating than the curmudgeons at the local coffee shop, so thanks for coming back and for deciding to continue marching forward. And thanks to all those who support this place with your contributions.
>> Please try to announce in advance so we don’t worry. We won’t burn the place down.
At least not intentionally 🙂
This is a sentence I could never have predicted, and without context, is one of the strangest things I’ve read in a long time.
When the bunnies quit dying in the straw later today
Could be a very strange opening line for a story…
n
>> OK, now let’s get MrAtoZ back.
At a minimum can someone reach out to him directly and share the latest updates.
I started reading this site because of Jerry Pournelle recommended it. In the beginning Bob talked mostly about computers (which I’m interested it) then it added astronomy, chemistry and then prepping. After Jerry passed I stopped reading his site as no one was keeping it going. After Bob passed I was afraid the same thing was going to happen here. Thankfully Nick took over. Has the site changed somewhat? Yes, it has, a different person is now doing the writing. I still enjoy it. There’s a lot of smart people who hang out here and it’s what keeps me coming back. Nick (and RickH), I think you have the right to delete any comments you want as someone has to be in charge and you’re the person who was appointed.
As Nick is fond of saying, these -are- the “good old days”
And where has SteveF gone? It’s been 4-6 weeks since I heard his dulcet tones and bright wit. Miss him!
Yes, these are the good old days even though there were serious holes in the shelves at HEB last night. School is starting and people are very wary right now.
SteveF and Pecancorner are still at the Daily Pundit along with Bill Quick.
https://www.dailypundit.com/dailypundit.wordpress/
This is extraordinary. I love that even an evil corporation can enable people to share their creations. I’d prefer they were less evil, but they let people do extraordinary things and add to the sum of human knowledge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeYZPuAI_xk
Forging a Copper Damascus Katana
n
WRT to avatars, I have no opinion.
Python 2 is already a bad sign for long term support. A lot of legacy Python projects have given up rather than face Python 2→3 conversion.
The last time I had some time, pre-July 4th, I took a look at running the f2c yacc code through modern Bison, but there were three gotchas which needed further research to determine if they were syntax errors in the .y source or some kind of Plan 9 Yacc extensions.
What f2c really needs is some serious regression test automation. Of course, the Labs guys on the mothership didn’t bother.
I have been thinking about converting my Fortran code to C++ quite a bit. I thought that f2c would work at first but it is fairly primitive. Plus it handles the base index change from one to zero in a weird fashion and possibly nonfunctional code on some machines.
Fable moves directly to C++, not C. It is too aggressive for array conversions but I can rip that out. And all I have to do is add a “-1” to all of the array index calculations. And the good thing is that it is just a one time pass so I don’t have to worry about long term running of various python dialects.
I have two items that I have to get done first before I can even start on the F77 → C++ conversion. The first is the port to a modern Fortran compiler that supports integer*8 and logical*8 variables. And Win64 programming. The second is the removal of all my data structures in our code. The first is proving to be fairly hard. The second is fairly easy since I wrote the converter that placed all those structures in the code two decades ago.
re: Astronomy, I have Sky Safari and Sky Guide on my iPhone. I had Sky Map on my android phone years ago, glad to hear it is back.
Last night it was a bit clearer, but the comet in Scorpio still wasn’t visible.
The 10×42 Vortex binoculars picked up the butterfly cluster nearby, and other Messier objects, so it must be fainter than advertised. The Vortex focus well past infinity, I am myopic and that let’s me use binoculars without glasses, which I prefer.
The Celestron astronomical binos are horribly out of collimation, but even using one eye the 70mm objective didn’t pick up the comet, and was clearly the inferior with regards to sharpness anywhere but at the center of field.
I had a medical appointment this morning so had to wrap up by 11pm.
Shirtsleeve observing in summer is nice.
Hot and humid. ‘Natch… as it has been with little relief. But that’s Houston in the summer.
An observation. 8 more hours in the day to do things did not mean I got things done.
The Houston area weather persons are obviously using a dart board every four hours for their weather predictions. The choices generally start out at 90 F with rain sprinkles. Then they add 4 more F. Then they take away the rain sprinkles, usually while we are getting a half inch of rain. Then they add another 4 F even though we are at 100% humidity.
I wrote somewhere between 2,000 to 4,000 lines of F77 code over the last two weeks plus 300 lines of C++. I’ve been real busy fixing some real nastyisms in our code and getting rid of a few global variables. One of my subroutines changed from six argument variables to eighteen variables arguments. Using global variables to pass along instance variables is never the right way to do things and leads to much programmer confusion. I know this because I got snared in the trap a month ago.
You haven’t read my code. Some of the best around, in my extremely biased opinion. Lots of comments, sometimes more lines than actual code. Never do in one statement what can be done in three statements if it makes the code more readable. I got burned on my own clever code. Lesson learned.
Our F77 and C++ code has had more than a 100 chemical, mechanical, and software engineers working on it in 56 years. To say that it is a hodgepodge is an understatement. Many screams over the years, many many screams.
I think is was Gravatars. Custom avatars? I had some randomly assigned red and blue Tetris looking thing. It doesn’t matter to me, I never noticed avatars cause slow page loading.
No rain yesterday. It went around. Normal.
I’m going to swab down and rinse the side by side. It’s suppose to be red. “Dusty pollen mud grey” sounds like a paint color on an old Ford Taurus or a rusty Olds Cutlass. 🙂 Both with peeling vinyl roofs.
zerohedge picked it up too.
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/zimbabwe-hails-success-gold-coin-issuance-lower-denominations-coming
n
Listening to the scanner last night, they were arresting streetracers. One cop remarked that so and so was deleting his social media posts about the night and the other cop asks him, “you know how to use the preservation tool, right?” Cop1 says, “yeah, doing it right now.”…
Facebook has this on their site. And a portal for LEO use.
I wonder if your average FB user knows that.
n
There’s your problem. Engineers do not write comments. A waste of good keystrokes when those keystrokes could be used slinging code. No reason to use three lines of code when one convoluted line of madness will serve the same function.
I figure FB keeps many things way beyond what is really. FB is about data, and keeping that data, selling that data, using that data for targeted advertising is big bucks. FB is not going to toss that data.
That is why I put very little on FB. Politic shaming, of course; sports pictures, of course; ridicule of other’s English, of course.
The average FB user is on the far left of the IQ scale. A few I know are well to the right but are few and far between.
“Anyone want to sale their washer.” “Don’t except friend requests from me, I have been hacked”. “I treated 20 patience today and it took a lot of patients on my part.” “I said know to the trip”. You get the drift. The dumbing down of America is real and FB is the focal point for proof.
@JimB
automatically-generated ones. Jenny pointed it out
I vaguely remember that. I pointed it out because I thought it was humorous. If I’m remembering correctly.
@drwilliams
When the bunnies quit dying in the straw later today
Rabbitry with a nestbox problem? Probably not.
(oh, forget about the drama and get back to stacking!)
Welcome back dude, welcome back.
I have run out of room to stack stuff in. This is evidenced by packed boxes all over the house and garage. The wife says it is like living with a overgrown teenager (I am 62). She is not wrong.
“Invasive Australian Redclaw Crayfish discovered in Texas for the first time”
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Australian-Crayfish-Texas-invasive-17369362.php
Before I saw the word Australian, I knew that they were from Australia.
We have crawfish all over our neighborhood. My dog thinks it is funny to run up to them and bark and then run away before she gets her nose pinched. We live in a swamp.
My employee with the 2023 Nissan Leaf Plus is loving it. He has charged it three times now, the last time he got it down to 25%. He is charging it with a 120 volt line in his garage since he only has a 60 kwh battery. He estimates that he is getting 3.8 miles per kwh, that is amazing.
My Netflix is back up to $250 from $170 low. I suspect that it will not make it up to the $690 it was last summer.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NFLX?p=NFLX
“House Democrats approve budget bill with higher costs for oil, gas”
https://www.ogj.com/general-interest/government/article/14281273/house-democrats-approve-budget-bill-with-higher-costs-for-oil-gas
“House Democrats approved a tax and spending bill Aug. 12 with expensive provisions for oil and gas companies but notable provisions for offshore leasing. A vote of 220-207 strictly along party lines passed the “budget reconciliation bill,” under the name Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. President Biden has promised to sign the bill. The bill includes an array of spending plans and technology subsidies to help address climate change. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the bill will “save the planet.””
“The legislation will increase oil and natural gas royalties, rents, and minimum bids for operations on federal lands, and it will hike Superfund taxes on crude oil and oil products. It will set a “waste emissions charge” for methane emissions from oil and gas production and onshore gas pipelines and gas storage. It will require royalties on all extracted natural gas, including gas vented, flared, or leaked, with exceptions for safety (OGJ Online, July 28, 2022).”
Just what we need, more inflation and more taxes. I do like the fact that Medicare can now negotiate on drug prices but they are limited to 12 drug negotiations per year (why ?).
@lynn
space for stacking – I’m hitting some challenges in that area. I haven’t found a good solution yet. I’m efficient in how I use space. I’m mindful of Nick’s experience with vermin and contamination. While we offloaded a LOT of ‘precious treasures’ when we moved in 03/2021, the remaining ‘precious treasures’ take up valuable stacking space -grin-
The more I think about feed costs the more I want to stack 3-6 months of rabbit and chicken pellets. The dogs can eat what we eat without much trouble. Chickens could eat what we eat with a bit of effort. The rabbits, they are more challenging. A lot of rabbit folks are doing fodder – sprouting barley and feeding at the ten day mark. However, from what I’m reading the nutritional content / calorie content isn’t any better than feeding them the unsprouted grain. I need to read a bit more, the assertion I’ve read is that you need to look at the dry matter for nutritional content, and that at the ten day mark the dry matter of the fodder is slightly less than the dry matter of the starting grains. I am NOT a horticulturalist so am having a bit of trouble working my way through this one.
Stacking pellets / hay / straw, but not too much (because vermin and nutritional loss over time), makes sense. If I can manage the loss. I’d love to have a hay round in the front yard. The neighbors would be angry -grin-
Just discovered a lot of mown grass dumped on the gravel path I installed along the garage. The gravel path abuts the neighbors lawn. 15’ish path. Narrow. Logically only the next door neighbor would have done this (or whoever cut their grass). No idea what’s going on there, passive / aggressive behavior or inconsiderate jerkery? Dunno. It’s out of the way and I cannot envision how it would have been done accidentally. So I clawed thru the gravel and chucked it onto their property.
Home projects. Weeks later and we still haven’t managed to get the bleepin’ tub surround up in the downstairs bath. I’ve done the work I can on my own and am at a stand still. I’m going to reach out to a couple folks and see what it would cost to get the work done. I don’t like doing that when I know it is work we are capable of doing. Time. Effort. Will.
Being human is hard.
Being a responsible and contributing human is hard. The others, not so much.
😉
n
“The Hacking of Starlink Terminals Has Begun”
https://www.wired.com/story/starlink-internet-dish-hack/
“It cost a researcher only $25 worth of parts to create a tool that allows custom code to run on the satellite dishes.””
Good night ! I am very amazed and scared by these people.
Hat tip to:
https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2022/0815.html
And people think I’m nuts for bringing my trauma bag to my kids’ sporting events.
n
“Why Solar Power Is Failing Amid Record-Breaking Heat”
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/why-solar-power-failing-amid-record-breaking-heat
“But because of the way solar panels work, they become slightly less efficient, by around 0.5 percent, for any degree over or under 25oC. This means that peak production periods in much of the world often happen in cooler spring months rather than during the summer.”
I did not know that the solar panels are designed for 25 C. Not good for here then.
@lynn – interesting Wired article … but I note that Wired only allows you 5 free ‘reads’ a month; after that, you have to sign up with your email address. No charge, so I did it, but I bet I get some marketing stuff from them.
Their free signup form does not accept emails in the format of yourname+stuff@mail.com ; a silly thing for a tech site to not allow. (That is valid according to the mail RFC. And a form ‘input’ field with a type of ‘email’ will validate that type of email.)
Customized email validation code is very hard – if not impossible – to do. In all my forms, I just set the type to ‘email’ and the browser will validate (before submittal).
Ray THompson says:
My son has said, “Document my code? Why do you think it’s called CODE?” and “It was hard to write. It ought to be hard to read!”
For myself, the primary purpose of adding comments to code is so that somebody, probably me, is going to have to figure out what I was trying to do when I wrote it.
Point well taken. I stand corrected. In that context I was apparently a very bad coder. My stuff could be read by mere mortals.
Currently at Fall Creek Falls State Park for four nights. Site 192H, yeh, a handicap site. Got it because it was fairly level and had sewer. Many sites at the park have no sewer and almost all have an incline, some not so bad, some quite a lot making leveling difficult. This site also has more space around the site and the view from our windows does not display another RV. Having that DV license does come in handy.
Anyway, a really nice park. Probably our favorite state park in the state. This is our fourth time camping “glamping” at the park. We have had dozens of day trips to the park.
And speaking of DV plates. That big toll road from I-10 east of San Antonio all the way past Austin is no charge for disabled veterans. Good to know. Many roads in Texas provide the same benefit except for a couple or toll roads around Austin.
My son has said, “Document my code? Why do you think it’s called CODE?” and “It was hard to write. It ought to be hard to read!”
For myself, the primary purpose of adding comments to code is so that somebody, probably me, is going to have to figure out what I was trying to do when I wrote it.
Our problem is that the code is somewhat commented. But, the code was probably written by a programmer and then modified but the comment was not updated. So, we have a standing joke to see who can find the most mismatched comment and code. We have had some whoppers over the years.
I didn’t know. Can’t say I care. I post mostly “liberated” from other places memes. Sometimes run my mouth. I don’t do FB on my phone. I had it on my phone a couple of phones ago and when it wanted to update and access my contacts and send txt and e-mail messages as me, yeah…. no. Too intrusive.
Customized email validation code is very hard – if not impossible – to do. In all my forms, I just set the type to ‘email’ and the browser will validate (before submittal).
I have given up trying to validate email addresses on my website. Just the @ and a period must be there.
I do enforce that any and all communication with a prospect must be through email. Just too crazy otherwise. And I do not allow free email servers. I have blocked over 200 of the free email servers from my website. You would not believe the complaints that I get from the Cubans and the Iranians.
“Trump claims FBI agents seized THREE of his passports during ‘sneak attack’ raid at Mar-a-Lago – as he warns DOJ ‘terrible things are going to happen’ if it doesn’t cool things down”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11113825/Trump-claims-FBI-agents-seized-three-PASSPORTS-Mar-Lago-raid.html
“Trump likely has a regular blue passport issued to U.S. citizens and a red ‘diplomatic’ passport issued for official government travel”
I would think that only a judge could order the seizure of a passport.
Hat tip to:
https://www.drudgereport.com/
I have a pot of spaghetti sauce going. It smells good. That hint of scorched garlic will fade away.
A dog thing. When I cook, if a dog is there and interested I let them sniff. Open a can of tomatoes? Make some gravy mix? Sure, let them sniff. Why not? They live here.
You get something like a package of sausage. Perky noses! It’s cool.
Wilma was always laid back. She knew she was going to get some. Same for Fred and Dino and Missy and Penny. Schwartzer, yeah, he tried. Today with Buddy the Beagle, I had a pound of hamburger in Reynolds Wrap. He sniffed and went Chomp! He failed. Left a fang mark in the package.
No problem. The meat has been fried off a bit and is simmering in the sauce. Any cooties are long dead.
Well. I need to tweak the sauce. It’s missing something. Probably just a wave of the salt shaker.
Chemistry. It’s not just about concrete and pool chemicals.
USC is flocked now–they lost the Teke’s :
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/08/six-fraternities-disaffiliate-from-usc-over-strict-party-rules/
Does that mean the Little Sisters of Lesbos don’t get invited to the next bash?
>> This is a sentence I could never have predicted, and without context, is one of the strangest things I’ve read in a long time.
When the bunnies quit dying in the straw later today
Could be a very strange opening line for a story…
It’s got “It was a dark and story night” beat by a mile…
I find that sauces involving tomatoes benefit dramatically from a spoonful of sugar (cue Mary Poppins…). They can be salty and peppery enough, but don’t taste “right” without the sugar.
Rick H:
Have you tried the “Open in private window” trick? That usually works for me to read the articles without signing up.
@Lynn
I screamed when I read that.
I’d rather eat railroad spikes and pass sailmaker’s needles.
Yep, a pinch of sugar cuts the tomato acid. I mean an actual three finger pinch from the sugar container. Not quite a teaspoon.
I added a can of tomato paste with a half cup or so of water. Needed more sauce. Almost there flavor wise.
Hey my beer is empty!
I totally forgot the oregano and parsley. I keep the stuff in the fridge. Duh. Chemistry.
WRT to those six USC fraternities, I think that mky grandson was in one of those. However, it doesn’t matter as he graduated two months ago.
I’ve seen that at other sites. Me? No problem. I keep the cookies for a few sites and the rest are deleted when I close Firefox.
Sometimes toggling Reader View lets you read the whole article.
Oh. And allow ads to continue? Nope. I’m not clicking any and WTactualF is it with the “try this one trick to eliminate toe fungus” crap?
Yeah, I’m a hater.
>> This is a sentence I could never have predicted, and without context, is one of the strangest things I’ve read in a long time.
When the bunnies quit dying in the straw later today
Could be a very strange opening line for a story…
“It’s got “It was a dark and story night” beat by a mile”
I assumed that most readers of this blog would know the reference. Particularly since I’ve used the original with attribution several times, as have others.
It was a dark and stormy night, and by the time the bunnies quit dying in the straw it was late indeed. The Doctor was feeling more than a little fatigued as he returned the overloaded gurney to cold storage, and jumped as a lightning bolt was finally captured by the tower, only to ground itself without effect in the pile of dead rabbits.
None showed any sign of reanimation. “I wouldn’t want to be known as the creator of Frankenstein’s Bunnies, anyway,” he said sourly. Still the aroma of flash-cooked flesh reminded him that he was more than a might peckish, and as he turned, Igor said “Care for hasenpfeffer, thir?”
Coincidentally, I got the new issue of Wired yesterday. I misplace most of them as they get mixed in with unread journals.
No great loss, as the mag is a pale shadow of what it once was (I kept the first ten years). If it was just the mag I wouldn’t be renewing, but the website is probably worth ten bucks a year.
Still, the fawning following-the-author of The Dawn of Everything article reads more like Soviet propaganda. Sounds like a great book, whole ancient civilizations living in peace and harmony deduced from discarded chicken bones.
Ummm, how would you know without prior experience? Inquiring minds want to know.
Back from shopping. Costco and Lowes had most of what I was looking for. Costco had cream for the first time in months. Charmin blue was actually on sale. The one thing I looked for was the shelf stable bread. Nope, not even a space for it. SOMEONE here got hissy and put my last two packages outside, where they got eaten. So I guess no more shelf stable bread for me.
Costco had choice ribeye beef on sale for $11/pound. That’s a pretty good price for ribeye, so I stocked up. They also had a couple new heat and eat entrees, so I got a couple. I put them in the freezer, and they are great for when I’m not interested in cooking. Cost more than making from scratch but less than a restaurant.
Oddly, the australian lamb is still about the same price as always. King crab was $38/pound, which is down but still too precious for me. They had organic chicken, and normal, with thighs at $1.34/lb and legs at 99c/lb.
No lines at 5pm on Monday.
n
Phonics, Failure, and the Public Schools
@Rick H: What is the status of Roberta Pournelle’s reading program?
I screamed when I read that.
I’d rather eat railroad spikes and pass sailmaker’s needles.
It is 850,000 lines of F77 code and 450,000 lines of C++ code. It is like working in a subway, you never know what is around the next bend. Every day is another thrilling moment.
The one thing I looked for was the shelf stable bread. Nope, not even a space for it. SOMEONE here got hissy and put my last two packages outside, where they got eaten. So I guess no more shelf stable bread for me.
What is shelf stable bread ? Something like this, B&M Brown Bread in a can ?
https://www.amazon.com/Bread-Plain-Brown-16-Ounce-Pack/dp/B00473NSXW?tag=ttgnet-20/
Python 2 is already a bad sign for long term support. A lot of legacy Python projects have given up rather than face Python 2→3 conversion.
The last time I had some time, pre-July 4th, I took a look at running the f2c yacc code through modern Bison, but there were three gotchas which needed further research to determine if they were syntax errors in the .y source or some kind of Plan 9 Yacc extensions.
What f2c really needs is some serious regression test automation. Of course, the Labs guys on the mothership didn’t bother.
I have been thinking about converting my Fortran code to C++ quite a bit. I thought that f2c would work at first but it is fairly primitive. Plus it handles the base index change from one to zero in a weird fashion and possibly nonfunctional code on some machines.
Fable moves directly to C++, not C. It is too aggressive for array conversions but I can rip that out. And all I have to do is add a “-1” to all of the array index calculations. And the good thing is that it is just a one time pass so I don’t have to worry about long term running of various python dialects.
I have three items that I have to get done first before I can even start on the F77 to C++ conversion. The first is the port to a modern Fortran compiler that supports integer*8 and logical*8 variables. And Win64 programming. The second is the removal of all my data structures in our code. The first is proving to be fairly hard. The second is fairly easy since I wrote the converter that placed all those structures in the code two decades ago. The third item is porting to Win64 so that we ship both Win32 and a Win64 versions of our calculation engine. Then I can take the plunge down the 100% C++ road.
When I try to generate gram1.c for f2c from the legacy Yacc rules in gram.in, the generator complains about the three assignments SICON, SRCON, and SDCON. If I assume the equals were typos in those situations and remove them, the resuting *.c file compiles, but then I wonder if those assignments are some weird Plan 9 Yacc syntax.
simple_const: STRUE { $$ = mklogcon(1); }
| SFALSE { $$ = mklogcon(0); }
| SHOLLERITH { $$ = mkstrcon(toklen, token); }
| SICON = { $$ = mkintqcon(toklen, token); }
| SRCON = { $$ = mkrealcon(tyreal, token); }
| SDCON = { $$ = mkrealcon(TYDREAL, token); }
| bit_const
;
I don’t lack for work work to keep me busy right now. The tolling company paying for my education in libcurl is paying off at another subsequent employer.
>> Chemistry. It’s not just about concrete and pool chemicals.
He says as we just today started watching Breaking Bad and in S1E1 Walter defines Chemistry for his high school chemistry class as this:
If you haven’t seen the “Better Call Saul” prequel, don’t miss it. Very well done.
costco had a three pack of this product in the store at I 10 and Bunker Hill.
https://essentialbaking.com/shop/take-and-bake/take-and-bake-sourdough/
it was great to have on the shelf and heat one up when we had stew or pot roast… although I am not a huge fan of sourdough bread. The taste and texture were excellent.
If I have to order from the manf. I’ll try this case
https://essentialbaking.com/shop/take-and-bake/case-of-originals/
n
WRT tomato based sauces, I just don’t make them. Kids don’t like them, and I don’t care for most of them. I will eat sloppy joes, but have to add sugar.
WRT Trump having three passports, I had two. If you are traveling to Israel, and the arab states you will need a separate passport WITHOUT the Israel stamp or visa. our friends the Saudis are very particular about who they let in, and if you’ve been to Israel, you ain’t coming in. Thus a passport for Israel, and one for everyone else. It’s also possible to get additional copies because some countries will take forever to get your visa inserted, and if you want to travel internationally while they have your passport, you need a duplicate. It’s possible one of his might still be a diplomatic passport, that would be a nice perk.
n
I was holding off on this article, but what the heck. Used to be the violence was on the east coast, or in the southern rural parts of the country.
I spent many afternoons drinking on the beach in Rosarito and even some time in clubs in Tiajuana, or shopping in the pharmacias.
Not a chance in heII of that happening now, and certainly not as a young woman with friends the way many of my friends did it 20 years ago.
n
The “Gene the Cinnabon Manager” segments are exceptional TV. Nothing in those scenes is wasted, even a seemingly mindless conversation about Nebraska Cornhusker football is relevant.
Carol Burnett opposite “Gene” in the last run of episodes is casting genius of the year.
@Nick
One of the passports was expired.
Democratic mouthpiece and spin merchant Laura O’Donnell (NBC) reported that the FBI didn’t have Trumps passports.
Turned out, they returned the passports–no time indicated.
So if it turns out that Trump had something he shouldn’t have, his lawyer blames it on the government employees that packed the boxes, and point out that the passport theft was just the latest in a series of government employees bungling.
Theft? Well, unless you can come up with a theory as to how that search warrant covers his passports, and explains how those crackerjack agents didn’t recognize they were passports and took them by accident, we’ll just go with the term that Laura and the rest would have used if Trump’s DOJ searched Biden or Hillary’s house.
So, who are you going to believe, El Presidente or your lying eyes ?
When I try to generate gram1.c for f2c from the legacy Yacc rules in gram.in, the generator complains about the three assignments SICON, SRCON, and SDCON. If I assume the equals were typos in those situations and remove them, the resuting *.c file compiles, but then I wonder if those assignments are some weird Plan 9 Yacc syntax.
I have pretty well given up on f2c. f2c was written before C had function prototypes and that is a showstopper for me. I am a big time believer in function prototypes and think that is one reason why just about any project, except realtime projects, should move to C++. You just need the protection when working in multiple programmer projects. Been there, got the flaming tshirt many times.
Wow, the cotton field behind our house is very white now. But I think that they cannot harvest it until it has not rained for a week. And it rained hard last Friday.
The program is done, but I’m waiting to see what the Pournelle family wants to do with it. It’s their intellectual content.
I had a contract that allowed me exclusive rights to sell, with a percentage of sales going back to them quarterly, but that contract has expired. I’m lousy at marketing, so the program, when it was working, never got any sales (and not many visitors to the site).
Every 6 months or so, I get a query from one guy that is interested in the program. But the Pournelle’s need to determine what they want to do with it. I’m even OK with giving it away. But can’t do anything without their permission. I last checked with them in July, but no decision from the family yet.
The site is here, if you want to try it out. The first four lessons are free. Does text to speech using the ‘voices’ that are part of your browser.
@Rick H
Seem like the recent disruption in schooling which resulted in students lagging even further behind has created market potential.
I know some marketing people but this is way outside their fields.
Anyone?
“Over 100 injured, multiple missing in Cuba after lightning sets oil storage tanks on fire”
https://www.nbcnews.com/video/lightning-strike-in-cuba-sets-oil-storage-tanks-on-fire-leaving-over-100-injured-145647685707
If you ever see one of these big oil tanks on fire, run ! They will explode and can send burning parts a half mile to a full mile away.
The site is here, if you want to try it out. The first four lessons are free. Does text to speech using the ‘voices’ that are part of your browser.
Dude, I am impressed that you got that to work.
True. With any marketing skills or efforts, the Reading TLC program might have had some great interest and potential for good sales.
But – marketing is hard for me to do – and takes time (and skills that I don’t have). I’ve got about a dozen or more web sites – and 6 self-published books (plus I’ve started 3 more) – that I think would be useful and maybe even profitable, but my feeble attempts at marketing have not made them very visible.
And, I keep getting more ideas of useful web sites (well, at least useful to me), and sometimes build them, which takes even more time away from any marketing that I might do (if I knew how to do it well).
Thanks. I probably spend at least a couple hundred hours figuring out the Reading TLC site. And a lot of time grabbing code fragments from other places.
@Rick
I tried to use the demo of Roberta’s reading program using Firefox. I use NoScript, but enabled everything the page showed it wanted, and also tried disabling restrictions globally. I got the following when I clicked on the demo page link :
[arrived at https://www.readingtlc.com/lessons.php?x=DEMO%5D
Warning: Undefined array key “voicesettings” in /home1/cellarw1/public_html/readingtlc/lessons.php on line 20
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home1/cellarw1/public_html/readingtlc/lessons.php:20) in /home1/cellarw1/public_html/readingtlc/includes/inc_main.php on line 767
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home1/cellarw1/public_html/readingtlc/lessons.php:20) in /home1/cellarw1/public_html/readingtlc/includes/inc_main.php on line 767
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home1/cellarw1/public_html/readingtlc/lessons.php:20) in /home1/cellarw1/public_html/readingtlc/lessons.php on line 31
browse over to
https://ace.mu.nu/
and read under this heading:
Trump Claims The FBI Stole Three of His Passports; The FBI Admits It Took Documents Protected by Attorney-Client Privilege
particularly the excerpts from Kash Patel at RealClearPolitics:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/08/14/kash_patel_on_that_fbi_has_an_ongoing_counterintel_investigation_they_can_make_all_russiagate_documents_classified.html
and John Solomon at Just the News:
https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/mystery-solved-doj-secretly-thwarted-release-russia
@JimM – that is a PHP 8x issue – the site hasn’t been updated for some deprecated commands in 7.x.
I put the site back to 7.4, and should work now.
The issue is with using an array element specified as
$x = $thearray[item1];With 8.x, you have to do it this way
$x = $thearray['item1'];.Gotta have the quotes, which were not required in 7.x.
This is also not allowed in 8.x:
if ($_POST['name'])… if the page is not being posted. You have to do an
if (isset($_POST['name']))thing in 8.x. The old way would work, as an undefined array element would return false. Now you have to check if the element exists, then test it for whatever reason.
So code that worked in 7.x gets borked in 8.x. I’ve got some old sites that need to be updated to work on 8.x. (Note that the above code has been sanitized before use.)
Site should work now – put it back to PHP version 7.4. Thanks for the alert.
This post outlines framing of the office with a kitchenette, bathroom, closet for the hot water heater, Wood Shop and the wall between the Lift Bay and the Metal Shop.
After the shop exterior was built the carpenter who had tentatively agreed to build the interior walls, backed out. I could not find anyone to do this. Fulltime carpenters were too busy for my small project and handymen didn’t want to do such a large project. After several weeks I decided to do it myself.
I could not build a long wall on the floor and then erect it as it would be too heavy for me to lift. So I built mostly small sections and for the long runs my son came by and helped me set them up.
There were three difficult issues. The first was that the one bathroom wall was made of 2x6s at the request of the plumber and that wall had to be lifted over the stub pipes coming out of the concrete. The second was creating a Beam in lieu of a wall between the Kitchenette and the Office (although as I write this the wall may have been acceptable) so I constructed a Beam out of three 2x12s using long screws. Some ceiling joists had to terminate at this beam. The beam is about 8 feet long. Because I was going to use the area above the office as a storage loft, I used a three 2x12s for the beam. The third issue was getting the 18’ 2×10 office ceiling joists into place.
The steel frame and the 2×4 walls make the outside walls a full 12 inches thick. There is probably some way to make a thinner wall to support sheetrock, but I couldn’t find anyone that knew how. I also had to frame around the building’s red iron supporting structure.
The photos show the end results. I had not built anything this complicated. Sometimes I had to change things after they were started because what I started to do was impractical. The captions for the photos point out how I handled various problems.
The pictures were inserted into the existing site photos more or less in the order the work was done.
http://fordfe.info/AL-Shop.html
I strongly expect I will regret this, but… here goes.
where? Where is there any evidence of this in what you pointed to???
The closest I can find in that minefield of pop-ups is this:
“Sources familiar with the investigation told Fox News Saturday that the former president’s team was informed that boxes labeled A-14, A-26, A-43, A-13, A-33, as well as a set of documents — all seen on the final page of the FBI’s unsealed property receipt — contained information covered by attorney-client privilege.”
That is not an admission by the FBI! It is an unsourced allegation by a fringe “journalist” that, at most, someone thought certain documents were protected by privilege. But thinking things to be true does not make them true!
The steel frame and the 2×4 walls make the outside walls a full 12 inches thick. There is probably some way to make a thinner wall to support sheetrock, but I couldn’t find anyone that knew how. I also had to frame around the building’s red iron supporting structure.
Yes, the downside of building conditioned space inside a metal building. I have the same problem with my office warehouse with the two story office building inside it. The metal bars holding the only window frame in the downstairs office are quite awesome.
Here in The Great State Of Texas we often call these buildings a barndominium.
https://www.familyhandyman.com/article/what-in-the-world-is-a-barndominium/
Labs guys don’t need no stinkin’ prototypes. How else would they prove how smart they are?
Hollywood Actor Glued His Hand To Starbucks Counter In Bizarre Protest
https://dailycaller.com/2022/05/10/james-cromwell-starbucks-protest-glue/
Upset at being charged for “milk substitute”.
Another climate change “activist” whose carbon footprint is 100X a normal person wants rules for the hoi polloi that he will not follow.
The store manager should have announced a citizen’s arrest, grabbed him and glued his other hand to the counter, to “make sure” he stayed until the police got there.
Or a “concerned citizen” should have helped. I can think of a dozen interesting ways.
(No, supergluing his finger up his nose is not one of them, sheesh!)
(But you’re halfway there)
Compile the code and it executes correctly the first time?
“How, When, Do We Come Together Again?” August 15, 2022 by Patrick J. Buchanan
https://buchanan.org/blog/how-when-do-we-come-together-again-159577
“For a nation, a country, a people, a democracy to endure, there needs be a broad consensus of belief, culture, custom and politics. … We are a country whose people have a diminishing confidence in almost all of its institutions, from big business to the churches, universities and media.”
I just don’t know, we have some very fundamental differences in this country now. I remember the 1960s were fairly peaceful but, I lived in Oklahoma, anyone getting out of line was arrested and beaten by the cops.
>> I figure
FBeveryone on the internet funded by ad sales keeps many things way beyond what is really.FBEveryone on the internet funded by ad sales is about data, and keeping that data, selling that data, using that data for targeted advertising is big bucks.FBEveryone on the internet funded by ad sales is not going to toss that data.F I F Y.
The impartial media is informing us today that Merrick Garland thought for several weeks before giving his go ahead for a warrant to search Mar-a-Lago.
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2022/08/15/wsj-ag-garland-deliberated-over-search-warrant-for-weeks-n489950
If it was careful at all, how did he miss the optics of having an ex-Epstein lawyer sign the warrant?
Were Starsky and Hutch originally in charge, got kungflu, and he had to substitute Stan and Laurel at the last minute, not realizing that they had never seen a passport before?
After his DOJ leaked a trial balloon that Garland didn’t have anything to do with it, it took several days of additional thought before he figured out that such a claim was not going to hold up.
Then he held a presser and read a statement bravely taking credit, after which he refused to take questions.
The evidence shows that we are very fortunate to have his intellect on this job rather than making the latina look wise in another building. It’s good not to be smarter than your boss.
ADDED:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/08/jim-jordan-14-fbi-whistleblowers-have-come-forward-against-doj-after-mar-a-lago-raid/
>> My employee with the 2023 Nissan Leaf Plus is loving it.
Same here (my 2018 LEAF SL, not his)…I really think Nissan missed a big opportunity by not switching over from CHAdeMO to CCS for fast charging.
>>My Netflix is back up to $250 from $170 low. I suspect that it will not make it up to the $690 it was last summer.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NFLX?p=NFLX
Was reading this post on my phone and had scrolled such that only the first line was showing and for a few seconds I thought, wait, what is @lynn watching such that his Netflix bill is $250 a month?! Then I scrolled further and…aha!
@lynn, how are you enjoying 24? What season are you up to?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Biden-Manchin climate: ‘Mother Earth gets angry from time to time, & this legislation will help us address all of that’
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/08/15/pelosi-biden-manchin-climate-bill-will-appease-angry-earth-mother-earth-gets-angry-from-time-to-time-this-legislation-will-help-us-address-all-of-that/
Where’s the Establishment Clause when you need it?
@Alan
Ok, I admit: Me too, ‘cept it was the $690 and “whatthe heck was he watching last summer?”
>> For myself, the primary purpose of adding comments to code is so that somebody, probably me, is going to have to figure out what I was trying to do when I wrote it.
+1
After a few years at my 35+ year job we started migrating the systems I was working on to the mainframe (COBOL/CICS/DB2) and when I saw existing mainframe code that was years old I realized some of my code would probably live a long life and comments would help me remember why I did what I did…and they did on several occasions, including some time-critical production issues. When I had people working for me writing code they quickly learned what I expected in terms of comments (both format and content) lest their code fail its desk check. We had hundreds of pieces of COBOL code and having (mostly) standardized formats for comments (and variable names) made finding related code via Panvalet scans much easier.
There were times when I regretted moving fully into management, but that was before our company had well defined tech-only career paths.
>>My Netflix is back up to $250 from $170 low. I suspect that it will not make it up to the $690 it was last summer.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NFLX?p=NFLX
Was reading this post on my phone and had scrolled such that only the first line was showing and for a few seconds I thought, wait, what is @lynn watching such that his Netflix bill is $250 a month?! Then I scrolled further and…aha!
@lynn, how are you enjoying 24? What season are you up to?
I am sorry, I was crowing / complaining about my Netflix stock and forgot to mention the word “stock”. Or “shares”.
I made it to the middle of the second season of 24 and got a little tired of Jack shooting everyone in sight. Then I saw that Resident Alien with one of my favorite actors with an unpronounceable last name was back on so I started watching season 2 all over again. Warning, the show is very woke, in fact the very premise for the murdering alien to be on Earth is that humans are destroying the planet so the alien is going to kill all the humans on Earth. Not sure about the ISS. And Mars.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8690918/
The wife is watching the Netflix tv series about the cute kids with the animal genes, Sweet Tooth. She finished the fourth season of Umbrella Academy.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12809988/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
>> @lynn – interesting Wired article … but I note that Wired only allows you 5 free ‘reads’ a month; after that, you have to sign up with your email address. No charge, so I did it, but I bet I get some marketing stuff from them.
Their free signup form does not accept emails in the format of yourname+stuff@mail.com ; a silly thing for a tech site to not allow. (That is valid according to the mail RFC. And a form ‘input’ field with a type of ‘email’ will validate that type of email.)
Customized email validation code is very hard – if not impossible – to do. In all my forms, I just set the type to ‘email’ and the browser will validate (before submittal).
Clearing any “Wired” cookies should get you more reads as well, no?
Some sites check for and reject any “@mailinator.com” addresses. In that case I use one of my “junk” g mail addresses.
There were times when I regretted moving fully into management, but that was before our company had well defined tech-only career paths.
I regret moving into management every day now for 27 years. My current career path is my desire to die at my keyboard. My wife has vetoed my other desired way to die.
I have had three comments in moderation today, a new personal high. I think I am quoting too much old stuff.
>> Just what we need, more inflation and more taxes. I do like the fact that Medicare can now negotiate on drug prices but they are limited to 12 drug negotiations per year (why ?).
Big Pharma Lobbyists (with steaks, single malt scotch and “entertainment”).
And first, the negotiation program doesn’t start until 2026 (yes, you read that right…why? See above.)
Then there are rules…
And there’s a lot more here, including specifics for biologics.
ADDED: And a Part D yearly out-of-pocket cap of $2,000 doesn’t go into effect until, yup, 2025.
>> >> This is a sentence I could never have predicted, and without context, is one of the strangest things I’ve read in a long time.
When the bunnies quit dying in the straw later today
Could be a very strange opening line for a story…
“It’s got “It was a dark and story night” beat by a mile”
I assumed that most readers of this blog would know the reference. Particularly since I’ve used the original with attribution several times, as have others.
Small time-sink and then this.
Pleased to see you back Nick.. 🙂
Plus very happy to see this journal continue. Even though I have lurked for decades, it is my favourite site and I endeavour to visit every day.
Thank you MrK and all the others who have supported me. I appreciate it greatly.
n
In regards to the Australian Crayfish invasion.. 😀
Seems these are from the northern areas of the country and are bred for human consumption. Their relatives which are in the southern areas are also quite a delicacy. In my younger years it was always a fun family outing to a quiet river with a scoop net.. 🙂
Wood framing a barndominium:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmvRazvwy6w
A completed house barndominium:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF_Ka4Rjxzw
Nothing to do with barndo’s: Little remembered devastation in Texas, ca. 1947:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgn-6DpUW6k