Sat. Aug. 27, 2022 – day two out of the house…

By on August 27th, 2022 in decline and fall, open thread, personal

Hot and muggy, with a side of damp.   It was noticeably cooler yesterday than last week, and it’s been getting below 80F at night.   I’m gonna say that Fall is coming.   But it ain’t here yet.   Still hot and humid.

Did my show yesterday.  Loaded in and set up in the morning, actually sold some stuff right away, and hope to sell some more.   The big stuff that I really wanted to move hasn’t moved yet.   Several interested parties for one item, but I’m having trouble finding a fair price.  Very few comps online.

Today I’m bringing another bin of stuff I pulled out of my office last night.   Could pull more besides but it got late.  Maybe for Sunday morning I’ll have time to pull some more.

Meatspace.  It’s important, even if it goes against your basic nature.   I am not outgoing by nature.  I’ve worked hard over the years to develop the persona that can just chat with random strangers, and initiate contact with them.   It’s a skill that can be learned and improved.   I think it’s worth spending time doing so, as in person  interaction is very important and probably will become even more so in the next few years.  Being likable, open, and friendly has  helped me tremendously personally and professionally.   It’s hard work, but it pays off.

Stack some skills.   And some network.  They’ll help.

nick

76 Comments and discussion on "Sat. Aug. 27, 2022 – day two out of the house…"

  1. ITGuy1998 says:

    @lynn

    And I am up and running.  Wow, that burned 45.7 GB of my 60 GB virtual hard drive.  Looks like I should have used 100 Gb as my sandbox uses over 20 GB.

    You can expand the size of your virtual disk. Shut down the vm and edit the drive setting in VMware. It’s non-destructive so your installation isn’t affected. Boot the vm and go into widows disk manager and expand your volume to take advantage of the extra space,

  2. Nick Flandrey says:

    77F, and coffee is brewing.   One of John Ringo’s characters refers to it as a ‘bean broth’ that’s important to humans for ritual reasons.   It’s  a pretty sharp observation.

    @jenny, a couple decades ago, I had a motorcycle accident.   One bike, two cars, one semi, on I 65 on a certain summer’s eve.   Top Gun had just hit the theaters.  My buddy and I were the only ones of three different bike accidents brought to the hospital  that night that lived.    I got a limp, a facial scar, and un-diagnosed TBI, with some weird psych issues.    Despite seemingly coping well, and recovering, months later  I woke up one day and went to sign my name, and my signature had changed completely.   It’s been in the new form ever since.  That’s a pretty good indication of a deep change in who I was.   

    The crazy thing is I think I’m a better human now, as a result.   I wasn’t very empathetic, I was a LOT better at math, and there were emotional changes as well.    The anger passed.

    Drs are STILL not counseling the patients or their families about the anger, from what I’ve seen amongst our circle of friends and acquaintances who’ve been injured.

    Keep working, take each day as the gift it is.   I tell my kids that each day since then was a gift, a freebie, a new life.    I haven’t always taken proper advantage of that, but I try.

    nick

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  3. Greg Norton says:

    OK, I am not smart enough to run Hyper-V as it keeps on giving me “Run IPX on IPV4” message.  I am trying the free version of VMware Workstation now and Windows 7 is installing.

    And I am up and running.  Wow, that burned 45.7 GB of my 60 GB virtual hard drive.  Looks like I should have used 100 Gb as my sandbox uses over 20 GB.

    Give VirtualBox a spin too if you’re just playing. 

    All of the virtualization platforms are getting short shrift from their respective owners because, for now, competing with AWS is a losing proposition. What Big River offers is just too easy/cheap.

    VirtualBox has the advantage of being open source. If the owner goes away, someone will still play with the code.

    My only long-term experience with VMware is on my Intel MacBook Pro, where I have a Windows 8 partition under Boot Camp which I can boot and run in parallel under Mac OS with VMware Fusion. That is a very sweet combination for working on both platforms simultaneously, but, these days, I mostly use it for editing my resume in Word 2007 under Windows.

    For the nitpickers – Windows 10 requires a separate license to run a Boot Camp VM under Fusion. I can’t use the same license that I use for booting the partition directly on the hardware. I’m legal on the Windows 8 install as long as it is for personal use so it stays. Classic Shell makes the environment tolerable.

  4. Ray Thompson says:

    @Jenny: Stay strong.

    I was the victim of a driver that was driving under the influence of drugs. It took a year to finally settle the accident. I was told by the DA that I would be victimized twice. Once by the driver, the second by the legal system. The DA was correct.

    It was the driver’s fourth charge of DUI. He had yet to appear in court on any of the charges thus not “legally” proven guilty. For my event his lawyer had the case moved to criminal court. Since past driving offenses are not permitted in criminal court as far as the court was concerned it was only his first incident. I was not allowed to speak in criminal court as my attempt was quickly squashed by his lawyer and the judge.

    His first appearance in traffic court he looked like a slob. His second and subsequent appearances he was well dressed, haircut, clean shaven, almost looked like a different person. He had a good lawyer, not a smart lawyer, but a good lawyer. He was forced to pay what his crappy insurance would not cover. The lawyer wrote the checks, hand written, on what would be considered a personal check. His lawyer was good, but not smart. He got off relatively unscathed. A slap on the wrist.

    I have the capability to print checks including the MICR line on check stock. The thought did seriously cross my mind of printing a hundred or so checks, with the payee blank, “Payable to Bearer” or “CASH”, random amounts all over $100.00, place the lawyer’s MICR information on the checks, sign the checks using the laser printer, then scatter the checks around Knoxville.

  5. Greg Norton says:

    A shortage of Adderall would be a crisis in Austin, especially in the IT community.

    I still can’t decide whether management’s twitching at the tolling company job was too much Adderall or an OD of T Therapy.  My wife believes the latter even though she complains about the amount of Adderall she wrote being an order of magnitude higher in Texas than Florida or Washington State.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/adderall-short-supply-pharmacies-rcna44815

  6. drwilliams says:

    Many questions are being asked about the legality of Biden’s ability to forgive college debt by executive order.  There is no doubt, however, that the tax code can be altered only by an act of Congress.  There were so many short sales during the ’08 recession that Congress and the IRS did impose a temporary moratorium on taxing debt forgiveness.  Not so for the state of California, which, of course, taxes debt forgiveness as well as capital gains.

    My CPA said she thinks Biden said the new forgiveness would be tax-free.  I reminded her that the tax code is made by Congress, not by the president — as are all other laws.  If, however, Biden truly intends on ordering his gathering army of IRS agents to not enforce the law against politically valuable individuals, then our republic is in serious trouble.

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/left_unsaid_about_college_debt_forgiveness.html

    I saw a local report yesterday that claimed that the bribe would be free of federal tax, but subject to state tax. My B.S. meter pegged. 

  7. Greg Norton says:

    Drs are STILL not counseling the patients or their families about the anger, from what I’ve seen amongst our circle of friends and acquaintances who’ve been injured.

    A GP in a large group is getting a flat number for the visit, typically the co-pay, maybe a little more. Beyond 15-20 minutes on a visit, the payment is not adequate compensation for the time, especially if the doctor is still paying on their student loans the hard way.

  8. lynn says:

    Give VirtualBox a spin too if you’re just playing. 

    I ain’t just playing.  I want to be able to run my debugger on my calculation engine: 850k lines F77 and 30k lines C++, on my Windows 10 pc.  I have to move to my Windows 7 PC in order to debug right now as my 1998 debugger has a problem setting breakpoints in Windows 10.  One of the security fixes for Windows 10 reputedly broke the two hardware registers that my debugger uses for speed.

    Moving between my two PCs is a pain in the rump.  There is about 15 feet between them so I roll my chair over.  

  9. Greg Norton says:

    Moving between my two PCs is a pain in the rump.  There is about 15 feet between them so I roll my chair over.  

    On Windows, most of my VM experience is with VirtualBox, but that was to run Linux VMs in grad school and various jobs since then.

    As long as you don’t install the Extension Pack in the VirtualBox, you should be clear for using the software in a commercial setting. Note that the Extension Pack is different than the Guest Additions device drivers, which are often necessary to make the guest OS experience tolerable.

    At least that was the read of the company lawyer in 2013 when I worked in Seattle. She was worried more about Cygwin, then under Red Hat, which the developers would install to run X on Windows just to get the Gitk GUI to work on the OS. 

    Kinda overkill. Tcl/Tk has been solid on Windows for decades, but all the young’n’s knew about scripting on Windows was PowerShell or Python, which ironically depends on embedding Tcl/Tk for the built-in GUI.

  10. EdH says:

    OK, I am not smart enough to run Hyper-V as it keeps on giving me “Run IPX on IPV4” message.  I am trying the free version of VMware Workstation now and Windows 7 is installing.

    Hah.

    That reminds me, you guys are due an Ancient Laptop update, just for laughs:

    From before: I put Mint on it, after a Debian variant failure, it runs clean, sees the wifi, uses about 400MB of the 2GB ram. 

    I put dosbox on it.

    Since then:

    Attempted a couple of games, they sort-of ran. Good enuff.

    Downloaded the abandonware “dos” game my friend wanted…and it is Win3.1, not Dos.

    Give up for a day or two.

    Do a bog standard apt-get Wine. It doesn’t run, dies immediately with no message.

    Uninstall. Go get Wine from the developer site and install, it works.

    Start futzing around, with virtual drive and cdrom mountings and settings. Have lunch with friend, mention this would be easier if they had the original disk and key. 

    ”Really? I do.”

    Get said package and take home.

    Open package, it is a different version, for XP, not Win3.

    Took a couple more days off…

  11. EdH says:

    re:scripting:

    In other news, I was semi-offered a small job doing some back office stuff, automating some excel/db stuff. I normally wouldn’t consider it, I‘m retired and tiny 1099’s are a pain, but its a good friend who needs the help.

    But, just how far has M$ deprecated vbScript? 

    I know it is gone, gone, gone from browser stuff, but how about excel and file handling/renaming and such?

    I‘ve done a small bit of powershell, but never any Javascript. Really don’t want to go there.

  12. mediumwave says:

    Meatspace.  It’s important, even if it goes against your basic nature.   I am not outgoing by nature.  I’ve worked hard over the years to develop the persona that can just chat with random strangers, and initiate contact with them.   It’s a skill that can be learned and improved.   I think it’s worth spending time doing so, as in person  interaction is very important and probably will become even more so in the next few years.  Being likable, open, and friendly has  helped me tremendously personally and professionally.   It’s hard work, but it pays off.

    Quoted for truth, as SteveF would say if he weren’t MIA.

  13. Greg Norton says:

    It was the driver’s fourth charge of DUI. He had yet to appear in court on any of the charges thus not “legally” proven guilty. For my event his lawyer had the case moved to criminal court. Since past driving offenses are not permitted in criminal court as far as the court was concerned it was only his first incident. I was not allowed to speak in criminal court as my attempt was quickly squashed by his lawyer and the judge.

    I indirectly knew a guy whose mother had a very good lawyer, and he managed to skate on … six (?) … DUI arrests. Two is automatic jail time in Florida. This person would not have done well in jail so Mommy indulged her special little boy well into his 40s.

    If it makes you feel better, I use the past tense because he choked to death on his own vomit after rolling home from a club one night and passing out on his couch, probably DUI then too.

  14. Greg Norton says:

    I saw a local report yesterday that claimed that the bribe would be free of federal tax, but subject to state tax. My B.S. meter pegged. 

    Everything about the repayment scheme is speculation and talking points right now. 

    Nobody knows anything for sure until it appears on paper.

    This time last year, everyone was headed for mass mandatory jabbings with the associated inevitable cratering of the economy, and we know how that turned out. Thank God the Old School Marm currently serving as Supreme Court Chief Justice had some sense.

    Still, it wasn’t enough to protect the people in the healthcare field and Federal employees.

  15. Greg Norton says:

    I know it is gone, gone, gone from browser stuff, but how about excel and file handling/renaming and such?

    The last time I had to manipulate data from an Excel spreadsheet in a script running on Windows to crunch some stats regarding vehicle dimensions at the tolling company, I used one of the Python libraries which read/write Excel files. Really easy.

    If you want to communicate with the spreadsheet via COM, that’s where things get complicated.

  16. CowboyStu says:

    I was asked to prevent engineers from making typos when moving numerical values from Excel into Word documents.  I had to self-learn and program from MS Visual Basic for Applications to do the cutting data from the spreadsheets to Word type templates.

  17. Alan says:

    >> https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/left_unsaid_about_college_debt_forgiveness.html

    I saw a local report yesterday that claimed that the bribe would be free of federal tax, but subject to state tax. My B.S. meter pegged.

    Some info here if you didn’t see this on Thursday.

  18. Alan says:

    >> Quoted for truth, as SteveF would say if he weren’t MIA.

    Was wondering if he’d eventually come back. Pecancorner and MrAtoZ are still MIA too.

  19. Alan says:

    >> This time last year, everyone was headed for mass mandatory jabbings with the associated inevitable cratering of the economy, and we know how that turned out. Thank God the Old School Marm currently serving as Supreme Court Chief Justice had some sense.

    @Greg, was this ever decided in Texas? IIRC, a decision(s) was still pending.

  20. Alan says:

    >> Did my show yesterday.  Loaded in and set up in the morning, actually sold some stuff right away, and hope to sell some more.   The big stuff that I really wanted to move hasn’t moved yet.   Several interested parties for one item, but I’m having trouble finding a fair price.  Very few comps online.

    Appropriately, @nick is selling at this show this weekend…I think  😉

  21. Greg Norton says:

    @Greg, was this ever decided in Texas? IIRC, a decision(s) was still pending.

    Mask mandate authority was still pending the last time I checked, the question being whether the authority rested with the Governor or the “Judges” (think mayor-type executive) of the counties in Texas.

    If I had to guess, the Supreme Court of Texas is hedging their bets by waiting to see how the election for Governor turns out. Right now, it looks like Robert Francis will lose to Abbott, but a week of rolling blackouts in the state would change that in a heartbeat. Since the justices are majority Republican, a Democrat Governor would probably motivate them to leave the authority in the hands of the Judges at the county level.

    There is no general vaccination mandate in Texas beyond what the Feds impose on healthcare workers and their own employees. Individual companies are free to impose rules for employees and customers *except* restaurants and bars holding liquor licenses — if you require proof of vaccination to enter the establishment and receive service, the Governor decreed that you will not have your liquor license renewed.

  22. Greg Norton says:

    I was asked to prevent engineers from making typos when moving numerical values from Excel into Word documents.  I had to self-learn and program from MS Visual Basic for Applications to do the cutting data from the spreadsheets to Word type templates.

    At the tolling company job, we used to receive spreadsheets of incorrectly classified vehicles from the customer authority on my project, and the transaction number in the spreadsheet had to be matched against the one in the logs of our classification subsystem in order to pull the complete stats on the vehicle in an attempt to improve the rules determining what was a “van” vs. a “commercial vehicle”.

    Python made that easy.

  23. CowboyStu says:

    For one mission, the first stage fuel amount to be loaded at the Cape was mistakenly typed in the Word document as 7528 lbs.  This was discovered about 10 minutes before loading started.  The correct number was 7258 lbs in Excel and given to the Cape by phone immediately.  

     I was able to prevent those in the future.

  24. Greg Norton says:

    For one mission, the first stage fuel amount to be loaded at the Cape was in the document as 7528 lbs.  This was discovered about 10 minutes before loading started.  The correct number was 7258 lbs in Excel but typed mistakenly into the Word document sent to the Cape.

    I was able to prevent those in the future.

    Yeah, if I classified a vehicle wrong it didn’t make much of a difference because the customer still received the correct amount of money. OTOH, an incorrect amount of rocket fuel could make things go splody.

    Still, our customer had quite a fit when Amazon started deploying the new delivery vans that skirted federal labor laws for truckers by shaving the dimensions very specifically. You would have thought that was life and death.

    I came up with a rule to fix the classification. Amazon overlooked something parsing those laws so finely.

  25. drwilliams says:

    @Alan @Greg

    The point of what I posted above is that absent a specific provision of the tax code enacted by Congress–not part of some EO–the student loan forgiveness would be taxable.

    There has been a lot of discussion on the tax forums

    https://taxfoundation.org/student-loan-debt-forgiveness/

    NB:

    Federal student loans forgiven under income-driven repayment (IDR) plans are typically treated as taxable income.

    While student loan forgiveness is generally included in taxable income, the current tax code contains a complicated patchwork of exceptions. The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021 temporarily exempted student loan forgiveness under IDR plans from federal taxation through 2025 under the rationale that tax burden arising from treating forgiven student debt as income partially undermines debt relief.

    Yeah, but…

    If you are not repaying student debt at this time, either because you have not gradumacated or because repayment is paused, how does that affect eligibility?

    I’m expecting that Pelosi and the rest of the self-serving wannabe commie overseers will be slipping some goodies into the next 1,000 page bill.

  26. drwilliams says:

    “I came up with a rule to fix the classification. Amazon overlooked something parsing those laws so finely.”

    Counter-revolutionary apparachik

  27. paul says:

    I’m expecting that Pelosi and the rest of the self-serving wannabe commie overseers will be slipping some goodies into the next 1,000 page bill.

    Is this where someone says “Oh, you sweet sweet Summer Child”? 

      🙂  

  28. drwilliams says:

    new meme:

    Congratulations to everyone who didn’t have college debt.

    Now you do.

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  29. Ed says:

    Congratulations to everyone who didn’t have college debt.

    Now you do.
     

    By that logic, you could say I “have” a retiree’s property tax liability because I pay into Social Security. A pretty ridiculous stretch of things. 

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  30. Lynn says:

    I was asked to prevent engineers from making typos when moving numerical values from Excel into Word documents.  I had to self-learn and program from MS Visual Basic for Applications to do the cutting data from the spreadsheets to Word type templates.

    We tried to build a software product for chemical / mechanical engineers automating data transfer between calculation programs and design drawings.  Sadly, we got it working on $100,000 Vax terminals in 1986 and then tried to port it to other workstations: Apollo Domain, Sun, and IBM RS/6000.  I worked on the ports to the Apollo and Sun from 1989 to 1992 when we abandoned the product as we ran out of money.  The guy in charge of the project was severely over his head and did not have a clue about the porting.  We should have ported to Windows starting in 1989 with the database on a Unix box.

    See page 25 of our newsletter for the first advertising:

       https://www.winsim.com/news/jan1987.pdf

  31. Greg Norton says:

    We tried to build a software product for chemical / mechanical engineers automating data transfer between calculation programs and design drawings.  Sadly, we got it working on $100,000 Vax terminals in 1986 and then tried to port it to other workstations: Apollo Domain, Sun, and IBM RS/6000.  I worked on the ports to the Apollo and Sun from 1989 to 1992 when we abandoned the product as we ran out of money.  The guy in charge of the project was severely over his head and did not have a clue about the porting.  We should have ported to Windows starting in 1989 with the database on a Unix box.

    Sadly, Linux really started rolling ~ 1995. I’ve never found anything cookbooked out of Richard Stevens Unix programming books that wouldn’t compile and run on Linux. The OS is a very clean implementation of Posix, pulled straight from the API documentation, which is both good and bad.

  32. ~jim says:

    >>Is this where someone says “Oh, you sweet sweet Summer Child”? <<

    I can never hear that phrase with remembering Chris Elliott in Scary Movie 2.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KkNVyu2FYn0

  33. paul says:

    I paid my college debt.  Didn’t do much for me, college, that is. 

    Yeah.  I did the “riding on my motorcycle and the old lady turns RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME” wreck.  Hit her sideways or a Ford p/u head on?  Hmm.  Last thing was “relax”.  Next thing was being in the ditch, bike right there and running, and some guys from the gas station that saw everything holding me down.  What do I know, beyond I can’t wiggle the toes on my left leg? 

    So four 6 inch pins in left leg at the hip with lots of doctors saying they hope this works or you won’t have a leg.  Cheerful!  Right knee swelled up to larger than a large cantaloupe.  I somehow cracked my motorcycle helmet when I landed in the gutter.  

    I spent almost a month in the hospital.  Dropped from about 160 pounds to 125.  They fed me and the food was good, too.  Towards the end they started asking if I wanted an enema.  Why?  I’ve never had one and I don’t have to poop.  Well.  After wheelchair training came crutch training.  

    One morning, I was just getting fair with crutches, I had the urge.  After almost a month.  So out of bed, into the chair, wheel across the room to the crutches, get near the bathroom door, onto the crutches and fighting self closing doors and onto the potty.   Pretty much the worst smell ever to come out of me.  Finished, back to the chair and back to the bed and I’m sitting on the bed and here comes the physical therapist lady…. I’m sweating enough to soak my shirt and hair.

    I was scolded.  Because I could have fallen.  And messed up my leg… which was still seeping plasma.  But she /was/ smiling.  She was right but I had to go poop. 

    I don’t limp unless I’m real tired.  I don’t run anymore either.  The sync ain’t there.  Right knee is fine.  Left leg hurts all the time.  I’m good at ignoring it.  I’m still waiting to learn how to forecast the weather.

    Ok.  All that aside…

    What’s with the anger thing?

    I mean, I tried to go back to college but I couldn’t concentrate.  I was living in the dorms and doing laundry was hard.  For real.  I’d already done a few semesters of 15 hours each and making A’s and B’s.   But, nope.  Ain’t going anywhere doing 6 hours a semester. 

    I figured I was messed up on top of the usual figuring out life and girls and stuff.  And add crutches for a year.   Cracking a helmet, yeah, there’s extra messed up.

    I miss the old me.  He’s still in my head.  That’s the guy that bought a tube of Singer Sewing Machine grease and did the maintenance on Mom’s machine.  Almost eight years old.  Me, not the machine.  Mom almost sewed through her finger the machine ran so good. 

    Pre wreck and after wreck have blended…. and maybe the blending is where the anger happens?

    I remember beating the shit out of a weedwacker.  Stupid thing was being a stupid thing about feeding line.  It was a pile of parts when I was done.  All I saw was red.  Not a moment to be proud of. 

    But I don’t know if the seeing red  tantrums was brain damage or just hormones messing with me.  It was almost always over stupid shit.  Pretty much cleared up about 10 years after the wreck. 

  34. Lynn says:

    We tried to build a software product for chemical / mechanical engineers automating data transfer between calculation programs and design drawings.  Sadly, we got it working on $100,000 Vax terminals in 1986 and then tried to port it to other workstations: Apollo Domain, Sun, and IBM RS/6000.  I worked on the ports to the Apollo and Sun from 1989 to 1992 when we abandoned the product as we ran out of money.  The guy in charge of the project was severely over his head and did not have a clue about the porting.  We should have ported to Windows starting in 1989 with the database on a Unix box.

    Sadly, Linux really started rolling ~ 1995. I’ve never found anything cookbooked out of Richard Stevens Unix programming books that wouldn’t compile and run on Linux. The OS is a very clean implementation of Posix, pulled straight from the API documentation, which is both good and bad.

    We were extremely tied to the GINO graphics package on the Vax VMS minis and the SEED hierarchical database.  And it was all written in … drum roll … Fortran 77.  And of course Vax Fortran extensions were used all over the place, especially character strings.  Just problem after problem after problem.  And we first started porting to the VaxWindows machines, then the Apollo Domain machines, then the Sun machines.  All a big mess.  And then the sponsor pulled out due to lack of a shipping product, the project engineer was totally shocked that they would not give us more than four years.

  35. Lynn says:

    “Windows, macOS, Chrome OS, or Linux: Which Operating System Is Best?”

        https://www.pcmag.com/picks/windows-vs-macos-vs-chrome-os-vs-ubuntu-linux-which-operating-system-reigns

    “We compare the top desktop operating systems based on availability, interface design, and ease of use, plus the apps and games you can run on them.”

    I know that it is Windows without reading the article.  The business world still relies on Microsoft products with selected holdouts.  Moving to any other platform will incur huge costs and retraining of personnel.  Businesses do not change things lightly because the typical employee is sitting right on the middle of the Bell curve.  They do their jobs well until changes come in and any difficulty in the new processes is exposed.  And there is always difficulty in the new processes.

    However, the most prevalent operating system used in the world is Linux, the operating system used by Android phones.  Even my father uses a tablet that looks like a large Android phone.

    I think that Windows desktops are slowly disappearing in homes. People are moving to tablets and smartphones. But I doubt that businesses will follow them.

  36. Rick H says:

    Watched the US and International championship games of the Little League Word Series. Both were great games. I don’t watch much sports at any level or genre, but enjoyed watching those boys play. 

    The softball games were also good. All of the players were excellent. Some impressive plays.

    Will be watching the ‘World Series” tomorrow. The teams from Honolulu and Curacao (small island in the Dutch Caribbean) will be playing.  Both are excellent teams.

    Fun to watch.

  37. Rick H says:

    One of my (many) web sites is a mailing list service. And one of the features that many mailers want is a way to track when their email was opened and read by the intended recipient.

    Most mailers (as does my site) with a ‘tracking beacon’ – a little one-pixel image that ‘reports back’ to the mailer that the image was views because the mail was opened/read. Tracking beacons are used in emails and web sites.

    Some mail services (think Apple, and now DuckDuckGo’s new email service) attempt to ensure privacy of their emails by blocking tracking beacons. Or stripping off identifying information in the beacon. And others (Gmail is one) grab the beacon image and cache a copy of the image, and then display the image from their cached version.

    Many mailing providers have difficulty keeping their ‘open’ tracking accurate with these new ‘privacy’ features. Some estimates are that 30% or more emails sent by mailing services are affected by inaccurate tracking.

    I’d been thinking about how to make my open rates on my mailing service more accurate. And my latest test of a unique (I think) way to do that is proving effective against ‘beacon blockers’ and ‘beacon caching’.  It is a simple combination of techniques, but it looks to be effective.

    Not going to share it – unless there is a strong incentive to do so. But am a bit proud that I (an old programmer working by myself) have figured it out.

  38. Greg Norton says:

    I headed out to the Toyota dealer to buy a jug of coolant for my Camry, and I was surprised to see the lot nearly full. Inside, all of the tables in the sales area were occupied.

    5 PM on a Saturday.

    Of course, the coolant was $33 where I paid a little more than $20 about six months ago when I did a flush on the Solara. The Solara may be “red” vs. the “pink” they gave me for the Camry today.

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  39. Lynn says:

    I headed out to the Toyota dealer to buy a jug of coolant for my Camry, and I was surprised to see the lot nearly full. Inside, all of the tables in the sales area were occupied.

    5 PM on a Saturday.

    It is the end of the month.  The car dealerships want to sell everything that they got and the customers are getting whatever deals that they can.  People need new cars and trucks and they are resolved to pay the price.

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  40. Nick Flandrey says:

    Home.   Still haven’t sold the main items I wanted to sell.   A few more hours tomorrow to try.    Youngest is turning into quite the sales person.    Late in the day I told her everything she sold from that point, she could keep the money.   She sold $30 worth, got double what I was asking for one item, got some free SWAG from another vendor, and happily ate candy from one booth’s bowl for 6 hours.   She’s chomping at the bit to go back with me tomorrow.

    Time to start dinner, then see how much more stuff I can rustle up from the depths of my office to put on my sales tables.   Since you never know what people like, it can pay to bring the weird.   I paid for my tables with safety glasses and PPEs today, stuff I threw in the bin at the last minute.   (safety glasses have bifocal ‘reader’ lenses built in.)

    n

  41. Rick H says:

    the hard-right political bent on this blog 

    I don’t think everyone (or most)  here is ‘hard right’. Some commenters lean in that direction, some more than others. But it appears to me that some other commenters  lean – to varying degrees – in the other direction.

  42. Jenny says:

    I’ve appreciated the comments today and yesterday regarding brain injuries. It is a puzzle to me, the anger aspect. 
     

    Short shrift to internet today. Gifted a ewe and goat. Enclosure was muddy. I grabbed the ewe as she ran past. Didn’t let go. She pulled me hiney over tea kettle. Mud (that isn’t mud) head to toe. Fall broke my grip. Grabbed her and didn’t let go on second pass. Timely helping hand from friend saved me from a second tumble. 
     

    Friend lent me a change of clothes. Would have been riding the roof rack home otherwise -laughter-

    Need to get home and get them processed…

  43. Alan says:

    >> See page 25 of our newsletter for the first advertising:

    @Lynn, so I’d venture to say that your desk looks about the same today as it does in that picture.

    And a three-button mouse, with a lefty no less 🙂

  44. Alan says:

    >> Friend lent me a change of clothes. Would have been riding the roof rack home otherwise -laughter-

    Was good enough for Mitt’s dog!

  45. drwilliams says:

    Mar-a-Lago: Court “hereby provides notice of its preliminary intent to appoint a special master in this case”

    Feds must respond by August 30, including under seal “[a] particularized notice indicating the status of Defendant’s review of the seized property, including any filter review conducted by the privilege review team and any dissemination of materials beyond the privilege review team.”

    Posted by William A. Jacobson Saturday, August 27, 2022 at 07:54pm

    https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/08/mar-a-lago-court-hereby-provides-notice-of-its-preliminary-intent-to-appoint-a-special-master-in-this-case/

    Professor Jacobson writes:

    The problem, as I’ve pointed out before, is that Trump delayed filing the motion, and now we’re three weeks out and the feds probably have gone through everything already, or will spend the next two days doing so since there’s no injunction in place. Nonetheless, the court inserting itself into the process is significant.

    from the court order:

    b. In addition to the Response, on or before August 30, 2022, Defendant shall file under seal the following materials:

    i. A more detailed Receipt for Property specifying all property seized pursuant to the search warrant executed on August 8, 2022.
    ii. A particularized notice indicating the status of Defendant’s review of the seized property, including any filter review conducted by the privilege review team and any dissemination of materials beyond the privilege review team.

    If I were cynical and believed that Trump and his attorney’s were somewhat skeptical of the good will of the DOJ after the June meeting, I might suspect that the dissemination that actually took place would be much broader than what will be initially admitted  and that the delay was entirely intentional.

    I might further suspect that the “privilege review team” might be a carefully handpicked set of alumni from the Mueller investigation, that the sequestering and review process was “somewhat” imperfect, and that the timeline for those imperfections started in the wee hours of the night of the day of the raid.

  46. Lynn says:

    >> See page 25 of our newsletter for the first advertising:

    @Lynn, so I’d venture to say that your desk looks about the same today as it does in that picture.

    And a three-button mouse, with a lefty no less 

    I suspect that is an advertising agency desk.  The computer was probably a Vax workstation.

    I was working for TXU then.  I didn’t come back until 1989.

    BTW, there are lots of lefties in the computer industry.

  47. ~jim says:

    >>regarding brain injuries. It is a puzzle to me, the anger aspect.  <<

    My suspicion is that the anger is brought about by a low frustration tolerance. Which in turn is brought about by stress, in the classical, Hans Selye meaning of the word. It could be psychological, i.e., shell-shock, natural disaster, or even family conflict.

    Then again, the low frustration tolerance might be physiological in origin. Yet that again points to an abnormal stressor: illness or injury.

    Whatever the cause, I think it’s kind of cool that we eventually manage to quell the monsters from the Id and become semi-social monkeys fit for human company after a while.

    And if we don’t, well, there’s always Thorazine.

    ~jim
    Who wonders where I left my Prozac
     

  48. Lynn says:

    Time to start dinner, then see how much more stuff I can rustle up from the depths of my office to put on my sales tables.   Since you never know what people like, it can pay to bring the weird.   I paid for my tables with safety glasses and PPEs today, stuff I threw in the bin at the last minute.   (safety glasses have bifocal ‘reader’ lenses built in.)

    People are expecting more crazy to go on so they are buying safety items.  And with rapidly rising prices on basic items such as food, shelter, and fuels, they have a lot less disposable cash money.

  49. Lynn says:

    And if we don’t, well, there’s always Thorazine.

    ~jim
    Who wonders where I left my Prozac

    Don’t forget the lithium.

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

  50. Nick Flandrey says:

    12 piece KFC, 3 sides, meal deal.   $36.   But there isn’t any inflation.

    n

  51. Ray Thompson says:

    I used to lean left.

    Then I had knee replacement.

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  52. Nick Flandrey says:

    I find her interesting because she’s a client and because she sleeps above her covers. Four feet above her covers! 

    – that’s what I associate with thorazine…

    n

  53. Nick Flandrey says:

    “I used to be an adventurer like you.

    Then I took an arrow to the knee.”

    n

  54. ~jim says:

    >> Don’t forget the lithium.

       <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkcJEvMcnEg<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkcJEvMcnEg<&lt;

    Let me guess, this is about 7-Up and lithium carbonate? That’s the kind of pointless braggadocio which makes me wish I had a button to exclude people who waste my time and completely miss the point.

    You’re not adding to the conversation, Lynn, only exploiting it to primp your ego.

    EDIT: so I watched about five seconds of the video. Thanks for ‘sharing’.

  55. Lynn says:

    >> Don’t forget the lithium.

       <a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkcJEvMcnEg<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkcJEvMcnEg<&lt;

    Let me guess, this is about 7-Up and lithium carbonate? That’s the kind of pointless braggadocio which makes me wish I had a button to exclude people who waste my time and completely miss the point.

    I am not sure what the 7-up reference is about.  Lithium is prescribed to treat bi-polar people of which I have known a couple.  The lithium makes them semi-normal for the rest of us but makes them feel like they are swimming through mud (a quote from my relative).  He hated the feeling desperately and we had commit him over it.  I am not sure about lithium carbonate, is that the common drug called lithium ?

    The song by Kurt Cobain is about how he felt about life when he was off lithium. He blew his head off with a shotgun one day when he could not stand it anymore.

  56. JimM says:

    “Paul Pelosi booted by 11-99 Foundation for flashing its card during his arrest”
    “On the video of the roadside discussion, Pelosi — husband of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — is also heard telling the deputy while declining to take a breathalyzer test that he is “a high-profile individual.””

    https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2022/08/27/paul-pelosi-booted-by-11-99-foundation-for-flashing-its-card-during-his-arrest/

    It is hard to say how he would have been treated if it hadn’t involved a collision.

  57. Alan says:

    >> I used to lean left.

    Then I had knee replacement.

    So now you’re “Fair and Balanced?” ™ Fox News

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  58. Nick Flandrey says:

    regarding brain injuries. It is a puzzle to me, the anger aspect.

    – I think it’s probably the hunk of fat being sloshed around violently inside your skull causes physical changes that effect the emotional management aspects of a normally functioning brain.   Other near death experiences like a stroke or heart attack can cause the same reaction, which I suspect is at root a physical issue with the meat.  And over time it either heals, or gets routed around, like relearning speech after a stroke.  

    I’ve found it’s very common though, and it has a tremendous negative effect on spouses/families/etc as well as the affected person.

    n

  59. ~jim says:

    >>I am not sure what the 7-up reference is about.  Lithium is prescribed …<<

    Which is all the more reason you should keep your mouth shut. When you don’t know something either ask, or look it up.  Yapping just because you can is impolite.

    Most of us know why lithium is prescribed, thank you very much. Once again, thanks for ‘sharing’.

    How we compensate after exposure to untoward stress is what interests me.

  60. ~jim says:

    >>Other near death experiences like a stroke or heart attack can cause the same reaction,  <<

    Might not even be near death experiences. People hooked up to heart-lung machines experience personality changes afterwards. I’ve seen it myself but I’m sure it’s in the literature. The one guy I’m thinking about seemed to return to normal after a year and a half or so. Oh, and another guy, too.

    What they both had in common was decreased frustration tolerance post operation. 

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  61. drwilliams says:

    Anger associated with TBI:

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/impact-aftermath/201107/anger-and-traumatic-brain-injury-common-companions

    I was introduced to a friend of a friend that had been in an auto accident and had a TBI. He was recovered, except that his memory didn’t work properly. His accommodation was a notebook that he carried with him always, to write down things he needed to remember.

    I’ve known people who were injured and lost functionality. I’ve known people who were not injured but took medication with terrible side effects. A large percentage of both groups had difficulty with anger.

    Several people here have shared their stories. Thank you. I salute you all.

    Please take a minute to remember those who didn’t survive.

  62. Nick Flandrey says:

    @~jim,   I’ve re-read both your and lynn’s comments, and I don’t understand what this :

    Which is all the more reason you should keep your mouth shut. When you don’t know something either ask, or look it up.  Yapping just because you can is impolite. 

    is about.   Take a breath.  Someone is SERIOUSLY misunderstanding something in this exchange.   

    You mentioned two drugs used to treat some mental disorders, Lynn mentions a third, with link to the music video of Cobain describing his illness thru music and experience with that third drug, and all that follows logically to me.

    Wherever the vitriol is coming from, it’s not warranted and is out of character enough that I had to double check that it was you actually posting and not someone spoofing you.

    Back it down a notch, please. 

    n

  63. Alan says:

    >> “Paul Pelosi booted by 11-99 Foundation for flashing its card during his arrest”
    “On the video of the roadside discussion, Pelosi — husband of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — is also heard telling the deputy while declining to take a breathalyzer test that he is “a high-profile individual.””

    https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2022/08/27/paul-pelosi-booted-by-11-99-foundation-for-flashing-its-card-during-his-arrest/

    It is hard to say how he would have been treated if it hadn’t involved a collision.

    Folks that I know that have appropriate LEO courtesy cards usually know when not to show them. Even if there hadn’t been a collision, it’s not easy for a ‘civilian’ to get off with a warning in a DUI situation, especially if the person refuses to blow the breathalyzer. I guess Paul never got the memo.

    When it’s an obvious DUI situation and the person involved is a fellow officer it can be a difficult situation to deal with.

    On the other hand, maybe Paul, at 82, is not well enough to drive. That can be checked courtesy of the CA DMV.
    It’s too bad though that he’s too poor to afford a driver. Maybe if he asks nicely Nancy will increase his allowance.

    Oh, and here’s the car, if you want to place a bid. It’s a 2021 PORSCHE 911 CARRERA S. More appropriate for him than say, a Camry.

    FTA…

    Paul Pelosi’s lifetime membership in the CHP 11-99 Foundation has been revoked because he displayed the group’s card when asked for his driver’s license during his DUI arrest.

    “The mere presentation of his 11-99 Foundation identification credentials to law enforcement made it appear that he was presenting them for preferential treatment,” the organization said in a press release Thursday. ”

  64. drwilliams says:

    @~jim

    >>I am not sure what the 7-up reference is about.  Lithium is prescribed …<<

    “Which is all the more reason you should keep your mouth shut. When you don’t know something either ask, or look it up.  Yapping just because you can is impolite.”

    Whether you started out this evening to make an ass of yourself or simply confirm it, you’ve done a workmanlike job.

    “People hooked up to heart-lung machines experience personality changes afterwards. I’ve seen it myself but I’m sure it’s in the literature.”

    “look it up”? Sauce for the goose:

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/disease-may-cause-pumphead/

    Now I’m angry because I posted a link to a formerly great but now slimy toerag like SA.

    I’m going to have a cookie. Suggest you have two.

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  65. ~jim says:

    I’ll happily exclude myself from ya’ll company if this, ahem, forum, is nothing but a barbershop quartet and not a salon.

    Separating the wheat from the chaff has become mighty difficult lately, so I can either continue to provide food for thought with a tasty, testy, side of sauce or just quit entirely.

    As a sister of perpetual indulgence I can only say it’s a bad habit I’d hate to forgo.

  66. drwilliams says:

    Kip Hanson posted a half-step short essay-ette in his series:

    Numbers –Tricky Tricky Numbers: Part 3.5

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/08/27/numbers-tricky-tricky-numbers-part-3-5/

  67. drwilliams says:

    ~jim

    Sand irritates the oyster, which produces the pearl.

    Don’t click the link–it might be irritating:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN1WwnEDWAM

  68. drwilliams says:

    I apologize.

    Last weekend I posted a “Weekend Quiz” 

    Weekend Quiz:

    What TV show original theme music would you nominate for the Top 10?

    Background: Of course I have the correct answer for #1 and can support it. But there’s a lot of iconic theme songs out there, so asking for Top 10 makes for a better discussion. It’s also going to show that no one here is much under retirement age, as some of the lists that are out there are heavily influenced by the MTV/cable generation.

    Hint: Same show gets my nod for Best Opening Video. They predate MTV, of course, but would have easily won awards there.

    and later 

    I have two shows in mind that had significant radio play of the theme songs.

    Then I forgot to do the third post:

    @Greg had my top choice easily: 

    Hawaii Five-O by the Ventures. (#4 peak Billboard Hot 100)

    The other show that I had in mind would also make my Top 10: 

    Secret Agent Man by Johnny Rivers (#3 peak Billboard Hot 100)

  69. Alan says:

    A round of Snickers Bars on me…

    My credit card number is 4266…wait, that’s not a good idea…

    Post your mailing address…hmm, that won’t work either…

    Okay then, make it virtual Snickers Bars.

  70. Nick Flandrey says:

    Hey Hey We’re the Monkees! 

    Don’t remember how it charted, but they were bigger than the show. . .

    Not a personal favorite, but it was part of the culture.    

    Now I’m off, early start tomorrow with a group breakfast at the hotel.

    n

  71. Alan says:

    >> Then I forgot to do the third post:

    @Greg had my top choice easily: 

    Hawaii Five-O by the Ventures. (#4 peak Billboard Hot 100)

    The other show that I had in mind would also make my Top 10: 

    Secret Agent Man by Johnny Rivers (#3 peak Billboard Hot 100)

    And in a distant third-place, peaking at #20 on the Hot 100: Keep Your Eye on the Sparrow

  72. Alan says:

    >> Hey Hey We’re the Monkees! 

    Don’t remember how it charted, but they were bigger than the show. . .

    #8 in Australia, but apparently did not make the Hot 100:

    (Theme from) The Monkees” is a 1966 pop rock song, written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart as the signature tune for the TV series The Monkees.[2] Two versions were recorded – one for their first album The Monkees[2] and a second shorter rendition designed to open the television show. Both feature vocals by Micky Dolenz. It is based loosely on the Dave Clark Five song (including finger snap intro) “Catch Us If You Can“.

    The full-length version was released as a single in several countries including Australia, where it became a hit, reaching No. 8.[3] It also made Billboard Magazine‘s “Hits of the World” chart in both Mexico and Japan, reaching the Top 20 in Japan and the Top 10 in Mexico.[4] It is still played on many oldies radio stations. An Italian version of the song was featured on a Monkees compilation album.[2] Ray Stevens did his take of the Monkees Theme on his 1985 album He Thinks He’s Ray Stevens featuring a male German group of singers, Wolfgang and Fritzy, that are arguing during the refrain of the song. (“Hey Hey Bist Du Monkees”.)

    A slower version – sung by Boyce and Hart – was recorded for an early production of the pilot episode (16mm black and white). This can be found on the Special Features section of the Monkees season 1 DVD box set.[5]

  73. OtherModerator says:

    @EdH

    I removed your comment. 

  74. Jenny says:

    Phew. 
    I’m cleaned up, finally. Lot of sheep mud in my hair. 
    The ewe and goat are processed and in fridge. Hides are bagged and in freezer with lower legs, heads, and other gross bits the dogs will relish.  For reasons we got home with the carcasses much later than we attended. About the toughest animals I’ve had to process as a result. Husband and daughter were huge helps. We lost daylight about ¾ way thru making the last part of the job difficult. 
     

    I haven’t tanned goat before. Daughter was wondering about making a drum head. I’ll research how to slip the hair and see if we can’t make a wood frame drum from the goat hide. 
     

    Sheep hide I may decide not to tan. I didn’t do my normal quality job removing it because I was racing the Sun and fighting her stiffness. I suspect it would be an inferior end product. Tanning is enough work I’m not sure I want to take a chance. 
     

    Anyway. I still smell lanolin and poo. I’m clean. Water ran brown for awhile. I need to get my encrusted filthy clothes in the wash. They may never be the same -laughter-

  75. Nick Flandrey says:

    @alan,

    oh jeez, youtube suggested this 

    Relaxing TV Commercials from 1987  Retro TV Commercials VOL 478

    307,542 views Jun 26, 2022 

    a channel with nothing but commercials…. que loco.

    n

  76. Alan says:

    >> VOL 478 

    478?! I better get started, a lot to catch up on… 

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