Cold, wet, and dreary. That’s my guess. Could clear and be nicer, that’s what the national forecast shows. We never really know until looking out the window. It was 47F when I went to bed.
We did get rain yesterday. At the house it started with a light mist, just as I went out to take down the rest of the Halloween decorations. I got the fabric stuff inside before it got too wet. Some of the other stuff will have to stay out for a couple more days. The living room is a shambles with all the stuff on the floor.
I headed out on my pickups, and took the Expedition to keep the rain off my stuff. I tried to run the heat, but got nothing but cold air. A check engine light, that I thought was for the expired oil life warning, caught my eye. I pulled over and checked the coolant level. Way low. Bought some. Added a bottle. Added half of another bottle. Finally got the reservoir up to the max line. Suddenly the heat worked again. And the cooling radiator fans running loudly and more than normal makes sense too. Don’t know where it went, or when, but I was low. I’ll keep an eye on it now for a while to be sure there isn’t a leak. I’m overdue for an oil change and a look at the brakes. I just need to find the time. (the prepper lesson is ‘check your vehicle fluids, don’t put off routine maintenance, and don’t ignore warning lights)
I did pick up the telescope. I’ve decided to sneak it to the BOL, set it up, make sure it’s all good to go, then put a bow on it. I don’t want my wife to have another less than stellar experience.
Today I’m off to my client’s place to do the TTU with AT&T on the phone. That should be a huge pain in the backside. I don’t want to borrow trouble, but they don’t have a great record of accuracy or ease of use, or even of knowing what they are supposed to be providing and how to go about that. The email correspondence says that the IT Consultant (me) should call a number, navigate a certain menu, and then “AT&T technical support oversees will call him back within 30 minutes to assist with service activation.” [see the error? very reassuring] I’ve also got a cell booster to install, and a room that needs A/V troubleshooting. Should be a full day. At least one of the youtube vids I watched showed me the crucial step I missed when I was poking at it last week, so I have a fighting chance this time.
I know it’s a socialist tool of political oppression, but when you take the politics out, youtube has enabled something wonderful with all the content creators sharing their knowledge, and adding to the sum of human knowledge. They’ve made it possible for people to make a living doing what they love, and for people like me to swoop in and pick up some crumbs to solve our own issues.
Build your BOL, build some skills, build your stacks.
nick
(yes, John Wilder is a bad influence on me. Bad John Wilder, bad!)
I see what you did there.
Technical support oversees, or overlooks?
Today’s bit of technical fiddling is to do with the remote-reading fill gauge on one of our propane tanks, a gadget called a “Gas Watchman”. The thing is powered by 4 AAA cells contained in a copper tube with a proprietary screw-on connector on one end, that attaches the battery pack to the fill gauge and RF transmitter that sends the fill level to a remote display inside the house. Other than the accursed oddball connector, the thing is just a bit of 15mm diameter pipe, four batteries and a copper end-cap. I can dismantle the old one, but have not managed to get it watertight again upon reassembly. I decided my time is too valuable, and have put in an email to the gas company technical support, who will no doubt charge me a hundred bucks for four new AAA cells.
Bezos doesn’t sell refrigerators or cars … yet … and I doubt he makes money on the TV deliveries after true shipping costs are factored.
HPFM indeed. At best, the box selecting AI is an approximation since the core question about packing the boxes efficiently in a truck or cargo container is, according to theory, one of the unsolvable problems in CS.
AT&T Fiber is not regulated as closely as copper in Texas. It is part of the deal the state struck with the company to run the service in the first place. The tech will probably be a contractor.
I had an annoying hum on my copper line all last week, after the rains returned, and, by the time I got around to reporting the problem, it was Sunday morning. The tech was out within an hour.
Amazon has a contract with shippers. Amazon packs the large bulk containers that are just forklifted onto a truck, then loaded into an air cargo plane. Almost no human handling until the final distribution center before being loaded onto local trucks.
When I worked in Oak Ridge Unisys determined that the services techs on-site were short one screw (literal screw) in their inventory. A new screw was overnighted via FedEx. With the contract that Unisys had with FedEx it was cheaper to use them than use the USPS mail service.
Based on some boxes I have received the problem has been solved. A giant compactor is used to squeeze all the air out of the boxes after being loaded. Crush ‘em if you got ’em.
The whole “Judge” concept, someone with executive authority over a county, is ridiculous.
Weren’t these offices mostly symbolic until the pandemic? Our worthless RINO Right Reverend “Judge” doesn’t strike me as someone with a lot of brain cells or the ability to project authority at gunpoint. Maybe that’s why the Wine Moms in the neighborhoods up here reelected him again.
Where a county “Mayor” has been tried in Florida has led to machine politics. Disney is bluffing when they say that losing Reedy Creek is no big deal since it will require them to cater to the Demings political racket in Orange County/Orlando.
Fortunately, voting for DeSantis meant choosing in the Senate race first so Little Marco beat Val Demings by a similar margin to the Governor beating the tired retread Charlie Crist.
The screw probably came from a FedEx warehouse in Memphis.
Came from Pasadena. Overnight.
That’s where I part ways with scientists and why I’m a working engineer. Sure, finding the optimal packing in a reasonable time is an unsolved/unsolvable problem, but finding a good enough packing has been in reach for years, with “good enough” evolving as computing becomes cheaper and new techniques are found. Handing this problem to a theory-oriented person turns into letting the perfect get in the way of the good.
re Bozos telling people to delay purchases because of a looming depression: in an economy driven by consumer spending, isn’t this a good way to kick off a depression?
Maybe Bezos/Bozos wants a recession. Sponge Brain and his handlers certainly want a recession. Why not others?
I find it amusing that Arizona took so long to count ballots. Any time it takes more than a day to count ballots I get suspicious. With the amount of computer, scanning equipment, and other electronic means manual counting should be minimal. A long delay in counting votes only makes me suspicious of adjustments in the count.
I’d love to see a chart showing the following:
Column 1: Entity
Column 2: Votes counted per minute
Column 3: Minutes from start of count (polls closed) to complete count
Column 4: Political party in charge of counting, where applicable
with Entity being a list containing, at a minimum,
You get the idea.
Yes, I noted approximations are possible which Amazon probably utilizes but results in outlier cases like the toothbrush packed in a box way too big.
Of course, the approximation may require the large box for the light item to prevent shifting inside the truck or air cargo container. Who knows.
Don’t blame me. I’m in the P ≠ NP camp, and I’ve never believed that Amazon could apply technology to shave enough costs, particularly in power costs, to escape the fate of the other #1 retailers I’ve seen come and go in my lifetime.
I am sure she will have stars in her eyes!
“it’s been programmed by a monkey with sense of humor.*”
More likely malice.
“Don’t blame me. I’m in the P ≠ NP camp, and I’ve never believed that Amazon could apply technology to shave enough costs, particularly in power costs, to escape the fate of the other #1 retailers I’ve seen come and go in my lifetime.”
If Amazon crashes and burns a large reason will be fuel costs outside the predicted range, due to the demented Big Guy’s energy policy. Since Bezos was instrumental in the regime change, I would be happy to drink gasoline and piss on the embers to keep them going.
From the local Faux News – here comes the Pfizer mRNA flu shot, just as predicted. And a combo jab, too!
https://www.fox7austin.com/news/pfizer-biontech-testing-combination-flu-covid-19-vaccine
So you think you outsmarted us, eh, Skippy? Well, yer gonna get yer medicine sooner or later, just give us time.
“AT&T technical support oversees will call him back within 30 minutes to assist with service activation.” [see the error? very reassuring]
I am guessing overseas is the correct answer. Yikes, if it is.
BC: Neck Kink
https://www.gocomics.com/bc/2022/11/15
That is going to make it tough to stuff his daily 20 tons of greenery down that pipe.
>> Bezos recommended American households delay big-ticket purchases such as new TVs, refrigerators, and cars, given the risk that economic conditions worsen.
He’s okay as long as you have enough cash to renew your Prime membership. And can he still afford a new Bronco.
More important though is to know if/when the current economic conditions impact AWS revenue.
>> You have kids, don’t you? Other than the tail and fur, I challenge you to find a significant difference between a monkey and a child.
Hard to get a child to wear a jumpsuit.
“US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds, but tough reliability and land use questions lie ahead”
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/us-can-reach-100-clean-power-by-2035-doe-finds-but-tough-reliability-and/635874/
“New aggressive planning is needed to identify the long-duration storage technologies and find the land to grow enough resources to reach Biden net zero emissions goals, a DOE national lab reports.”
These people are delusional. The capital investment alone would run in the tens of trillions of dollars. The materials for the batteries are not there. And conversion of our crude oil and natural gas pipelines to hydrogen is not simple.
Plus the carbon tax of $80 per ton will cause a rebellion in the heartland of the USA.
MacKenzie drove the Bronco in The Legend of Jeff.
Jeff himself drove a 90s Honda Accord.
Of course, the Legend is all BS.
Gridlock is in our future. The House is coming for Hunter Biden even if The Big Guy skates.
Was working temp in the field for a company just large enough to have a purchasing department. A notebook was needed. Field Director was not authorized to purchase one in the local five and dime, but had to call company purchasing to overnight a then 75 cent notebook to the field location. I’m pretty sure purchasing was able to get that notebook for 50 cents with a bulk purchase so I guess they were saving money, at least in that budget column. Gotta love one size corporate rules designed by pencil pushers.
After I left CGI, management was determined to make an example for the young’n’s with the next resignation. The poor guy turned in notice and within an hour was walked to the door for “stealing” – management went through his expense reports and found a $2 soda at the end of a $300 bill at Office Depot in Ontario, charged during a trip to give a presentation to a customer a year earlier.
In most cases, you can teach a child to do some things and not to do others. I’m not certain that you can teach a monkey such things.
Otherwise, construction crews would have several monkeys on the payroll, being both stronger and less expensive than human employees.
When I was working for Maxima Corporation in Oak Ridge under a DOE contract with the Navy the rules were strange and must be followed.
I was going to a conference in Anaheim CA. Dates were Monday through Thursday with the attendees arriving on Sunday. I asked if I could fly out on Friday, spend Saturday and part of Sunday at my mother’s place in Victorville. I would rent a car at my expense, would charge no per diem, just wanted a couple of days. The tickets were half the cost at $700.00 as I would be staying over one Saturday.
The DOE’s travel office response was a resounding NO. I was taking a vacation at government expense. Uh, no, not really but that is what the travel office saw. Travel dates and airline tickets must correspond with the event. I had to fly out on Sunday when the airline tickets cost $1400.00, twice what it would have cost to fly out on Friday.
Out of spite I took a cab rather than use the shuttle service supplied by the conference for trips to and from the airport. Another $50.00 wasted each way but allowed.
Coming back, I was going to spend one night at a relative’s house as it was close to the airport (Ontario Airport). Uh, no can do. I must have a hotel on my expense report for the night before the trip back. Otherwise, it would be considered a personal trip. Another $100.00 wasted.
Another conference a year later was in San Francisco. The hotel for the conference was $10.00 over the maximum allowable rate. I was not allowed to stay at that hotel. I had to get a cheaper hotel a block away for $15.00 less. Because I was not staying in the conference hotel, I was allowed to rent a car at $60.00 per day and pay $25.00 a night to park at the hotel. I walked to the conference every day, one block. An extra $80.00 a day for four days so the rules could be followed.
The DOE travel department in Oak Ridge was ruthless, and stupid. The travel department also made travelers turn in any mileage points to the DOE travel department. I never used my travel card when I traveled for DOE. Screw ’em.
The new PC has enough USB ports. But I want a USB hub so I don’t wear out the PC’s ports. Powered, too, to take the load off of the PC’s power supply.
The new PC has one micro SD whatever card slot. The tiny one, like you put in your phone. I think. I’m not taking my phone apart to be sure. I thought I had an extra but it doesn’t fit. Shrug. I need a card reader because the camera uses Memory Sticks and I have a few SD cards floating around.
Sure, I could pull the card reader from the old PC, maybe, it looks to be part of the case, but it connects to the mainboard with connectors similar to fans. Perhaps I can not be so cheap for once? Also, all of the USB ports on the old PC quit doing data…. maybe the old PC’s card reader fried something.
I found one USB hub that can also read memory cards. Didn’t do Memory Sticks. Bummer.
Amazon for the headache! There are so many options. Oh, “this one” looks real good. Yeah, but the cable from the hub is all of six inches long…. that’s going to be convenient /if/ I decide to mount the PC on the back of the monitor.
I finally said rude words and bought a hub and a card reader. Just under $40 for both. One item had a “click for a discount” on its page. I don’t know why. Hey, two bucks off almost covered the sales tax. Then for extra discounts, I could get Prime free for a month and get almost $6 more off the entire order.
Pass on Prime. We didn’t use it enough to make it worth the cost. Like Next Day Delivery ever happened more than one time.
The stuff is suppose to arrive on Friday. With this weather, I’ll pick it up Saturday morning /if/ the dogs want to go to the gate for their morning walk. Penny and Buddy are both “I want out” and they circle around, tripping on their feet, and back into the house…. unless they really have to go potty.
The ISP did some upgrades and tinkering today. Nothing major. A couple of new routers in a couple of locations along with adding a few UPS units. Then on the main tower here, they replaced the radio. From Gen 4 to Gen 5.
So no ‘net for most of a horrible hour.
I have a phone. It lets me tether. Worked fine on the old PC before the USB stuff crapped.
New PC has wi-fi and bluetooth built in. Either should work and no cables needed.
Can I tether the phone to the PC? Not today.
The PC did seem to connect to the phone’s wi-fi but checking mail or just going to Google didn’t work. Some kind of Win11 firewall thing perhaps.
I’ll figure it out.
That’s pretty typical corporate travel department stuff. The points get traded back to the airlines for last mintue changes and short notice trips.
Lots of horse trading and working the phones/computer. They’ve been Made Men in the Work From Home Mommy (And More Than A Few Daddies) Mafia going back at least 20 years.
The tradeoff is that they are always “on duty”. It really doesn’t make sense to force them to commute and kill valuable time in a car/bus/train.
One of the Chinese relations on the West Coast is the US travel department for TSMC. She’s based in Seattle while the nearest plant was down the street from our house in Vantucky, just across from Portland Airport.
Well, it finally happened, NATO has been attacked. “Russian missiles kill two in POLAND: Warsaw puts army on ‘increased readiness’ after blasts hit rural village FIVE MILES from Ukraine border – officials blame Putin but Kremlin DENIES responsibility as NATO members vow to defend ‘every inch’ of territory”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11431591/Russian-bombs-kill-two-POLAND.html
Hat tip to:
https://www.drudgereport.com/
This thing is looking more and more like WWIII to me. Russia is busily turning Ukraine into a concrete rubble moat.
And they just gave Poland (no fans to start with) a good excuse to facilitate transfer to the Ukraine of cruise missiles to use themselves. Not smart.
The Russian capital is well under 1000km from the Ukraine.
What will happen when strikes start on Ru power plants, and electricity starts going off in metropolitan Moscow, and bridges start dropping into the Moskva river?
>> What will happen when strikes start on Ru power plants, and electricity starts going off in metropolitan Moscow, and bridges start dropping into the Moskva river?
Uhh, M A D ? ?
A tow truck is dropping off the neighbors’ new-ish Hyundai plug-in hybrid tonight, making big machine noises right outside my home office window.
So much for the “green” future. The tow truck is a monster diesel flatbed.
Using the new AirPods at the basketball game in a really noisy arena. Sound hit over 90db multiple times. The noise cancelling capability is outstanding. Better than earplugs in this environment.
The Army (or at least CECOM headquarters at Ft Monmouth) started doing that partway through my time posted there. I spent more than half of the year and I half I was there away from there, more than a flight per week on average, all over continental US. A few of the DOD civilians on other projects flew almost as much. We were able to get first class upgrades and the bosses figured that was fair because we were spending so much time on travel. Until one day… There was one flight where the lab boss (one of the SESs, considered the civil service equivalent to a general officer) was riding in business class and saw one of the peons riding in first class. Intolerable! The following week the directive came down that all airline points were to be turned over to the travel office, to be used as the travel office saw fit. No, screw that. I don’t know of a single airline point being applied for after that date, at least not by those of us who flew a lot. Let that fatass earn his own upgrades. With the two trips he took per year, that should only take ten years or so.
Similar story with the official credit cards we were supposed to use for travel expenses. The cards were in our name and we had to pay them every month and the travel office would eventually reimburse us. Exactly like using our personal credit cards. Except that the cash back or usage points went to DoD, not to us. And the credit limit was too low for me, because I was on the road so much. But they “couldn’t” raise the limit and I “wasn’t allowed” to use my own credit card. It was an additional problem for me because I was away so much that I often didn’t get the credit card bills in time to pay them without penalty, and of course I couldn’t get reimbursed for the late fee and interest. So I said screw you all and just got wads of cash before each trip to pay for everything. Use the DoD credit card as security when renting a car but settle the bill in cash. I then got bitched at for not using the card, which makes me wonder whose pocket had been receiving the benefit of the thousands I had been charging every month. I wasn’t budging and my boss thought I walked on water so he backed me.
re: traveling for the government
Some years ago a colleague who was in the Naval Reserve asked if I would be interested in attending a meeting about a little problem the Navy was having. (No under-exaggeration, it was a fairly small problem) Always a sucker for interesting problems, I asked a few questions, suggested a couple adds to the attendees list, and a week later got a night in the BOQ, a nice facilities tour an early afternoon meeting. By that time I had a solution in hand, and the only problem was it didn’t quite fit their time frame. After some discussion I was asked a question about longevity, and my reply started with “After thirty or forty years, if this wears out, you can do this…”. They were on their second failure of a “permanent” solution, but I must have been convincing because the conversation segued to dicing the calendar to get more time.
I was flying back solo that day, and after a bit of discussion I was offered a ride back to the airport by a civilian whose flight to DC was about the same time. The civilian was Indian (Asian) and the Chief Architect of the U.S. Navy. He carefully explained that he was happy to give me a ride, but had our positions been reversed and I was the one with the rental car, he would not have been able to accept a ride from me due to “rules”.
I didn’t just get a ride. I got nearly an hour of stories about being an architect around the world, including one about a top-tier European architect whose fee was a percentage of a project being built in a poor country where they had to post armed guards on the cement.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/11/abbott-calls-out-the-guard.php
Does the Texas congressional delegation introduce articles of impeachment in January?
It’s just like that suppressed tape from the Mars rover…
https://twitter.com/_B___S/status/1557272476786331649
This book should be a best seller.
You can read the text in the Internet Archive here.
No. Republicans still control the delegation, but IIRC, the Dems gained two House seats and turned previously “red” counties “purple”, sending a message to the incumbent Congresscritters.
As for the Senators, Rafael Edward is not going to touch it since he’s up for reelection in 2024, and Cornyn is … well, Cornyn. In other words, fuggedaboudit.
I was in a work meeting at 8 PM so I just heard about the announcement.
DeSantis success must drive Trump crazy. Wait until the Governor brings Disney to heel this Spring.
Home and fed.
Client has internet. And reasonably fast. AT&T was no help. The instructions I got about who to call got me “overseas” tech support of an “asian” voiced female, clearly of indian or similar decent. She could not help me. She “doesn’t do the technical side of things’. And she transferred me to maintenance… where I sat on hold for ½ hour before being disconnected.
Since she’d insisted that the paperwork showed the logical work was done as well as the physical, I assumed I’d got a setting wrong, and would need to start changing things one thing at a time. Hooked the lappy to the AT&T box and started poking.
Got the internet to work, transferred the settings to the Unifi Security Gateway Pro, and got it working. Then added the other Unifi stuff back in, doing factory resets, and going thru the whole Unifi setup stuff AGAIN. Eventually got all the Unifi under one management console, on their “Cloud Key” management appliance. Except the APs didn’t work.
They were there in the console, LOOKED like they were working but were not broadcasting their SSIDs. That was a head scratcher, so I manually connected to one, entering the SSID myself, and suddenly all of them were visible, and all my existing gear connected to them.
Testing showed we are getting the full 50Mbps up and down that we are paying for. Paying absolutely crazy amounts for. It’s ten times faster than what we had there, so for now, my client thinks it’s worth it. He split the cost of bringing in fiber with 2 others, and AT&T took the opportunity to wire the whole neighborhood at their expense.
I was so happy, I spent the rest of my day troubleshooting his AV system and forgot to do the port forwarding. Also didn’t get the cell boost repeater installed. I’ll see if I can figure out how to do the port forwarding remotely thru the VPN that I might have gotten set up. Otherwise, I’ll make another trip this week, do the port forwarding, and push the repeater off until after Thanksgiving.
—
I found this guy’s channel to be a big help with the Ubiquiti Unifi. https://www.youtube.com/c/WillieHowe
n
added- and this guy’s video gave me crucial details on configuring the Security Gateway
https://www.youtube.com/c/PoseidwnTech
n
more on science fiction:
Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988) was a prolific writer of short stories. His page on the Independent Science Fiction Database:
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?55
shows well over 100 published short stories.
During his lifetime short story collections were regularly issued, beginning with the linked stories of “City” in 1952, and continuing through at least five other major collections in the USA. Unfortunately, many of his later collections were published in the UK, but not the USA. It’s a project to collect them all, and not inexpensive, although they do come with some nice introductions by Francis Lyall.
A few years ago his literary executor started issuing series intended to be complete. Again, unfortunately, rather than do so chronologically he chose some other method of selection. Personally, I was hoping for publication order and about twice as much in each volume, and paperbacks
I noticed this evening that five of the twelve collections, usually offered as Kindle ebooks at $7.99, are on sale for $1.99.
https://www.amazon.com/s?i=digital-text&rh=p_27%3ADavid+W.+Wixon&_encoding=UTF8&ref=dbs_mng_calw_a_0&tag=ttgnet-20
If you grew up reading the short stories, these are worth considering.
>> DeSantis success must drive Trump crazy. Wait until the Governor brings Disney to heel this Spring.
Winner-take-all primaries…and nicknames that stick…just sayin…
Artemis 1 launch currently scheduled for two hour window starting at 1:04 AM today/tomorrow (depending on your time zone).
NASA live stream here.
Some fueling issues apparently resolved. Hey, no worries, it’s ‘liquid’ hydrogen that’s leaking.
“The rocket will experience Max Q — an aerospace term that essentially means the rocket is enduring the maximum amount of stress that it must on its way to orbit — about a minute after takeoff. Then, the rocket will begin intentionally shedding parts, which will fall away from the Orion spacecraft and into the ocean, until a single engine remains attached to the gumdrop-shaped capsule.”
Outrageous, fumes Tony, as he pounds out the tweets…
🙂
. Then, the rocket will begin intentionally shedding parts,
– which is a feature, not a bug, if you are spending other people’s money…
n
more on science fiction:
Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988) was a prolific writer of short stories. His page on the Independent Science Fiction Database:
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?55
shows well over 100 published short stories.
I have a Simak in my SBR. I read a Simak recently, it was strange and good. Recommended for his view of the 500+ year future where people routinely moved their houses around the planet.
https://www.amazon.com/Werewolf-Principle-Clifford-D-Simak/dp/1504051068/?tag=ttgnet-20/
>> which is a feature, not a bug, if you are spending other people’s money…
You’re correct, my bad, forgot that this is a .gov project.
Oh, and those “other people” are us.
Well today got eaten by the Fortran interpreter built into our calculation engine since 1983. I have a user who wants to change the ambient temperature in the middle of a case study and I am trying to add that feature. He builds LNG ships in Norway so they do have a wide variation of temperatures.
The dadgum Fortran interpreter is allowing me to look at global variable but not change them. And everything is a pointer to a pointer to a pointer which drives our crappy debugger nuts. I suspect that the developer got a very early version of lex and yacc and recoded them in Fortran. From obtuse to incredibly obtuse with variables named ix1, ix2, ix3, … ix32.
The late-night Artemis launch lined up nicely with breakfast for me. The launch was glorious, and the biggest problem (that caused a half-hour hold) was a network switch that went toes-up at the wrong time.
Of course, now NASA will have no choice about awarding the next round of crazy-expensive cost-plus contracts to the contractors. Pork 2.0.
Sounds like the good-old-days. I haven’t written Fortran for ages, but: Back in the good old days of Fortran 77, weren’t there serious limitations on variable name length? First-letter determined the type, and total length was 6 characters? Kind of difficult to come up with meaningful names, and anyway, Fortran programmers didn’t much care about maintainability.