cold, damp, but clear? Dunno. Fell asleep in the chair until about 5am, went to bed. Still in bed. More later.
Fix sommething, stack something.
nick
Sat. Feb. 4, 2023 – fell asleep in the chair, again.
95 Comments and discussion on "Sat. Feb. 4, 2023 – fell asleep in the chair, again."
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question for the collective mind here, I remember that James Watt and Matt Boulton (stam machine) was financed in part by a contract of UK Navy Arsenal before or during until they were able to perfect the boring or contract another to do so (Really was another people, but it is another history), but I am unable to locate the reference in my readings.
Someone remembers this little fact?
I plan to run a few errands today, but first I need to see if my car is runnable. Temperatures got down around -20F last night and I didn’t think to check my antifreeze because the Winter has been so mild until yesterday. Well, too late for preventive maintenance now. If I have a car with an intact engine block, I guess I’ll be running some errands.
A week ago I first heard of “plastic welding”, by YouTube throwing something up at me. Bough t two kits, using different technology, and will play around with them. Once I know what I’m doing, I’ll make a number of repairs to the front and rear bumper covers on my wife’s car. I’ve mentioned a time or two that she’s a lousy driver. Her car has had visible damage and loose pieces for a good while because I got tired of paying for repairs when she’s just going to drive into something in a few months anyway. However, if a couple hours of my time and a few dollars of consumables can result in “good enough” repairs, then it’s worth doing. Not for the next couple days, though, what with the cold.
Continuing to feed some birds. Just a couple of feeders, a bag of regular seed, a bag of sunflower seeds, and bricks of suet-and-seed. Started doing it on a whim a few months ago, continued in part because my daughter likes watching the birds’ antics while she eats breakfast, and now continue because I’m at war with the tree rats (which I don’t really mind) and the antlered forest rats (which annoy the crap out of me). I haven’t gone as far as the guy who put up “Squirrel Maze” videos but I’ve been playing around with ways to block the antlered forest rats without making it too inconvenient for me to get to the feeders. Over the Summer I’ll do something fancier. I might do a project with my daughter for a motion detector triggering sound and lights or a swinging arm or something along those lines; she’s interested in programming and electronics and robotics, so we might see how far and how ridiculous we can push it. (A motion-activated camera getting video of a deer getting punched in the face by a hydraulic-driven fist isn’t too far or too ridiculous, is it?)
Again assuming that I have a working car, I’ll see about taking the teenage daughter of a nearby family grocery shopping. The family’s on hard times but the real problem isn’t a shortage of money, it’s a shortage of housemaking skills. The mother is doing what she can about income and is sort of keeping the family above water, but she doesn’t really cook and doesn’t really clean, and the kid obviously can’t learn to do it if her mother doesn’t know how. (The mother is slim and attractive even now, age 40-ish. I imagine that she was a real hot patootie in her 20s, got married young, didn’t bring much to the family other than being a young, fertile hot patootie, and her husband took care of things until he died.) They normally buy name-brand canned goods and packaged food to heat-n-eat, which costs twice as much as buying flour and meat and whatever. When our schedules match up, I’ve been teaching the daughter some simple cooking, how to get best value for the money when grocery shopping, and some simple home maintenance. (Really simple. Like, how to use a screwdriver properly.)
If all of the above fails, like because my car’s coolant froze, well, I guess I’ll be looking online for a new car. Might do some writing. I have several stories which need to be finished so that I can publish them. There’s no deadline, which is why I haven’t made to time to work on them, and they’ve been sitting for months in one case and over a year in the other.
The coolant in my car is still liquid and the car started without too much protestation (yay!) so I guess I’ll be running errands from 0800-1200 (boo!).
Just noticed that the date in the title of this post is wrong. Eeeeeeeek! Temporal dislocation and confusion! #Triggered #LiterallyShaking
Anything modern, especially Toyota, is going to spec decent coolant.
The dealer gave me grief about flushing my coolant on the last visit with the Camry because the new “pink” type is supposed to last 100,000 miles.
Yeah, right.
Just don’t add water to the system unless you are in a serious pinch and can do a flush right away. Keep a jug of the exact type spec-ed for your car in the garage, purchased from the dealer, and add as necessary.
If you notice the vehicle losing coolant regularly, get the problem addressed. I waited too long on the water pump on the Solara, and the bearings seized causing the timing belt to break.
Fortunately, I got lucky. The car runs like nothing happened.
With the Exploder, the coolant loss out the weep hole was a sign of an even more serious problem since the water pump sits inside the engine case, bolted to the block. If you have a Ford V6, ask about the location of the water pump and have them monitor the weep hole for encrustation if it is one of the p*ss poor designs.
Tommy Boy has a problem. Ford leads the industry in recalls this year, and that’s just from the issues they admit to having.
She was liv-ing in material world and she-was-a-material-girl.
Again, nuclear bombs dropped on the suburbs in the late 80s would have done less cultural damage than basic cable being installed in every home. At least the networks had to pretend to make money from advertising or “synergies” in the case of Disney Channel up until the mid-late 90s.
Pournelle’s Cultural Weapons of Mass Destruction. Didn’t he advocate Madonna going on iPods smuggled to Iran?
When I saw Jimmy Fallon appearances on the Letterman’s YouTube channel yesterday, my first thought was that Fallon had been fired or died. Fortunately, that was not the case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gydrt1-CV0c
41 years. Geesh.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/02/the-daily-chart-accident-rates.php
Yup.
Apparently I missed a lot of nasty troll action yesterday.
Many thanks to The Hammers of Bob.
A couple of thoughts on the Chinese Commie ballon:
Game over, man, game over. (I’m sure plugs will claim a great military victory. Beau was flying the jet that took the balloon down.)
I read a comment that the WuFlu Commie Cooties balloon was a test run to see if the Commies could sneak an EMP device into the FUSA. The novel writes itself.
Geez:
Laughably, Biden’s Treasury Dept Claims All Aid Being Laundered Through Ukraine Is Being Used Properly
I guess this goes along with the plugs, PLT, Dumbocrat mantra of : “The United State of America sucks”.
These creeps have relocated us to a Turd World country.
I’m guessing they were sniffing EM. A spy satellite would fly too high/fast.
My rejected grad school thesis was securing the air traffic control network against an attacker injecting fake data into the system using a platform at various altitudes including ground vehicles and airplanes. I didn’t think of a balloon, but that would work.
At the time, the response from my *North Vietnamese*-born professor was “The government probably already has a solution in place.”
(Yeah, he was too young to be a refugee and did undergrad in some weird quota arrangement at a school in Australia before landing a visa to get a PhD at Portland State. After I left, he was practically frog marched off campus mid-semester the following spring over an incident no one wants to talk about.)
This is what today’s flag officers are taught:
The public certainly has the ability to look up in the sky and see where the balloon is.
Weasel words. “You dirt people need to STFU. Trust your goobermint.” The Perfumed Princes are alive and well. Thank you Obola. Thank you plugs. We currently cant’ even fight a war on one front.
The aid is most likely being used “properly” to line the pockets of the defense contractors and justify the existence of the freak show commands like what happens at MacDill in the old bank building just off the base property, coordinating with Raytheon across the bay in the former Eckerd Drugs HQ complex.
We have another one of those commands here in Austin in Downtown somewhere. My wife’s nephew applied to be stationed there in his next assignment, still dreaming of getting an MBA from UT and becoming a tech manager with his Broadcasting degree.
I hope his off-base allowance is generous. I’m on the record that, as a grown-a** man and a Captain in the Army, he does *not* need to live with us. My wife is a soft touch, however.
@SteveF
Glad your cars ok. Glad you’re helping that teen learn basic life skills. We haven’t seen much of the twins we had been helping, since mom got fired. Saw her briefly at school pick up yesterday, but we were in our cars traveling opposite directions so no more than a shallow Hello. My daughter says the alcoholic father has been dropping the girls off at school in the morning. I hope we see them this weekend. I’d like to know how they are.
And I thought your dating list yesterday (?) was spot on and fair.
My aunt‘s plane landed in DFW a little while ago. I imagine she’s wending her way thru baggage and customs and what not. It’ll be another 14+ hours before she arrives here in Anchorage. Long way to travel. She will have been in travel mode for over 30 hours by the time she gets here. And that was with minimal layovers. She will be tired. I upgraded her to better seats on all legs, and bought her time in one of the travel lounges to try to refresh her batteries.
I figure the first day or so will be hanging around not doing much so she can bounce back.
Did some deep cleaning in the walkout basement yesterday. That area has LVP flooring (I did that), nice wood paneling and properly finished / painted drywall, trimmed out doors and baseboards, baseboard heat. The ceiling joists are open, copper and electric accessible, etc. I installed sound insulators on the copper where I could earlier this week. It made a big difference in the cacophony from the pipes down there. Doing so, I discovered thick layers of dust on the pipes. Makes sense. Anchorage has received volcanic ash from eruptions numerous times over the years. Plus glacial silt. It’s as dirty as a coal town, seems. Yesterdays deep clean was using many wet cloths to wipe all of the pipes and dust collecting surfaces in the ceiling joists. Filthy filthy work. I wore a mask. I vacuumed and wiped the top of the walls. There was a lot of sawdust from when holes were drilled to pass electric and pipes thru the wall cavities to the joists. I was concerned until I realized accumulation coincided with holes and the splinter / sawdust was from 1964 when the house was built.
No wonder that room has been so hard to keep clean.
I have had a Winix air purifier thing running all week. After I disturbed all the dust I changed all the filters and set it on high. I think the air quality down there is going to be much much better.
Our youngest dog is the creative athletic type. She’s restricted to a leash when outside currently. Between her creativity, physical prowess, and the deep snow with sturdy crust, she escapes the yard at will. I cannot reasonably dig a canyon along the fence when the backyard is over 100’ deep and 50’ + wide. She’s leashed until the snow subsides. When I can navigate back there I’ll honky hack the fence taller. 4’ is adequate to contain a corgi, but not in the winter with the snows we had this year. She’s going kinda bonkers not being able to run. Our dog parks are dangerous, and her recall is unreliable. Play silly games, win silly prizes.
Rear hatch window on one of our vehicles was discovered smashed yesterday morning. Nothing stolen. Cleaned up the glass (4 trash bags of snow and glass crumbles and I missed a lot). Filed insurance claim and police report. Took it to the shop to be crash wrapped (gotta keep the snow and wind out). Will get the rear hatch window replaced probably next week. Will do the windshield at the same time. It’s got many dings, and a horizontal crack with offshoots that look like a vein of quartz. Alaska is cruel to glass. Glass shop yesterday says they’ve seen a high number of spontaneous shattered glass incidents recently. Security camera didn’t reveal any mischief makers. -shrug-
First rabbit litter of 2024 is due end of the month. I bred three does. Need to clean and set up my kindling cages next weekend.
GGGGOOOOoOOoooodddd mooorrrnnninnngg internets!
Forecast for today is cat pics, rickrolling and the occasional GOATSE.
nah, just kidding.
@steveF, I think you’ll find that the date is correct. It was correct 5 minutes ago, and therefore has always been correct. It’s your lying eyes and faulty memory that are wrong. WRONG!!!111 and if you persist in your wrong, lying, mis-information, someone will be by to shoot your dog, and kick your door. Wrong.
{I have encouraged D1 to write sh!t down, and keep a journal. I haven’t gone so far as to suggest it be kept in a place no one else has access to. Having THIS place to record MY daily thoughts and what’s going on in the world has been invaluable. The gaslighting and memoryholing are strong in the world.}
@steve, dodged a bullet with the car. I looked at the plastic welding for bumper cover repair back when I bought the cop Expy. Looks pretty straightforward and simple. There were guys embedding wire mesh from window screen and using zip ties as filler material back when I looked at it. Using the right stuff is probably better. I did fill some interior trim holes in my cop car expy by melting the plastic and pushing it into the holes. I had done some plaster casts of the texture and pressed that into the warm plastic with OK results- better than shiny anyway. Don’t have to worry about that with exterior trim. Or you could go the off road quad wheeler route, and ‘stitch’ the pieces back together by drilling holes and zip tying…. Heat will cause the bumper cover to snap back into shape too if you have a pushed in corner. There are good vids online.
@jenny, I’m always amazed at how much you get done when you get moving. #Unstoppable.
My one trip to AK was an 8 hour flight? Or am I remembering wrong? Houston to Narita Japan on the way to Shanghai was 18 hrs and that was the longest single segment I’ve done. You really get a weird dissociative state going when you are flying that long. Hope your aunt is resilient, and I’m sure the extra room and amenities will help.
n
It was more of a troll than anything. That is, it was intended as a troll but I seem to have blown it. While the advice of not presenting yourself as someone that you aren’t is generally good advice, telling women to avoid makeup in order to defeat the patriarchy is not only never going to be taken seriously, it never should be taken seriously. I also screwed up in not making it more clear that I was talking about the obese in mentioning “curvier” women.
Of course, the other interpretation is that my writing was perfectly adequate, or would have been with an audience of normal readers, but alas most of my readers are kind of dumb. I choose to assume that I didn’t write well enough. I’m generous like that.
Hmm.
Looks like you may be right.
But what’s this I see?
Hmm! I sense treachery!
Glitch in the matrix, the cleaners will be fixing that shortly. And then where will your unsupported allegations be??? HMMM???
n
{long time ago Neal Stephenson wrote a nice essay talking about our broken computing metaphors, specifically relevant to this is his mention that when we “document” stuff now, we do no such thing….as it is instantly mutable.}
n
In regards to the big ‘post dating’ controversy (or conspiracy theory), I could go into the post revisions database and take a peek.
But I wont. Even though, like most conspiracy theories, it could be easily debunked.
Just stick with your story, Nick. We’ll take care of the eye rolls.
I see that I should have fixed the typo spelling error too.
n
I could go into the post revisions database and take a peek.
– but then we’d have to trust you as an authoritative source, and believe that your assertion hadn’t been influenced, or altered. And believe that a sufficiently connected or powerful actor couldn’t have changed the log one way or another….
REEDUCATION CAMPS FOR EVERYONE!! FTW!@!!
n
@SteveF
intended as a troll but I seem to have blown it
I’m so literal the trolling omega’d right over me -laughter-
@nick
Thanks. I try hard. Tend to make those unfortunates around me a little crazy with my antics. It’s good to have some energy back. January / bronchitis type thing put the kabosh on getting things done.
Messaged briefly with Aunt. She’s hanging in there. Another 12 hours before she arrives.
Just found out we’re celebrating my MiL’s birthday at a local restaurant this afternoon. She’s a pretty great MiL and I look forward to celebrating her. The timing is making me squish my other timelines and shift my priorities though.
Currently 70F in the sun. It was 34F at 530am, so that’s an improvement. Blue sky, clear, sunny. Smiles all around.
Wife and D2 headed off on an overnight trip to see relatives from out of town and babies…
I’ve got auctions to pickup, sorting to do, and work at my storage unit to get on with. All delayed by the late lie in, and then the ‘getting half the family out of the house’ time…
always sumptim’
n
Dear Bob,
Even though it means putting money in the pocket of the devious international thought criminal Gina Carano along with other less evil but still not-completely-woke people like Dave Bautista, you need to release legal DVDs of “The Mandalorian”, complete with Carano’s money line kicking off the final 10 minutes of Season Two which arguably saved the “Star Wars” franchise.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-03/disney-explores-the-sale-of-more-films-tv-series-to-rivals
PS Take your kneepads to Tallahassee.
To address a comment made the other day, yup, I’ve used a portapotty on the job, during UAT of my portion of this project, where time was of the essence and my employer severely under bid the contract as usual.
As for the ultimate value of the work, my math has been criticized so help me out – what is a third of $2.8 Billion?
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/transurban-readies-for-buying-spree-with-2-8b-us-road-sale-20201217-p56oce.html
It is not much better on the 8-hour trip from the US to Germany, and Germany back to the US. The first trip I ever took to Germany was miserable as I had no idea what to expect on such a long flight. Mistakes were made in the clothes, items brought to amuse, seat selection, understanding immigration and customs, and not telling that idiot one row away who wanted to be the life of the plane to shut TFU.
Subsequent trips were much better. I am hoping for this next trip with Premium+ seats on Delta to be significantly better experience.
The one thing that I have found that helps most with the buzzed brain effect is noise cancelling headphones. Those simple devices, especially over the ear, make a huge difference after such a long trip. Getting rid of the constant roar from the engines and air noise is a game changer. Even short trips benefit from the reduced noise. Since the noise is generally repetitive, and constant, the noise cancelling effect is really very good on the Bose headphones that I use.
One of our trips to Europe with Spain as the first stop was a 30-hour journey. It is rough. Give the relative a couple of days to adjust, unwind, decompress, and otherwise navigate the brain fog and time zone changes.
Mr. SteveF winning thru losing!
RIP Jeff Beck.
Anti-science and the anti-promotion of exploration death dealer Billy Gates:
Don’t go to Mars’: Bill Gates slams Elon Musk’s space ambitions as a ‘waste of money’ because he could be putting billions into buying ‘measles vaccines and save lives’
How much did BillyG make off the pseudo-mechano-gene-splicing faux vaccine?
Work a few festivals and you’ll see what portapotties are really like.
Or something more useful, like pretty much every single construction site in the western world.
But “oh the indignity” of pissing in a plastic box…. no one likes it, but people who live in the real world, the same people who BUILD the real world, do it millions of times a day.
That kind of ivory tower lily livered pearl clutching kinda says more about the person saying it than any target of their abuse.
Of course, we could look at countries where “outdoor defecation” is still a thing, like about 115 of them…
https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/SH.STA.ODFC.ZS/rankings
India is the first major, at #32 with almost %15 still cr@pping in fields, something that too often leads to rape as well.
Or the big bad wolf –
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/04/02/indoor-plumbing-still-a-pipe-dream-for-20-of-russian-households-reports-say-a65049
I think I might have to start signing “Ever” as well….
n
Some years ago I drove some teens to an event a couple hours away as my part of helping with getting people to a martial arts expo. Anyway, along the way the boy had to pee and there were no rest stops and it was another 20 miles to the next exit and McDonalds and he can’t hold it any longer. So I stopped on the highway and he ran maybe forty yards to the woods to get behind a tree because he can’t pee where girls might see him! When he got back he was complaining about never having done something so primitive in his life and his shoe had dirt on it from having to walk on something other than pavement.
a) Sheesh. City kids. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hjAQQTVTZuU
b) I don’t recall the ungrateful little turds thanking me for the ride in either direction. I didn’t notice them thanking the people who sponsored them to go for free or the people who provided the free refreshments, though thanks may have been expressed while I was working on something else. I’m not saying that all urban youth from fatherless homes should be abandoned by society (or rather, by the civilized parts of society) but my experience is that investment of time and other resources has a low likelihood of paying off.
The Chinese are laughing at our feeble leadership. Gee, I wonder if that spy balloon was relaying everything it scanned until shot down.
Sure. Via StarLink. That’s how I would do it.
When Cory was little, around six, we were outside doing something. Something on the BBQ and burning a brush pile, not near the house. I told him to go pee on a tree. And he did, right on the trunk after stumbling over tree roots. Then I told him what I really meant was “go over and away from the group and face away”. Pee on an ant bed or water a clump of grass.
Oh! Cool!
It isn’t about the money for Gates at this point. He wants to be Richard Feynman, but he will settle for Bob Metcalfe.
In the fourth grade I got an awesome case of poison ivy on my junk from peeing on a post…
n
Win for the good guys.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/368-arrested-131-rescued-california-sex-trafficking-operation
n
There are Elint satellites used by everyone. They fly in highly elliptical orbits so that they have long dwell time over areas of interest.
The shootdown went as I expected. They waited for it to be over water, used an air-to-air missile (Sidewinder), probably with a dummy/inactive warhead to puncture it. Did it inside the 12 mile limit so that it was legal under international law.
They made the area a no-fly, no watercraft zone and there were Coast Guard units nearby, including a C-130, maybe with parachutists onboard. The problem with a land shootdown is you have a huge area on the ground for the debris to come down on, and would have required an evacuation. The Sidewinder could have gone on for miles after flying through the balloon, so who knows where it would have come down.
Seems like they could have gotten the balloon a lot earlier by making a giant butterfly net and holding it between two airplanes and just scooping up the balloon. Or else shoot sticky ropes at it with anvils attached, until there are enough to drag it down.
It makes me sad that none of our political or military leadership watched Saturday morning cartoons when they were kids.
Well, I understand that it is difficult to fly above 60K feet, according to some reports I’ve read. Kudos to the team that flew and supported that mission. Some ‘rad skillz’ involved there.
There’s supposed to be video of the shootdown, but haven’t found it yet. And the balloon went down in about 50 feet of water off the coast, with the US Coast Guard ready to retrieve.
There are reports that there was much monitoring of the balloon and it’s gathering of data during it’s trek to it’s demise.
Greg asks:
Even without my calculator, I can answer “About 900 million”.
The pellet stove’s pellet hopper lid, yeah, it’s not tight like it was when it was new. Wear and tear. The manual does say to keep the lid closed in case the power goes out. The smoke backed up into the hopper when the blowers quit. It doesn’t use indoor air, it has a small duct for outside air ala from the heat shield on the exhaust manifold to the air cleaner. On Chryslers. I don’t know how Chevy or Ford did it. I suppose all that went away with fuel injection. It’s just Operator error on my part.
Lanterns? I wanted heat also. My fingers were numb enough to ache in the joints.
I have a couple/three fancy Streamlight lanterns, a Tractor Supply $10 knock-off, and a Coleman. Stumbling around in the dark won’t be a problem.
Oh yeah, Big River sells brass caps for the little propane bottles. I bought some because it seemed like a good idea. Took the tank off of the lantern today and so much for a quality valve. Capped that sucker. Same for the tank on the Coleman Catalytic Heater. Both tanks hissed like an unlit Bic lighter.
That stuff eats Cory alive. He just has to walk by the stuff. Me? When I was clearing brush and cedar here, I didn’t know what poison ivy was beyond “pretty vine”. Just gives me an itch like getting chiggers without the bite marks.
@paul, I use the brass caps for any bottle not straight from the factory.
I also like the Mr Heater Lil Buddy for temporary spot heat. The coleman you mentioned, is it liquid fueled? I’ve got a couple in the stacks but never tried them. Easy to use? Downsides?
n
btw, banned troll is BANNED. no matter what he says or any inadvertent truth to his comments. he repeatedly acts in bad faith. I thought that was clear, but maybe it bears repeating.
shot down over water.
—and by doing so, allowed it to complete its mission. That might not have been a factor in the timing and location, but it is a pretty good assumption.
n
I suggested building a giant butterfly net and that’s the part you got hung up on? haha
They should have tried all those fancy lasers we keep hearing about. Field test for the win!
I think just the opposite of our military lame-brain leaders. The Coyote comes to mind.
I did my due diligence research. Couldn’t find a giant net in the Acme catalog. But perhaps the first image in this could have helped.
But this image purportedly shows all the items the Acme Corporation sells: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fringefocus/the-acme-corporation Perhaps they have a secret catalog.
Heater is propane. Worked great when new which was mumble mumble 35 years ago? That was the camping trip to Colorado just in time for the first snow. 1986 or 1987. Yeah, one night and screw that, let’s go south to Big Bend. It’s always been in a climate controlled area. It’s easy to use. The hard part is screwing on the propane tank.
Now? It seems to work fine. Hot enough to give me burn blister on my inner arm because I are stupid. It was pretty cold in the kitchen, so, it felt warmish. Like maybe a 40 watt bulb from a foot away. It’s made for a tent size area. Works great in a tent.
I need to replace the Coleman stove. It leaks around the crimped on valves and that’s exciting.
I have a gas grill with a side burner so it’s not a big deal other than portability.
The local Ford dealer had a Maverick in stock, so I test drove it. It was the top of the line Lariat. It was nice. Peppy for a small truck, nice enough interior,and it rode really well. Unfortunately, the dealer insists on a 4k ADM. No way in hell. I can wait, and I will never buy from that dealer.
I also stopped by the Nissan dealer to see when they would be getting a new Z in. They had no idea. Their lot was full of everything else though. I mean jammed full of new vehicles, I wonder if some manufacturers are milking the current situation for all it’s worth…
Nissan needs to sell anything it can at this point.
The Z car will be an exception with the dealers, however. Just wait until you see the ADM on that.
People will make an effort to preserve that car, but one of the Chinese relations attempted to keep a 370Z on blocks and gave up, making it a daily driver. I never heard the reason why, whether it was financial or a longevity problem with some component sitting for years.
@Jenny
From your task list it was an easy guess.
@Greg
He needs to seriously lower his sights. Feynman and Metcalf are way out of reach. So are Ron Popeil and Earl Tupper. As the man who packaged a useless mouse with his software because a competitor had the real thing and didn’t have the class to pay for ideas he could rip off, his highest achievement is requiring two hands and five keys to type a degree symbol*. There’s an open slot in posterity just below Charles Ponzi, and he should settle and fade before Ms. Maxwell spills the beans.
*or worse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGubwFrCAiU
@Nick
With the Chinese so far up FJB’s backside they can issue a daily report on his flossing, it’s almost certainly the major factor.
They should have shot it down over Montana, set off a large explosion where it landed, and accused the Chinese of bombing the U.S.
Re degree symbol – a quick googles came up with this:
…rather than the convoluted method in the video. Alt+248 is only four keys. (looks like this: ° )
But that’s how you get special characters in most apps.
My brother got a rude awakening by peeing on an electric fence. In spite of Mythbusters saying it was not possible to get a shock, ask my brother who was writhing on the ground in much pain. I was also rolling on the ground, in much laughter.
“Informed about the spy balloon” which was apparently tracked over the Aleutians, and it was reported Friday that the Canadians put a large number of 20mm cannon rounds into the ballon without bringing it down.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/02/04/bombshell-white-house-knew-about-the-chinese-spy-balloon-and-covered-it-up-but-then-n1667854
It should be noted that the claim that “ [FJB] argued for shooting the object down” is without evidence.
Yeah, Milley. And Joe.
Best I can do is Carrottop.
Bah. Bah, I say! ℃ and ℉ are in reach of anyone who can enter unicode.
@RickH
I’d estimate Alt+0176 is cited ten times for very time Alt+248 is listed, including by MS:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/insert-ascii-or-unicode-latin-based-symbols-and-characters-d13f58d3-7bcb-44a7-a4d5-972ee12e50e0
but you’re entirely correct, you can get the job done with two hands and four keys, if you have NumLock on to begin.
Interesting video about how they made those very realistic looking dinosaurs in the Apple TV Plus’ “Prehistoric Planet”.
Check it out here.
I’d like to watch the show, but won’t since it requires an Apple TV Plus subscription. Don’t need to spend more time watching TV.
@SteveF
I learned to type on an Underwood 5 and anything without a manual return is just a sop for the weak.
Note that women dominated typing in the late 19th century, pounding keys hard enough to make up to five copies, with a manual return after each line. Men invented “carpal tunnel syndrome” until they started calling it “keyboarding”.
12 hours a day of Heroes and Icons is enough for me.
Pantry report:
Swiss Miss Chocolatier Series Dark Chocolate Gourmet Hot Cocoa Mix, 12.7 Oz
Use by June 2019.
About 12 servings per container.
I bought a dozen pouches more than three years ago when it was near the “use by” date and marked down to a buck from IIRC $2.50. It is $3.48 at Walmart now but that is order only, so it may not have gone up a full 40%.
The mix does contain milk products, so no storage not air-conditioned.
I finished a package today and found it excellent for a mix. To detectable deterioration, although I did not have a new package as a control. Much better than the little envelopes with desiccated marshmallows. I usually make it with 50:50 milk and coffee, but today I used 75:25 coffee and homemade cold brew, topped with an ounce of heavy cream left over from cooking. (Yes, fancy boys, I eat quiche and like it. Ham, cheese and spinach in this case.)
Got distracted again:
“I learned to type on an Underwood 5 and anything without a manual return is just a sop for the weak.”
We had to leave a blank space and add special symbols by hand with pen and ink. It was nice when Papermate came out with the original Flair pen. Even better a decade or so later when the Pilot Razorpoint was introduced, but by that time I had acquired an IBM Selectric II Symbol ball, which I kept in the back of a desk drawer.
“Note that women dominated typing in the late 19th century, pounding keys hard enough to make up to five copies, with a manual return after each line. Men invented “carpal tunnel syndrome”
untilwhen they started calling it “keyboarding”.”If you do any browsing of antique stores you have doubtless seen a book press for sale. 98% of the time what is called a “book press” is actually a copy press. They were common items in 19th century offices, used to make multiple copies, and relying on Hot Skillz technologies that are well-documented in old patents and make great reading.
Report: Heart Attacks, Strokes On the Rise Among Young Adults
The reasons for the rise? Big Media says depression, mental health issues, obesity, and smoking.
From that 2022 report:
One year later, United Press International (UPI) finally published a story noting that there is an increase of heart attacks and strokes in young adults.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/02/report-heart-attacks-strokes-on-the-rise-among-young-adults/
Yeah, it’s a real bleeping mystery.
“Tracking” by David R. Palmer
https://www.amazon.com/Tracking-David-R-Palmer/dp/1948818396?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number two of a two book science fiction fantasy apocalyptic series. I read an earlier version of this book in 2018 that was serialized in Analog Magazine back in 2008. I bought the POD (print on demand) trade paperback published by Ring of Fire Press in 2019 and reread this version. Unfortunately, when Eric Flint passed away, the Ring of Fire Press died with him and the book is not being published now. Getting a copy could be quite difficult. The author is in his 80s and getting his five books republished seems to be difficult for him. I scanned the internet and only found one copy of the book for sale at ebay which is now gone.
Candidia (Candy) Foster-Smith, a eleven year old Homo Post Hominem who survived the experiences of the first novel in which over seven billion Homo Sapiens died, has more adventures. A spy team in Russia reports that her foster father is being held by the Russians so there is only one thing to do, rescue him !
Candy steals a single engine turboprop plane and flies to Russia. She gets a new dog that really likes to play frizbee along the way. The Berserker Special Ops Girl kills more bad Russian Homo Sapiens who survived the apocalypse. BTW, Candy does not exhibit any new superpowers that I can think of that were not revealed in the first book.
Unfortunately, “Tracking” ends on a cliffhanger. Not a huge cliffhanger though. A third book has been reputedly written but never published according to the author and Spider Robinson. One can only hope.
Here is my 2018 review:
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.sf.written/c/JJvJbVmAUDI/m/4IuQldevBAAJ
BTW, author requests that if you think that the Border Collie that he describes in the book is cool, do not go out and buy one. He says Border Collies are a fifteen year commitment with a dog who needs ten hours of hard work per day or else they will find a way to do ten hours of hard work. He recounts a friend whose Border Collie got bored and pulled the siding off the back side of his house and neatly stacked the sheets into a pile.
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (103 reviews)
Explaining a 291% increase in Bell’s palsy diagnosis (average 40,00 per year) over the 2016-2020 5-year averages as “delayed diagnosis and/or treatment of precursor conditions that ended up worsening” and “people started feeling comfortable going out and about again” is just another example of innumeracy compounded by severe ignorance and stupidity.
It’s the kind of explanation that FJB and his administration would offer, then have Kewpie Doll respond to follow-ups with “We already answered that” or “Ask the CDC for more details”.
The whistle-blower article, btw, is a year old and it appears that there has been no rebuttal by the CDC, the military, or the medical establishment.
Meanwhile, General Milley Vanilley frets about shooting a spy balloon down.
I’m guessing you are a frustrated astronomer, limited in your observational capability by the close proximity of your oculars to Uranus.
@Lynn
Any idea why?
I enjoy series characters, but when a series stops or goes out of print for an extended period of time it is very frustrating. Unfinished by death (e.g., Rick Shelley and Leo Frankowski) is understandable (attempts were made by other for Shelley and Frankowski, but were not very successful). Derailed by medical problems (Laumer) is also understandable. But if the third book in this series has been completed and the author is living and has resources, why is there no PoD or ebook?
“Kavanaugh Is Wrong, IMO”
https://areaocho.com/kavanaugh-is-wrong-imo/
“This past week saw a huge win for gun rights, in that SCOTUS struck down a part of the GCA that was added during the Clinton administration- making prohibited persons out of people who are subject to domestic violence restraining orders. AWA over at GunFreeZone did an excellent post on the ruling, and I won’t attempt to recreate that here.”
There is an alternate viewpoint at:
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/domestic-abusers-guns-supreme-court-rcna68934
“It wasn’t enough for the Supreme Court to gut abortion rights last year. The justices also unleashed a Second Amendment ruling with potentially deadly effects.”
“On Thursday, we got a reminder of how perilous that ruling can be, with an appeals court decision that struck down a federal law that keeps guns out of the hands of people under domestic violence restraining orders.”
The second amendment does not say that random judges can take away a person’s right to arm themselves. SCOTUS just affirmed that.
Any idea why?
I enjoy series characters, but when a series stops or goes out of print for an extended period of time it is very frustrating. Unfinished by death (e.g., Rick Shelley and Leo Frankowski) is understandable (attempts were made by other for Shelley and Frankowski, but were not very successful). Derailed by medical problems (Laumer) is also understandable. But if the third book in this series has been completed and the author is living and has resources, why is there no PoD or ebook?
No idea why. And I have looked for an email address for the author.
I managed to get an email to David Gerrold once and ask him about the fifth Chtorr book. He replied that it will be released when he feels like it.
appropos of nothing:
Robert Silverberg wrote a UFO novel in 1967 (same year as Keith Laumer’s novelization of The Invaders).
“Those Who Watch”
In a discussion about UFO’s, a disbeliever attempts to use a well-known (and misunderstood) logical tool, and is interrupted with:
“Apply Occam’s Razor to your throat, Bronstein and press hard.”
May not be an exact quote , but it’s been a while.
If Gates really was the author of the rand()/srand() in the Visual C++ library, he already has a claim on that position below Ponzi. Maybe worse. Time will tell.
see:
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/g/david-gerrold/method-for-madness.htm
meh. That story line was either off the track or the engine had thrown a wheel long before the fourth book. I had the first four and released them into the wild to find their own way. Seeing the fifth book did not tremble my excitement meter. Reading it or the alleged unpublished sixth and seventh books is pretty low on my list, sometime after porting Galaxy from my FatMac to my MacBook Pro.
YMMV.
Yes, very insulting to point out mental deficiencies in trolls.
Hardly. The original journal article in Nature Medicine stands, at least one related that purports to show alternate explanations, and the inconvenient fact that the military blamed it on a “glitch” in the database and took said database offline.
And as I’ve said before, no reason to leave my little indulgements up when the TROLLHAMMER is out.
sale email from Sam’s Club today had the Ninja Foodie Air Fry Oven at $139 (60 off).
I bought mine on sale more than a year ago and paid more.
It does a very good job on frozen food like 12-in pizza (cut in half), egg rolls and French fries. Great fresh sweet potato fries. Temperature distribution is not perfect and it’s a good ides to rotate the rack 90-degrees a couple of times.
Step One: Don’t nominate a meth head to oppose DeSantis.
The Dems already blew that one, and, as a result, gave up meaningful political power in Florida for at least a decade as well as control of the House and any chance they had at Little Marco’s Senate seat.
https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/forget-trump-democrats-are-preparing-ways-to-beat-a-desantis-campaign
Translation: The troll’s reading comprehension was not good enough to catch the existence of a journal article until his nose was rubbed in it.
Evelyn Wood might help.
You’re the jumper.
Pro tip: If there was credible refutation, there would have been a corrigendum.
You just want to claim Jill’s Ed.D is better . BTW, how’s your ED, Nano?
Right after we see the stats on the effectiveness and safety of Comirnaty deployment post approval.
Or Spikevax. Either one.
No corrigendum indicates that the authors were not presented with criticism needing a reply
A retraction would only be done if serious deficiencies were found, but: no retraction.
The publisher could “comment” for whatever reason, but: no publisher comment.
Conclusion: As noted: no credible refutation.
(Style points: bold and italic together projects real toughness. We’re amazed you didn’t use the caps, too.)
A troll hiding their identity after having been banned and making repeated appearances for the sake of lying, belittling, and threatening, has no expectation of any courtesy, much less response to demands.
It is marginally amusing to bait you and see you fold yourself in logical knots and demonstrate your abysmal ignorance and inability to comprehend, follow, or make an argument. About as amusing as watching the barn cat find a cricket and play with it on the shop floor until it goes still and starts shedding pieces.
Bye, Nano.
Activate The Hammers of Bob.
im sure the troll posts will disappear shortly.
In the fourth grade I got an awesome case of poison ivy on my junk from peeing on a post…
Fooled around in the woods with a boyfriend decades ago. He got poison oak -grin-
Good times.
Ugh, poison ivy and oak. Many times in my youth I almost had to bathe in calamine lotion. It was the official scent of many summers for me.
@ITGuy1998
poison oak
I ran around in the woods and hills most of my childhood and teen years. There was a lot of calamine. I hated how it would dry and flake, but it was better than the itching.
David R. Palmer’s “Tracking” is available on GoodReads.
https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=david+r.+palmer&qid=KaQKDtHGfN
I previously wrote here about my last bout with poison ivy. $600 in medical expenses, iirc, but saved the $50 “donation” in lieu of doing my part for the rec association…
Had to shampoo the whole truck interior too.
I picked up 4 bottles of special soap a couple weeks ago at an auction and brought 3 of them to the BOL. Haven’t seen the weed yet, but want to be ready if I do.
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watched Escape from NY with D1. It was slow, not very exciting or funny, and not what I remembered. LOTS of famous actors though.
To make it up to her we watched Jack Reacher (movie). Better, but oh so predictable. My only exposure to the material was the audiobook that I really disliked. She thought it was ok, but really obvious.
I was timing the editing. 3 sec, 2 sec, 3 sec, 1 sec, 8 seconds, 3, 3, 2, 8 …. LOTS of cuts. Watching a modern movie is like watching strobes go off during a bar fight, while someone yanks your viewpoint around. Cruise hired good people, and they did a good job, but the contrast to something shot in the late 70s was brutal.
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Thank you to whoever recommended the Laundry series. It’s not relaxing reading as every sentence is pretty full o ideas that need unpacking, but it’s entertaining and moves along pretty quickly. He’s a master of convincing jargon.
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Hammer away.
n
>> Seems like they could have gotten the balloon a lot earlier by making a giant butterfly net and holding it between two airplanes and just scooping up the balloon. Or else shoot sticky ropes at it with anvils attached, until there are enough to drag it down.
“… sticky ropes …”
Should have called Spiderman and had him use some of his Spidy webs.
>> To make it up to her we watched Jack Reacher (movie). Better, but oh so predictable. My only exposure to the material was the audiobook that I really disliked. She thought it was ok, but really obvious.
For me, Cruise never came across as Reacher. I found the Prime series better.
Cruise is too small. He walks thru the bar, and I wondered how they found that many short women…
And he’s a charmer. Never got that from the audio book. Don’t think a drifter and loner would be much of a charmer.
The fight scenes were cool. Except the boss fight at the end. WTF? Even my daughter was yelling at the screen to just shoot the bad guy, and when he threw down the rifle, she about lost it. But I guess that was faithful to the source? Which doesn’t strike me (in my limited exposure) as too well done. Or maybe well enough done, but not novel. Kinda like Harry Potter or Hunger Games or the Divergent stuff. OK writing, something for fans to connect with, but pretty ordinary writing and ideas.
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Had to yank the audio book I tried to start last trip up to the lake- some sort of Clancy thing with another author. Opening scene is a congressman getting caught in his hotel room in a honey trap. So cliche’d I couldn’t bear to listen to any more.
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I’m for a soft bed.
n
Aunt is safely arrived, and tucked in after a glass of wine and hilarious travel stories. I’m so deeply glad she is here.
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I love the Reacher books, though the most recent couple I couldn’t get thru. I did not like Cruise as Reacher. Charming and midget sized and way too pretty. He’s not a good enough actor to make me buy in to him as Reacher. (Top Gun I and II were great fun)
I liked the series and hope there are more of those. I thought they were far far better than the movie.
I loathe the cut-cut-cut of modern movies. I prefer the longer camera shots of older films.
Stupid tired. Bed.