Cool, and damp, probably clear. We should have another day or so of clear which will be nice. It was gorgeous yesterday.
Wife and D2 were at a camping resort for Saturday evening and Sunday morning, with relatives. They had fun. I was home with D1, who mostly stayed in her room and read. Everyone is home and ready to go back to school today. Which is fine with me. I’ve got my own stuff to get done.
Freezer pickup and some other auction stuff being top of the list. Freezer selling coming soon after that. Sometimes I bite off more than I can chew in an effort to ‘share the wealth.’ We’ll figure something out.
Figuring it out is my main strategy for pretty much everything. That and having a bunch of stuff on hand so I have options.
Prepping is about giving your future self options. Options let you avoid unpleasantness. They let you function when others are frozen. They can save your butt.
Stack up some options. For health, cooking, water treatment, sanitation, and repair.
You’ll be glad you did.
nick
@Lynn – Contact Pinballz Arcade here in Austin and see what he would offer for the machine and whether they would drive out to pick it up at your location.
I know there is a big retro arcade expo in Houston every November, but I’ve never had the time to go. The right dealers and collectors would be there, however.
Not FIRST!!
57F and 99%RH.
So tired. But awake. Coffee is brewing.
n
Reasons to prep don’t come at noon…
n
Guess who is going to be asked to provide the aid to the Turkish people in the affected region.
Guess who is going to be asked to provide the aid to the Turkish people in the affected region.
– I think it’s time for the Great Satan to take them at their word, and leave them alone.
n
F’ing kids today…
So who is Bonnie Raitt? Shock moment blues singer, 73, beats Beyonce, Adele, Taylor Swift, Harry Styles and Kendrick Lamar to win coveted Song of the Year award at Grammys (and even she can’t believe it!)
I don’t love Bonnie, wife is a big fan, but you know kiddies, there were people doing sh!t before you became aware…
“Well, I’ve never heard of them, so they must be a nobody.” Yeah. ‘Cuz you are a soooper gene i ass…
n
n
Brad, I told you and told you but you didn’t take my advice: Shoot, shovel, shut up.
Lynn, you may wish to listen to my wisdom, too.
As for Turkey, to hell with them. It’s like I said to Nick the other day: If you do a favor for a neighbor, they’ll remember it … the next time they need something. The “to hell with them” goes for most of the rest of the world, too. If anyone’s helped the US people or nation in time of need, we can help them when they need it. That list is mighty short.
Be interesting o see if Fil or someone else does a comparison to see which are autotuned and which not.
Train derailments are just one reason why you might want a BOB and a plan, even if you don’t live in an area with frequent disasters.
Pipeline breaches are another…
n
I worked on a friend’s pinball machine as some of the actions were not working. It surprised me to find that voltage was always present on each element. Threw me for a curve as voltage was present on the mechanism but it was not moving. Turns out the transistors used by the system actually short the circuit to ground. This allowed current to flow and activate the mechanism. I found a couple of bad transistors and a couple of loose connections.
Any time there is a disaster in another country the U.S. seems to be the only country that provides aid. Mostly in the form of money, which winds up in corrupt officials’ pockets. Then six months later the cretins from these countries are demonstrating in the streets against the U.S.
The shabby building codes, if any, the crappy construction, all contribute to the massive loss of life when such an event happens. Tough noogies. Their problem, not ours. The U.S. should not be paying for the poor decisions made by these third world countries. And yes, I consider Turkey and Syria third world countries. India is more like a fourth world country, crowded, filthy, hot, disgusting.
AC guy coming this am to look at the heat pump compressor fan/motor. The rattling seems less, but you can hear a ting-ting-ting as it spools down.
I missed the troll action last night. Sounds like it was nasty.
Praise be to The Hammers of BobTM.
Meh. I don’t even read the troll posts. Takes a 1/10th of a second to hit the button and remove them.
They’re pretty easy to recognize, the spittle flecked ranting comes thru in the first line.
n
See if you can get that changed to a boom-chikka-wow-wow. Then grow your big mustache and mullet, sit back, and live the life.
dang, the fan noise in my pc is back, but I still can’t tell which fan it is.
n
Stick something in each fan to stop it turning until the noise stops.
If it’s a boom-chikka-wow-wow, just leave it alone.
Boom chicka wah wah
Note: has NSFW links on the page, but the main button is ok.
Still catching up…. “Many thanks to The Hammers of Bob.”
Indeed.
The AC guy is done. Nothing wrong except some loose covers that caused the spool down noise. He said the system is a variable speed one that can really torque up when the weather hits the low 30s since that is the cooling level of the heat exchange can reach. That probably was the noise. He said he doesn’t really like Lennox, but the 4 ton 16 SEER (2018) the previous owner put in is top of the line and worth it.
@mratoz, a service call may feel expensive if the verdict is “nothing wrong” but that is a lot cheaper than letting a problem grow worse.
@frank, you’re using the same vpn, and the same IP address as our troll. So if you aren’t him, my apologies. If you are him, bye Felicia
n
LOL. The troll thought it was sneaky. The Hammers of Bob are always on the job.
The database that the had the glitch (DMED) is one that is abstracted from DMSS. DMSS is the master database that pulls data from Personnel, Medical, Lab, and Deployment databases. However, it’s HIPAA protected. DMED is updated every month, but the data have to be anonymized to comply with HIPAA and other privacy concerns, so that researchers can do queries. Doing that abstracting is not trivial, and it appears that the civilian contractor (an SDB, naturally) screwed the pooch.
The whole issue of scrubbing medical records of Personally Identifiable Information is a hard one and can be computationally expensive. A couple of years ago, there was a prize being offered for anyone that came up with a better algorithm for reconciling medical records and getting rid of the PII and replacing the patient ID with a unique entry.
There are some very successful authors (*cough* David Weber *cough*, *cough* Tom Clancy *cough* ) that had some bloated books published that a good editor could have cut by 25-30% without sacrificing anything.
When hour dramas were stand-alone episodic (i.e. Star Trek, 60s crime dramas), the subplots were mostly incidental and were there so they could be cut for syndication and extra ads inserted. But when the evening dramas were finally allowed to have multi-episode arcs, like daytime soap operas do, they needed to keep all the characters involved, so you add subplots. In cop shows, it’s usually about the characters’ private lives (i.e. the L&O franchise, NCIS franchise, etc.). It’s part of a how a show builds an audience by making the characters relatable.
>> Grammy awards tonight. Hopefully I can find something more intelligent to watch. Reruns of Gilligan’s Island perhaps.
>> Much of the singing tonight on the Grammys is highly modified in the mix with echo, pitch correction, or overwhelming the vocals with thumping music. Most of the performances are dancing and jumping around with fancy lighting and stage sets. Very little talent except for the backstage hands.
Like the other awards shows, it is all about patting themselves on the back, not about talent.
@Ray, what no Gilligan? Do you get MeTV? They have plenty of the old-time favorites like Green Acres, Petticoat Junction and of course Gilligan’s Island.
Not good news. This last summer the pool was losing water at the rate of about 2″ a week. It cost a lot of money to keep it full as we were being charged sewer on the water. This year we need to do something. The pool drained down about 2.5 feet below full fill and stopped. The crack that I knew of, and could see, is now filled with something white. I suspect the carrier agent of the chlorine powder. Maybe it sealed the leak.
Thought about filling in the pool. That brings a entire raft of new problems such as how to keep the thing drained. Punching holes in the bottom puts the water in the ground behind our basement wall. As it is now the pool, and surrounding patio, divert rainwater around the house. The cost to fill it in was close to $15K, as there would be some demolition involved. Then putting concrete over the filled in spot was going to be another $10K.
Resurfacing is going to cost $20K. A liner will cost $18K. The advantage of a liner is that there will be no more cracks. And it looks prettier than plaster walls.
The final option is to do nothing and keep filling with water. Put off the repair for another year. A $200 a month water bill is less than any of the other options. I do not want the pool to turn into a swamp, so it has to be maintained.
I guess I should not complain as in the 35 years we have lived here we have only had it resurfaced once about 28 years ago. Had the pool edge replaced seven years ago. Replaced the pump twice, rebuilt a pump once (the motor was good). That is not a lot of repair expense factored over the years.
Yes, I have MeTV, and H&I. Lots of old reruns including MacGyver, Gilligan’s Island, The Beverly Hillbillies, Star Trek. Mission Impossible, etc.
TV drama subplots… Hill Street Blues were either the pioneers or the kings of this.
Every episode would have that show’s main story, one story arc beginning, and one story arc ending. Kept viewers coming back for more.
I had a class on writing for TV and the main point, from a very successful TV writer was this formula
Tell them what’s going to happen. Tell them what’s happening. Tell them what happened.
Once you see it, you can’t un-see it. It’s like the essay form- intro, topic sentence with three points, body with those three points, conclusion…. it’s the most basic structure you need to be effective.
n
For some reason, probably because I opened some spam email from someone who mined linkedIn or bought their list, I’ve been getting recruiting emails. Some are just job listings, with hilarious stuff included because of keywords. I get ticket taker positions at AMC film theaters, and Fundraising and Endowment Supervisor at local big theatre theaters… I guess both are ‘theaters’. One pays $11/hr, one pays six figures.
I also get a bunch of aerospace and engineering listings due to some of my resume’ entries on linkedIn.
One interesting thing is the listings without a salary or hourly rate listed. HARD PASS. I’m busy. I don’t want to waste my time. Show me a range, quantify what sort of things get an applicant up toward the top of the range. Otherwise, you’re on a fishing expedition and you have demonstrated a desire to F me for as little as you can. It’s especially stupid when I can go on glassdoor or social media and find out anyway.
Of course the ones that DO list a salary often list one WAY below market, or way below what is normal for that job. That is of course why they are having trouble filling the position. “Why yes, I’d love to help you build scenery nights and weekends for less than I made in the late ’80s.” (That one has been running for months, is at a local community college and is specifically part time, not eligible for bennies… and they want a degree or several years of professional experience.)
I’ve been out of the job market a long time, but I still hear from my friends.
n
sit back, and live the life.
– until you’re riddled with dementia and start getting sued for stuff that allegedly happened AT WORK decades ago. cough- Ron Jeremy -cough
n
(editor does funny things when you use the * in front of a word. Or two asterisks)
>> “Oppenheimer” has been the big film trailer of the Winter and widely predicted to do well this Summer. The buzz is that it will be Oscar level good, but who knows how that will turn out.
There was also the “Manhattan” TV series from 2014-2016, shown originally on WGN America. Daniel London played Oppenheimer. The series is a fictionalized version of the Manhattan Project events. 91% on RT. Currently available on the Roku channel. We enjoyed it.
Stick something in each fan to stop it turning until the noise stops.
Fingers work well, usually.
As soon as word popped today on Bloomberg about the impending layoffs where I currently work, up pops a recruiter looking to put someone at Canon Microelectronics here in town.
I have a long, very insulting series of interactions since 2014 with Canon who want my Tcl development skills on a plane to Japan 3-4 times a year but don’t want to pay even what I made at the Death Star without travel much less international travel 13 years ago.
The recruiter was supposed to call at 2 PM, but I guess he had a spit take moment when he saw my asking price to take another look at Canon, complete with the hiring manager’s first name.
“Fat Man And Little Boy” starring Paul Newman covered much of the same ground as “Oppenheimer” will, and at some point in the last 20 years, I remember Matthew Broderick directing and starring in a Richard Feynman biopic covering the scientist’s experience at Los Alamos during that time period, based on Feynman’s first book.
>> Now we have pod and self-publishing, and a lack of editing that is almost painfully evident.
My wife does some freelance editing…with all the self-published “authors” thinking their
sh!t don’t stinkwork doesn’t need any editing, business has dried up.>> “Fat Man And Little Boy” starring Paul Newman covered much of the same ground as “Oppenheimer” will, and at some point in the last 20 years, I remember Matthew Broderick directing and starring in a Richard Feynman biopic covering the scientist’s experience at Los Alamos during that time period, based on Feynman’s first book.
No need to do the work to create something original when if enough time has passed you can just push yet another remake.
“How I Met Your Father” Really?!
ADDED: What’s the release date again for “Rust”?
>> Now we have pod and self-publishing, and a lack of editing that is almost painfully evident.
My wife does some freelance editing…with all the self-published “authors” thinking their
sh!t don’t stinkwork doesn’t need any editing, business has dried up.The way that I have heard is that most self published authors sell less than a hundred copies of a book so they have no money for those fancy things like editing and cool covers. And, Amazon has done something to the self publishing to make it harder to get your books listed on their e-book and POD services since there is so much fraud out there. Sarah A. Hoyt just went through the nightmare with her backlog in preparation for new releases and has many complaints.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2023/01/30/its-up-its-up-2/
and
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2022/12/31/green-shoots-riding-the-catastrophic-wave-of-change-part-vi/
Fingers work well, usually.
– once.
-well, maybe 10 times.
-well, maybe 7 if you are Vek in the Reacher film.
n
ADDED: What’s the release date again for “Rust”?
– – don’t know the date, they are probably waiting to see if their star beats the rap, but it will go back into production. The dead DP’s husband will be working on the film as part of his civil settlement. THAT should be fun for all involved.
The completion bond company has the specific job of making sure the film gets completed. And you can bet people will watch it, if only out of morbid curiosity.
n
“America once again turns the other butt cheek” by Simon Black
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/america-once-again-turns-the-other-butt-cheek-145703/
“It’s remarkable that, despite incursion after incursion, attack after attack, the United States has done practically nothing about any of it. Instead America has adopted a sort of 1930s style European ‘appeasement’ strategy. Or as I call it, “turn the other butt cheek”.”
Poor choice of showrunners doomed that project.
No one is ever going to trust Carter Bays and Craig Thomas again after the finale of “How I Met Your Mother”, but they were the right creative minds to run the spinoff and even shot a pilot for “How I Met Your Dad”, starring Greta Gerwig and Meg Ryan narrating.
Now that would have been legen–wait for it–I hope your not lactose intolerant becuase your going to get it–dary.
“Texas wind energy freeze-out shows need for better resource adequacy, says NRG VP”
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/texas-wind-freezout-renewables-resource-adequacy/642031/
“The underperformance of wind energy during a Feb. 1 winter storm in Texas compared to its effectiveness during winter storm Elliott in December demonstrates the need for energy systems to be resource adequate in all scenarios and create a market for reliability, says an industry official.”
“Travis Kavulla, NRG’s vice president for regulatory affairs, said the difference in performance had more to do with uncontrollable meteorological factors than anything else.”
“The Feb. 1 storm froze turbines and caused available wind capacity to drop as low as approximately 1,600 MW out of a total installed capacity of almost 37 GW, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas’s fuel mix tracker.”
The so-called renewables are not reliable and need to be priced as such.
Maybe you can resurface from a few inches below the crack? Or maybe scrape the crack out and pump it full of silicon sealant and then a skin coat of gunite or whatever it’s called?
I don’t know, just tossing out an idea.
– his hollowness the enabler thinks the SALE of weapons is more dangerous than their USE. I guess it’s been a while since he read the Bible.
While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
I guess Cain went to his local weapons of death merchant first…
n
I’ve stopped with freelance editing. I’ll edit as a favor for people I know and rarely for someone referred by an acquaintance. The average joker off the street is too much of a PITA. They don’t really want their Great American Novel or memoir to be edited. They want someone to read through it, find a few typos, and tell the author how good it is. I’ve received screaming tirades when I’ve told a prima donna first-time writer that some word doesn’t mean what he thinks it does and that he pretty clearly wants this similar word. Or when I pointed out continuity problems, or that the main character’s actions in the climactic scene go against her character as developed over the previous 80,000 words, or … As I say, they want validation more than anything else. Sorry, you want someone else for that.
As for most first-time self-pub authors selling under a hundred copies, that’s true, in the sense that selling under ten copies is by definition selling under a hundred. But, and there’s a big but here (“but”, not “butt”; get your mind out of the gutter, Mr Ray), if a halfway-decent author perseveres and keeps putting books up, there’s a decent chance that one of his books or series will catch on and then his back list will start selling. I’ve seen no statistics on this, the sale rate of an author who’s put up at least three books a year for several years. I’ve also seen no statistics for conversion and sale rate of authors who’ve been publishing online for a while and then self-pub a book for sale; they’re first-time, self-pub authors so far as stats tracking goes, but they came in with a built-in audience.
“Don’t do any of the things I’m talking to you about kids, not one of the things I’m about to describe should be done….. wink, wink.”
If we can’t find them, we’ll make them. -FBI motto.
n
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11719243/Two-arrested-plotting-attack-substations-Baltimore-goal-destroying-city.html
There are various fairly serious hydro-phobic and hydro-philic things you can squirt into and around cracks to seal them, used in water drainage industries.
That said (and its about the extent of my knowledge about it) one person I knew years ago had a breakage in a pipe underneath/outside his pool that caused a lot of trouble.
You know what would help Texas more than a hundred acres of wind or solar farms? A new nuke site with 4, 1GW stacks. Mmm, yummy yummy baseload.
The same can be said for the eastern and western grids, of course.
Squish a rabid dog into a crack to stop a leak. Genius!
I’m ignorant.
If you are using a VPN can’t you change it so some site, say, Youtube, thinks you are in Europe? I thought that was the whole point…. like sitting in China…. as a way to get around the CCP firewall.
I thought the whole VPN thing was to connect to somewhere using a network client, to a server somewhere. Like , in Berlin or Perth or Moscow or Cancun, and you get a random IP address from that server.
Sort of like your local router assigning addresses on your LAN. You connect to a router located in a Berlin bunker, and you get an IP address that Mustache Guy would approve of.
And locally, for me, if my ISP is puking and I tether the phone, Home Depot (for example) thinks I’m near Atlanta, Georgia. Which is as useful as their thinking I’m in Corpus Christi.
I haven’t used a VPN. I don’t give a shirt-r if you know where I live. Bring beer, Miller High Life. We can toss something on the grill.
Keep in mind that at least 300,000 homes in Texas were knocked off the grid due to downed lines during the critical 24 hour period. There were probably more.
You know what would help Texas more than a hundred acres of wind or solar farms? A new nuke site with 4, 1GW stacks. Mmm, yummy yummy baseload.
The same can be said for the eastern and western grids, of course.
About 400 new 1 GW nukes across the fertile plains of the USA would solve a lot of problems. Bechtel and Fluor Daniel would be looking for engineers until the unemployment rate went negative. And then we could use all that natural gas to make plastic pellets.
Keep in mind that at least 300,000 homes in Texas were knocked off the grid due to downed lines during the critical 24 hour period. There were probably more.
I heard the total was over 400,000 homes for up to 48 hours. At an average of 10 kW demand (SWAG), that is 4,000 MW. The Texas grid could have swung that ok.
The Texas grid works a lot better when the idiots at ERCOT do not turn off the power to the Permian Basin oil fields and the electric motor compressors for the natural gas pipeline that the EPA made us install from 1990 on instead of good old gas turbines.
Yeah, somewhere along I-45 from Dallas to Houston. A bit north of Fort Hood would work. Shove it east towards Louisiana. Because well, it’s Louisiana and radiation mutated alligators along with redwood sized pine trees would be neato.
Some of the troll’s doxxing is borderline legal to present out of context about non-public figures.
By using a VPN, they know that any court action would involve legal fees being expended by the owner of this site which would mean the end of the forum since the stated policy of this place has been to protect IP addresses of participants.
That’s what they really want — shutting down the conversation.
I’ve talked about this with a lawyer.
On 2/6/2023 10:15 AM, James Nicoll wrote:
I loved the “Lensmen” series back in the 1970s. And the “Faded Sun” trilogy.
And I love, love, love, love, love “Shards of Honor”. It is one of my thirty top ten books. I’ll bet that I have read it a dozen times.
Lensman eat Jedi for lunch.
Faded Sun? yeah, Kesrith, Shon’Jir, and Kutath.
Haven’t read any of them for years but when I cleared out about half of my books, you know what I kept.
The Pern stuff? Bye.
Just wait. Jesus Trucks will require 19.2 kW each, whether they come from Tony or Tommy Boy.
Summer 2024.
@paul, the troll isn’t very bright, hence his insistence on going where he’s not wanted. He’s using a VPN with very few endpoints. He gets the same IP addresses most of the time.
The internet is not anonymous. Every interaction is recorded in server logs all over the place. Getting to those logs takes law enforcement and he hasn’t quite crossed that line yet. Given the increase in his anger and frustration levels, it won’t be long.
n
@ech
That’s a good start to the list. Once an author gets successful enough, editing becomes harder.
Best case in point: Robert Heinlein. It was interesting to read Heinlein’s perspective on the editing of SISL (Grumbles from the Grave) and then later read the author-edited uncut version, which was a third longer that the book published. Due to the lengthy period spent writing before tpublication–which ultimately greatly helped sales–parts heavily grounded in contemporary American life ca. 1948 had already aged somewhat by first publication in 1961, and even more so when the uncut was published in 1991.
The success of SISL meant that was the last time that Heinlein was forced to edit by an editor. “I Will Fear No Evil” was edited by his wife and agent when he was near death. As close as those two were to the writer, the result was sub-par.
We now know that “Number of the Beast” was significantly revised under time pressure when permissions to include literary characters from other works were not forthcoming. Again, not so good, and we now have the original to compare.
I can think of numerous more recent examples that I would add to the list. No need to go there–those books are simply not on my shelves, which means I have considerably fewer shelves.
Yeah. This is all weird.
It’s like when I ran/owned a dirty book store. Studs. Right there at Breaker and I-35. We ran a clean store. Clorox and Pine-sol every night. Didn’t make quite enough to buy a Fleetwood but I paid my folks well. Like almost $6 an hour plus cash commission on what they sold…. so almost an extra hundred a week in cash.
I had a thing with my employees. Do your job, it’s easy because you can spend most of your time reading a book. Keep this place spotless. Don’t steal from me, if you need more money let’s talk. It worked.
Clean store, like, make this place spotless like Joskes. Unlike walking past Mr. Peepers on 6th Street.
And then there was a church down the road. Big fancy buildings. The preacher dude spent a lot of time in my dirty bookstore trying to convince me to shut it down. weird. He stared at my crotch all the time, I should of gone commando to give him a good look up my shorts. But I was modest, then. Heh.
My book store was right next to a stripper bar. Freaking Hell’s Angles or whatever from San Antonio would visit the titty bar and OMG, they would come next door and spend a ton of money on magazines and toys. Bunch of cool folks.
And the preacher dude? He got busted for something and he had a few footlockers of porn mags and videos. “For research purposes”. Effer never bought anything from my store.
Being new-ish to this community, I took it with a grain of salt when told the range of experience and expertise here was wide and covered a big variety of endeavors.
Paul just took it in a whole new direction. At the same time, he sort of proved the point, didn’t he?
I took it with a grain of salt when told the range of experience and expertise here was wide and covered a big variety of endeavors.
– I am constantly amazed. Humbled. Blown away.
n
Man, you SAY you don’t want to go there, but then you don’t mention —
Stephen King, or JK Rowlings, or Peter Hamilton (although I think his issue is just the scope of his work, since they are ALL doorstops.)
And seriously the nature of the reader’s relationship with IP has changed. Readers are looking for more about their beloved characters and places, and they are willing to pay to get it. It would be interesting to see the percentages of ‘one off’ novels vs. series or trilogies, and does it vary by genre? SFF seems to be all series these days.
n
@paul, one of the guys I used to tour with was the “mop and bucket” guy at a big place in Cali. They had live peepshows with the sliding doors too. His stories were pretty good…
n
Best case in point: Robert Heinlein. It was interesting to read Heinlein’s perspective on the editing of SISL (Grumbles from the Grave) and then later read the author-edited uncut version, which was a third longer that the book published. Due to the lengthy period spent writing before tpublication–which ultimately greatly helped sales–parts heavily grounded in contemporary American life ca. 1948 had already aged somewhat by first publication in 1961, and even more so when the uncut was published in 1991.
For those who are not Heinlein fans, SISL = Stranger In A Strange Land.
SISL was not the first Heinlein book heavily edited by the publisher. The first version of “Podkayne Of Mars” had an ending where Podkayne survived Venus. In the original book written by Heinlein, Podkayne did not survive the nuclear bomb from the Venus smugglers. But the publisher did not like Podkayne dying in a purported juvenile book. I bought a new copy of Podkayne a few years ago that was published by Baen, it had BOTH endings.
https://www.amazon.com/Podkayne-Mars-Robert-Heinlein/dp/1612422624?tag=ttgnet-20/
For a while I consulted for an internet company which, among other things, ran half a dozen porn sites. One guy’s job was to crop pictures to the teaser thumbnails on the front page. (He loved his job at first but by the time I met him he hated it.) IIRC another guy’s job was to tweak images so that they wouldn’t be identified as having been stolen from other sites.
My job was even sleazier. I was cleaning up Python scripts (horrendously bad scripts, written by someone who’d taken a Python class, had no real experience, and got things sorta working via copying code from the internet) which inserted “Search Engine Optimization” magic keywords into web pages, inserted links between pages of various customers, and otherwise attempted to fool 2004-era Google. I didn’t know quite what would be involved before I took the contract (“Python programs to build links between web pages”, IIRC, with details to be provided once I was under contract, “to protect our trade secrets”) and I needed the money, so I did it.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11719609/Single-women-2-64-million-homes-single-men-despite-lower-salaries.html
All the way down at the end….
n
They misspelled “The guy is generally the one forced to move out, even if it was his house before the relationship”.
decimate
Google announces “Bard” – their Chatbot tool to compete with ChatGPT (see article here)
And the ChatGPT folks are releasing a monthly subscription of it’s product. See article here:
Microsoft also announced access to the OpenAI APIs on Azure but no definite time frame.
Serious computing power will be involved on the back end.
Tossed a solar salesman off my porch this evening.
Just gave her two bullet points:
–solar doesn’t pencil out without tax subsidies
–solar is not dispatchable
Are you familiar with the term dispatchable?
No.
Go look it up.
>> “Travis Kavulla, NRG’s vice president for regulatory affairs, said the difference in performance had more to do with uncontrollable meteorological factors than anything else.”
“Uncontrollable,” okay, I’ll give him that one…unpredictable, well taking an average from the ‘weather liars’ and there’s at least some lead time…not that he yet has a solution for the whirligigs when it’s 25 F outside.
>> @paul, one of the guys I used to tour with was the “mop and bucket” guy at a big place in Cali. They had live peepshows with the sliding doors too. His stories were pretty good…
If you want to see a good fictionalization of the hooker, pimp, peep, drug, mob scene in NYFC in the 1970’s, check out “The Deuce”. Created for HBO by David Simon and George Pelecanos (who previously did The Wire). Stars James Franco (in a dual role)and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
@Nick
I have no beef with any author that decides they can deliver the goods to their readers, and then proceeds to do so. If we all liked the same woman the earth would be barren.
I grew up on the science fiction of the first half of the twentieth century, often filtered through great anthologists like Moskowitz and Conklin. Enjoyed it even though I already knew that Rutherford’s raisin-in-a-pie model was hooey. Sought out the 19th century authors (find The Crystal Man by Mitchell, if you haven’t read it) early and read darn near everything science fiction until about 1970, when I learned to toss anything that didn’t engage after a few pages (50 then, 10 now).
[Tons of non-fiction, and I read mysteries and westerns, too. Enjoyed Sherlock Holmes, disliked Nigel Bruce. Could not read Christie or Chesterton, but Poirot and Father Brown have been brought to life on the small screen.
Fantasy other than Heinlein and Dame Norton left me cold. Could not warm up to Baum or Burroughs, but enjoyed reading about the authors. Then Lin Carter taught me the history. Small doses since.
I found Huckleberry Finn early, re-read it yearly and found that each year I could understand more of the subtleties. When I took American Lit in HS I knew the book better than the instructor, and didn’t read it again for the class. If I could have two books on the desert island, the second would be Hearn’s annotated Huck.]
King never held much appeal to me. Koontz is a better writer. I used to buy copies of Lightning to give away.
Rowling is in a class by herself. Heinlein might have called her the most successful universe-builder ever. She has a real intellect and refuses to bow to woke–not surprising in one who believed in her work through so many rejections.
Luke-warm on Hamilton.
Jordan, Martin, ElRon, et al. Pass. By the
poundyard.Woke science fiction in print or on the screen? Like a weiner in a landfill, it may survive for decades and keep every bit as much quality.
What? Weather and nightime?
King never held much appeal to me. Koontz is a better writer. I used to buy copies of Lightning to give away.
Rowling is in a class by herself. Heinlein might have called her the most successful universe-builder ever. She has a real intellect and refuses to bow to woke–not surprising in one who believed in her work through so many rejections.
Twin !
Yea! Just won a medium sized equatorial mount in a local auction. Won’t be big enough for my 10″ (ehhemm) but might be ok for the wife’s 8″… certainly will be good for one or more of the smaller ‘scopes and even that is helpful for locating objects.
n
King himself made the best argument for discounting his work, when the Bachman books didn’t sell.
n
No, I probably wouldn’t even point out the incorrect usage. The revised meaning is now its new definition and insistence on the traditional definition is pointless. (See also the contradictory definitions of “biweekly”, brought about by people too dim to comprehend the difference between “bi-” and “semi-”.)
I have in mind mix-ups like home/hone (home a knife), counsel/council, averse/adverse or difference/deference.
>> I worked on a friend’s pinball machine as some of the actions were not working. It surprised me to find that voltage was always present on each element. Threw me for a curve as voltage was present on the mechanism but it was not moving. Turns out the transistors used by the system actually short the circuit to ground. This allowed current to flow and activate the mechanism. I found a couple of bad transistors and a couple of loose connections.
‘Real’ pinball machines don’t have transistors, they use relays and stepping motors.
The Ten Baddest Dudes in the Spy Genre Right Now!
https://therealbookspy.com/must-read-list/the-ten-baddest-dudes-in-the-spy-genre-right-now/
Jack Reacher isn’t a spy. Scratch him and add Doc Ford
The Ten Baddest Dudes in the Spy Genre Before the Other List!
Matt Helm
Joe Gall
Sam Durrell
James Bond
Tiger Mann
George Smiley
Veil Kendry
Mac McCorkle
Paul Bannerman
Jonas Wilde
Jonathan Hemlock
Sean Dillon
Teddy Fay
That’s 13 nominations.
No spies created as movie/TV characters, with novelizations as an afterthought.
@SteveF
It’s kind of like calling a public swimming pool with only one turd in the water “clean”.
j’refuse
I made a trip to the west coast with a good friend from high school who was attending a formerly well-respected university there. Two of us, big bag from the Hostess Thrift Store, and 7 pinball machines in the back of a ’63 Chebby van. He’d been a hardcore pinball enthusiast for years. I played them at the bowling alley, three games for a quarter; he bought them and learned to fix them.
When he went to college he discovered that a senior had a “franchise” running pinball machines in the dorms. He apprenticed, bought the guy out, and expanded. Didn’t make a fortune, but did a lot better than flippin’ burgers, and no FICA.
One of those machines was a nearly new Gottlieb Sing Along. Great action on the playing field:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNElsSD_Qfk
and this one is adjusted to bypass the fourth hole and kick it straight down the drain.
At this late hour, I’ll reiterate, DON”T sit down and watch youtube shorts if you can’t afford to lose a few hours.
n
Nick apparently can’t bring himself to type the words “Do as I say, not as I do.”