Cold, still, but less so. Should clear up for the next few days. Never cleared completely yesterday. Never warmed up much either.
Spent the morning taking D2 to the Orthodontist. And today I have to take D1. They are at different points in their treatment, and the office does one type of visit per day, so there wasn’t a way to get them both in on the same day. I guess it’s what being the stay at home dad means, taking kids to appointments.
Spent the afternoon on auction stuff. Got a few sprinkles of rain. Nothing that stuck though.
Made a box meal for dinner and used the canned costco chicken. I do that all the time. You get shredded chicken instead of chunks, which alters the meal somewhat, but it still tastes great. This time I used a “Tasty” Chicken Tikka Masala kit. Subbed minute rice for the included rice as I didn’t want to wait. It was really tasty! Wife said she’d eat that again, so I went looking. It’s not at HEB anymore. Neither does the corporate website list it (or any food for that matter, only recipe books). Searching amazon or the web for “tasty chicken tikka masala kit” is painful. Folks, if you are going to start a company making food, don’t pick a name that is a common adjective for food. You get the search results you’d expect for a generic keyword search.
In any case, no more of the product is available, that I can find. One of the disadvantages of stacking and then not eating for a while is that the product might not be available to restock.
I have a lot of ‘box meals’ that use hamburger, and a lot that I can sub in canned chicken. Very convenient, and store well past their best by date. There are also a lot of quick side dishes that could be fortified with canned meat or sausage to make a main meal. Anything to save time, or effort, is a good thing in a disaster, and also in a normal busy life.
Commander Zero noted that his local store has Auguson Farms FD and dehydrated food on sale. That led me to look at some on the ‘zon and since it was on sale, I bought some more. FDs aren’t my primary stored food, but they do make a good long term storage solution. Just don’t expect to get the number of servings on the can. I treat the Auguson Farms FDs as a supplement to other food, not as complete meals.
Today I’ve got more auction stuff to sort and bin, and maybe deliver, after I get D1 back to school. I might do some pickups today too. I’m supposed to be meeting a friend, and I don’t know how long we’ll spend doing what he needs to do, so I might not get much done besides that. But you know, meatspace baby!
Get out in the world this week. Call up an old friend. Stack up some good times as well as good stuff.
nick
Good morning. I am drinking tea, listening to Rimski-Korsakov’s Scherezade on the radio, and watching the red squirrels eating peanuts from the bird feeding table. They seem to like a sunflower seed every now and then as well.
Today’s project is proofreading an essay by the Mrs about the psychology of learning, so I expect to learn something new. Enough procrastination – time to get proofing. Wishing everyone a good day
Woke up dreaming of an NP-complete problem. No idea where that came from—does not comport with any current project.
Coffee is on.
@Ken Mitchell
“How do they plan to get from Tiera Del Fuego to Antarctica? The South Magnetic Pole is in the ocean close to Antarctica, but pretty much directly south of Tasmania.”
I suspect unicorns are involved.
Too much Minesweeper.
60F and 97%RH with uniform overcast.
Time to get moving. Need to get the cave troll up and out to her orthodontia appt.
n
With lots of flatulence.
Leaving Biloxi this morning for Atlanta. Spend the night with friends then home on Wednesday. I suspect I will have to cut the grass on Thursday as the grass was starting to grow when I left.
Then I need to contact a chap to come and replace the chimney on the house. Bricks are starting to deteriorate and the whole thing needs replacing.
It’s DOCTOR Greta Turdberg to you!
University of Helsinki gives Greta Turdberg a Doctorate of Theology
She’s 20. Really?
Even Doctor Jill Biden had to write and defend a dissertation.
Linus Torvalds attended University of Helsinki and developed Linux during his time there. As the article points out, it is supposed to be a real school.
Will she help me get to heaven with the theology degree?
Just quaff deeply from the Kool Aid vat.
At some point, the vat will stop being figurative.
Only if you renounce fossil fuels. Go forth and sin no more!
>> Chris and Julie Ramsey will set off to travel 17,000 miles (27,000km) from the Magnetic North to South Pole this week.
Their vehicle will be powered for much of the trip by solar and wind energy.
The couple will navigate into Canada, then head south through the United States and into warmer temperatures in South America over the space of 10 challenging months.
They will travel through Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Argentina.
Six weeks from now…
Associated Press / Mexico Bureau
“Now going on two weeks, the Mexico Police Bureau still has no leads on the disappearance of a Canadian couple that were on an intrepid ‘pole-to-pole’ cross-continental road-trip in an electric vehicle.
Anyone with information regarding this incident is urged to contact the Police.”
>> Hey Greg and SteveF, I have a question.
I think you married a lady from China. Can she read Chinese?
Was there a divorce in between or was everybody living in Utah at the time?
Commander Zero noted that his local store has Auguson Farms FD and dehydrated food on sale. That led me to look at some on the ‘zon and since it was on sale, I bought some more. FDs aren’t my primary stored food, but they do make a good long term storage solution. Just don’t expect to get the number of servings on the can. I treat the Auguson Farms FDs as a supplement to other food, not as complete meals.
No joke. The box that I use for making Jambalaya claims that you get five servings. I got two meals for me alone with a turkey sausage thinly sliced into it. Spiced so hot that each bite was delicious agony.
https://www.heb.com/product-detail/jambalaya-girl-jambalaya-rice-mix/2210393
@RickH, how does a comment wind up showing a zero for ‘thumbs up’?
https://www.ttgnet.com/journal/2023/03/21/tues-mar-21-2023-another-morning-appointment/#comment-256435
@RickH, how does a comment wind up showing a zero for ‘thumbs up’?
https://www.ttgnet.com/journal/2023/03/21/tues-mar-21-2023-another-morning-appointment/#comment-256435
If you keep on clicking, the count goes up then down. Up then down.
Is “Dune” really the reader favorite science fiction book of all time ?
https://best-sci-fi-books.com/the-readers-speak-this-blogs-readers-favorite-science-fiction-books/
Dune is not even in my 23 books on my top ten list.
Dune does have a 4.7 out of 5 stars rating on Big River with 73,363 reviews.
https://www.amazon.com/Dune-Frank-Herbert-ebook/dp/B00B7NPRY8?tag=ttgnet-20/
Re the number next to the thumbs. You can click the thumb, and it registered your location and your vote, increasing the number. If you click again, you ‘un-vote’, and the number goes down.
The plugin had an update earlier this morning, and the number 0 (which didn’t display before) is now shown. May be a setting in the plugin due to the update today.
Visitors get one vote up and/or down. You can’t easily do multiple votes. If you try a second vote, the number will decrease.
…and…the ‘0’ will appear if someone votes up on a new comment, resulting in a ‘1’, then clicks again to ‘un-vote’.
Although there is a setting to disable the display of a ‘0’, and that setting is not enabled here, I suspect a bug that will be fixed with the next update so the ‘0’ will not be displayed when a vote-then-unvote happens.
“Dune” comes and goes. I’m old enough to remember a couple of cycles starting with the David Lynch film adaptation.
The book is hot again because of the big media push for Part Two of the latest film adaptation, and I thought I saw new Brian Herbert books in the greatly diminished Sci Fi sections of the two Barnes & Noble stores I’ve walked through in the last few weeks.
Sci Fi is rapidly losing shelf space to Manga at Barnes & Noble. The situation was worse in Houston than McAllen.
“Houston comedian tells the perfect joke about driving in H-Town”
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/houston-driving-texas-17850010.php
“If you’ve ever missed your exit in Houston, you know this pain all too well.”
“Welcome to Houston, TX. Where if you miss an exit yo ass might as well go on vacation”
He ain’t wrong.
Thanks to all who made suggestions for backup and archiving media. Thanks also to all who suggested ways to backup or copy files. That was outside the scope of my request. FWIW, I only store files in their original format and folder structure using xcopy batch files. I want to be able to read them without any special software. I also do not use compression or encryption for the same reason. I do not use rented (cloud) storage, except for non-private data. I do store some copies off site.
I just spent a couple hours reading some fairly hard core archiving sites, and was impressed with what people are doing. The divide seems to be the amount of data, and whether it needs to be readily accessible. Tape is still king for larger commercial operations, but not a consideration here. It is good to see tape is still alive, and I was surprised to read that it writes and reads faster than some other forms of storage. It is also expensive and labor intensive. For smaller operations, archival optical media are apparently popular, and I might consider those in the future for certain kinds of data. Cloud storage is OK for stuff that is not private, and has many advantages. Solid state storage is still too risky or expensive, or both. No one yet knows how long the various forms of solid state storage will last, and accelerated testing does not seem to be appropriate.
That leaves spinning hard drives. They are used a lot, and that is what I will stay with. Disks have known risks and failure modes, and can be effective if enough are used.
So far, I have just done a little cursory shopping. I should consider sizes larger than one terabyte, mostly for future needs, but need to decide future needs. Isn’t that always the case?
I was puzzled by @ayjblog, who said “Never but never use any capacity that was not available since 2 years, i.e. HD more than 4 TB is ok, today. Why? early failures” I will try to confirm that. Also, Lynn worried about helium leaks, but I won’t be buying drives in that class.
Now to go shopping.
Pearls Before Swine: Books On Tape
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2023/03/21
Groan, dad joke warning.
Going to Fung’s Kitchen, we missed the exit and we ended up getting there 15 minutes past the original time of arrival.
You Ain’t Got No Ice Cream is the game at that place on Sunday morning. Arrive after 10:30, and you’re going to be waiting a while. The cart service isn’t exactly speedy and it stops at 3:00 PM.
No Soup For You!
At least the food … what we managed to get … was decent. And we were seated at 10:30!
I’m not a big dim sum person, but my wife wanted the whole “rolling cart” dining experience, and we last did that about 20 years ago.
Mental illness:
Report: Vice President Kamala Harris congratulates Dylan Mulvaney for being a woman for 365 days
One heart beat away…
I think the Kindle was pushing something the other night …. “Streetwalkers of Dune” was it? I didn’t bite.
I think the Kindle was pushing something the other night …. “Streetwalkers of Dune” was it? I didn’t bite.
Nah, it was probably “A Princess of Dune”. She was a streetwalker before she became a princess.
There are many more Dune books left to write. John Norman’s Gor books can be used as reference material: Hunter of Dune, Captive of Dune, Outlaw of Dune, Rebels of Dune, Slave of Dune …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Norman#Gor_series
Oh my lord, the Gor books.
I actually read several before I realized that these weren’t my generation’s Barsoom books (or maybe they were).
Arrived in Atlanta. About 3:00 PM and lots of traffic. One wreck on I-285 which made a mess. Vehicles were drivable and should have been moved to the shoulder. But no, the imbecile drivers were blocking two lanes with their thumbs up their solid waste discharge tubes.
Delta has screwed me over on my flight to Europe in June. We now have to fly from Atlanta at 9:50 AM instead of 3:00 PM. We fly to JFK, JFK to Detroit, Detroit to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Oslo. At least the flight from Frankfurt to Atlanta was not changed. Four flights to get to Oslo. Original was three. We have done the journey in two flights but Delta saw fit to change all of that.
There are no flights to which offer Premium Select seats. I can change flights and wind up crammed in coach an Delta will provide me $218.00 in E-CREDIT per person. Such E-CREDIT worthless unless one flies on Delta again within the year. Scumbags.
We are cattle, Delta is our drovers. We will conform or get the cattle prod.
I’ll be the heretic here and say “Dune sucks”. How about an editor? The book was a slog. Not as bad as Dracula or Moby Dick but pretty close. When the movie was on HBO it took me three weeks to get through the betamax tape I made because it just put me to sleep.
I liked the story but, yeah, I’d rather try reading Chaucer in Old English, fonts and all, again.
I like the new “can change my mind about liking a post” feature.
I had most of them, at least up until most of my books mysteriously disappeared when I was working out of state.
I had a friend who’d bought all he could find at the used bookstore. He was still living at home. His mom had seen the covers but figured that they were just your typical 1970s fantasy covers and didn’t think much about them. But then she learned the horrible truth about the books and made him get rid of them. (I suspect that his younger sisters ratted him out but don’t think that was ever proved.)
So I found myself the proud owner of three or four dozen Gor books. “Proud owner”. I think that’s the term. My word but they were godawful.
Chaucer wrote Middle English, which is mostly intelligible to modern English readers. Old English is a whole ‘nother language, unintelligible without study. The fonts are, ugh, another matter, even once they moved to machine printing. Whatever genius decided that distinctive typeface is more important than legibility really needs a good solid dopesmack.
I’m not a great photographer and close-ups with the phone seem an iffy thing. Anyway.
http://remsset.com/files/coin;
Hopefully good enough to read.
Dad lied about his age and joined the Marines. Said he was on Iwo when the flag was raised. The pictures were taken the next day after folks had time to wash off a month of stink. Then he went to Korea. Some where along the way he was on Kennedy’s Honor Guard for a few months. It seemed like a Very Big Deal when I was two pushing three. Then he was a recruiter. And after a year in ‘Nam he quit. I think combat time counted as time and a half for retirement…. so he had like 28 years. What do I know, I was 9 when he retired from the Marines. He had a couple of Purple Hearts and I think a Bronze Star.
Ok, Middle English. It’s still older than what I know and the fonts, ah, German is difficult but they had their own font.
Come to think of it, maybe a good chunk of why Russia is Eeevilll is their alphabet.
I can’t read French or much Spanish and even less German, but I can figure it out. Sort of. I know my ABC’s and all that.
But “It’s pretty this way. Hater!!!”
Let me try the link again. http://remsset.com/files/coin
@paul, I fixed the first link too. There was an extra space after the URL that got encoded as &space and included in the URL.
n
Mr. Paul, it works now.
One more step towards the PLT Utopia:
Scholarship application asks if your sexual identity is LGBT or LGBT Ally
The push for the QWERTY Utopia is, of course, coming from the education field. The commies took over without firing a shot.
Watch this rot creep over to all Federal sites. plugsy McSpongeBrain FJB! leading the way.
ANYBODY BUT FJB! 2024
The Camel for the win in 2024!
—man that’s a big bag of bud…
n
First face of the coin: rotate 135 degrees clockwise. The characters are stand-alone.
Left symbol is Ning, meaning Peaceful
Top symbol is Shou, meaning Longevity
Right symbol is Kang, meaning Health
Bottom symbol is Fu, meaning Blessing
.
Second face: rotate 90 degrees clockwise. The characters go in pairs
Left and right make Nan (man) Duo (many), meaning “more boys in the family”
Top and bottom make Fu Gui, meaning “aristocracy”
Put them together and it’s an assertion that more sons put the family into the wealthy upper class.
.
The characters are all in traditional Chinese, of course, because they predate Mao and his idiotic (and murderous) policies.
The coin is probably worth a fair amount now, according to my wife.
Thank you Steve and Wife.
In Holmes County, Florida.
Any possession without a medical exception is against state law, but 20 grams is the entry level for a felony in Florida.
He’s going to be picking up a lot of trash along I-10 very soon.
So Amazon was going to deliver a package today that yesterday was scheduled for tomorrow. That is, Wednesday.
I looked at the tracking and it says “Carrier is unable to gain access to front door to deliver the package. Please contact the carrier to resolve”. The site says 4:31pm. Big River usually shows up between 5:30 and 7:30.
Now, my gate opener is broken and disconnected. For now. The gate has a rock on one side and brick on the other to keep it from blowing in the wind. Gate was wide open this morning. It’s not windy today so zero chance of the gate getting free.
I think Bubba decided to take the rest of the day off. But it’s my fault. Somehow. 🙂
You white, cis-male monster! How dare you write that so sarcastically?!
An ad seen on ZeroHedge today:
”A customer service AI chatbot you can trust. Powered by GPT-4”
And you thought the sub continent phone help was bad.
$200,000 per server to buy. $37,000 per month to rent the entry level hardware and Nvidia optimizing expertise.
No word on Azure costs yet, but it won’t be cheap.
An ad seen on ZeroHedge today:
”A customer service AI chatbot you can trust. Powered by GPT-4”
And you thought the sub continent phone help was bad.
Is this going to be just for chat or for vocal also ?
“US Studies How To Guarantee All $18 Trillion In US Bank Deposits”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-studies-how-guarantee-all-18-trillion-us-bank-deposits
Uh, does anyone beside the Saud family even have $18 trillion in their pockets ?
And that is a cool new FDIC sign with the infinity symbol.
$37000 / 30 = $1,200 a day. I don’t know what the loaded call center cost per employee is, but this might be a deal.
And Moore‘s Law says in 2025 it will be half that, and in 2027 1/4th … just assuming hardware advances. Assuming competition – and there seems be a lot – even less,
Game has changed.
“Not ESG-Friendly: Insurers Junk Entire EVs For Minor Accidents”
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/not-esg-friendly-insurers-junk-entire-evs-minor-accidents
If you have to total an EV for minor accidents, insurance is going to get expensive in a hurry. $10,000 per year in auto insurance is not doable for anyone but the rich class.
That will effectively nationalize the banks.
Of course, we are there already. All that is left is the EO making it official.
Nonsense. Government will take care of that problem. Look at what’s been done to health insurance costs. You’ve been drinking a bottle of whiskey a day for ten years? No problem! You pay the same premium as a teetotaler.
The Geico Gecko used the float from his insurance operation to buy out Pilot/Flying-J with the idea to eventually turn them into EV charging/service centers.
Since everyone will be idle for an hour or so waiting for their EVs to charge, I’m sure Dairy Queens and See’s Candies will get added to the mix at the store locations.
Synergy!
If you want to understand the importance of a strategically located charging station in the boonies, go visit the Love’s at I37 and 281 outside George West on a Friday night. Every Supercharger space filled, with additional vehicles waiting.
Green energy depends on exploiting brown bodies.
———
did I mention that yesterday’s auguson farms order was on my porch at 7am today? 5 #10 cans in a plastic bag. Cans are in good shape though.
n
Haven’t seen any kittehs…
https://twitter.com/TheFigen_/status/1638248451367399435
Liberals are mentally ill and should be rounded up and institutionalized for the safety of the republic
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/03/21/an-interesting-review-of-the-well-being-gap-between-liberals-and-conservatives-n538503
and given thorazine like it was soy.
“What happens when the Department of Justice decides that its goal is not justice but protecting the ruling class at all costs?” Carlson asked. “Think about that. People are still going to demand justice. The desire for justice is an inherent human desire. We are born with it. But if there’s no neutral place to do it, some people will decide they’re going to have to do it themselves. Now, we don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like, but we can say for certain it’s going to be really ugly.”
–Tucker Carlson
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/03/21/tucker-carlson-makes-a-chilling-prediction-about-possible-trumps-indictment-n1680125
Weaponize the FBI? Check
Weaponize the DoJ? Check
Weaponize the entire U.S. Government? Check
Put all of them in bed with the sweaty billionaires to serve the ruling class? Check.
Already there except the “at all costs” part, which is an undefinable moving target. The day after FJB unleashes an F16 on the citizens, a reason will be found to use two, or two and a tank, or whatever they think will get the job done.
>> Made a box meal for dinner and used the canned costco chicken. I do that all the time. You get shredded chicken instead of chunks, which alters the meal somewhat, but it still tastes great. This time I used a “Tasty” Chicken Tikka Masala kit. Subbed minute rice for the included rice as I didn’t want to wait. It was really tasty! Wife said she’d eat that again, so I went looking. It’s not at HEB anymore. Neither does the corporate website list it (or any food for that matter, only recipe books). Searching amazon or the web for “tasty chicken tikka masala kit” is painful. Folks, if you are going to start a company making food, don’t pick a name that is a common adjective for food. You get the search results you’d expect for a generic keyword search.
@nick, this was too easy so probably not the one you’re looking for?
https://tasty.co/recipe/chicken-tikka-masala-helper
>> Spent the afternoon on auction stuff.
@nick, when you bring items to one of your local auctioneers, do you have any input as to the starting bid? And what percentage of the winning bid do you wind up with if you don’t mind sharing? I have a few bins of ~$20-$30 items that I should be listing on eBay but never quite get a ‘round tuit’.
Plus my wife keeps telling me about “finds” she sees while thrifting. Of course, they’re most always gone if I go back looking for them.
>> Pearls Before Swine: Books On Tape
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2023/03/21
Groan, dad joke warning.F I F Y. Dad jokes rule!
>> REVEALED: Alabama freshman football player Tony Mitchell ‘was clocked fleeing Florida police at 141mph before he and a passenger were arrested with 226 grams of marijuana, a loaded gun, scales and $7,000 in cash’
Mitchell was clocked speeding 141mph before his arrest last week in Florida
He’s suspended from the Crimson Tide, football coach Nick Saban announced
They always think their ‘Mopar muscle power’ will outrun the cops, hence no need to dump the evidence out the window.
>> Already there except the “at all costs” part, which is an undefinable moving target. The day after FJB unleashes an F16 on the citizens, a reason will be found to use two, or two and a tank, or whatever they think will get the job done.
We’ll be okay … just keep repeating … “two is one and one is none.”
>> I have a lot of ‘box meals’ that use hamburger, and a lot that I can sub in canned chicken.
@nick, ever try this? Seems there’d be more demand for canned ground beef, but have never seen it at a grocery store. Rather pricy though.
Dilbert, as written by Google Bard: https://www.reddit.com/r/dilbert/comments/11xxbs3/i_asked_google_bard_ai_powered_by_lambda_ai_to/
And found an email today in my inbox with Bard access. Let’s see what I can come up with.
@alan, that is the Tasty site, and the recipe is the directions off the box… but I can’t find anywhere to buy the box, which has the critical “spice pack” in it.
I’ll answer your auction questions in tomorrow’s post. My answers got quite long.
Good questions!
n
@alan, I think the cost of the Keystone is prohibitive, but I do have a dozen cans in the stacks. Haven’t tried it but the reviews are generally good.
I do sometimes “brown the meat” for a whole bunch of hamburger at once, and then bag and freeze the result to save a step at dinner time, and that works pretty well for box meals.
Speaking of, I tried to make some pasta or rice side dishes tonight, using Knorr flavored side dishes in foil pouches. They were 3-4 years past ‘best by’ and infested with bugs. Did not eat. Infested is too strong a word, but there were grain of rice sized larvae in the rice dishes, and tiny pinholes in the foil pouches. Don’t know if the bugs got in, or WERE in, but the apocalypse hasn’t happened so I’ll be going thru that bin soon, and replacing those dishes when they go on sale. They were still good to eat last year, so they actually lasted pretty well.
n
Much the same for Lord of the Rings. I read both, back in younger days when I had too much time on my hands. I’ve tried since, but – geez – both are just ridiculously long-winded. Both could be edited down to a quarter of their length, and be much better for it.
Honestly, GPT-4 is likely to provide better service than outsourced support. At least it will listen to what you say. How many times have you had a service agent who clearly completely ignored whatever your problem is, and just read from their standard script?
I recently had something similar. We have an agreement with our phone/internet provider that we only seek help online. That’s great, for anything to do with our service. A couple of days ago, a friend lost their phone, and we wanted to report it and block the SIM card. There is no online option except for stuff having to do with *our* services. No escape to a real person. Even their help line detected our number and redirected us to the online support.
Don’t forget judges who determine the desired result, often before hearing the facts of the case, and search for laws or creatively interpret laws to justify their decision.
I think that lobotomies have an unfairly bad reputation and should be experimented with on a broad population of the mentally ill.
Nick, why not go to an Indian grocery store and tell the clerk what you want and try what they give you?
The obvious solution to this difficulty is not to have friends. No friends = no need to figure out how to help them with their problems.