Very humid but somewhat cool, due to yesterday’s rain. Got a real gully washer at home, and on the way home as I passed under some thunderstorms. Parts were still dry. Houston.
I got my networking sorted out. Dug a trench, laid in some liquidtite conduit, did it right. Tested everything and my switch has a bad port. Got permission to order a replacement and keep this as a spare. It was hot, but not as hot as it could have been. Even on the roof, it wasn’t blast furnace hot. Installed a new antenna support pole, and the cell booster antenna. Took down the DirecTV dish. I am trying to not go back today unless the gate installer runs into something weird. Maybe Wednesday. I’ve got to pull the rest of the DirecTV gear out of the rack and the equipment closet. I think it can wait a couple days for my stuff to come in. Makes more sense to do as much as possible at the same visit.
Raced the rain home, but made it in time for the swimmeet. It was good to see some of the people we used to see all the time. Kid swam well. It was very damp, wet even, and my joints will ache tomorrow. That’s the way it is though.
Today I’ll do some computer work, some house work, and maybe some auction work.
And I will spend some time thinking about Robert Bruce Thompson, re-reading some of his posts, and hearing his ‘mental voice’ in my head. Check out the keywords to the right.
Stack up the good times when you find them. It can all change very suddenly.
nick
How odd. I was thinking about RBT, because his “Astronomy Hacks” book arrived recently, and I just saw it on my desk. RIP, Robert. The world is poorer without you, but richer for having had you.
Is it weird that, for me, nick inherited RBT’s “voice” when I am reading this journal?
Bits and pieces from yesterday…
Too bad that nobody in power listened. Whoever had followed that advice would now be rich, energy independent, and a power to be feared, because they would own the high frontier.
In Germany, VW keep it very quiet indeed that any of their vehicles are made elsewhere. Most customers would be shocked to learn their car was made abroad. I am not a fan of the VAG brands, but if I were ever to buy one, I would probably get a Czech-made Skoda, as they seem to hit the quality vs price sweet spot. VW’s and Audis are terribly overpriced, and I find SEAT a bit low on fit and finish for the price.
EVs actually make some sense in Norway. Electricity is cheap (hydro power), car prices are exorbitant anyway, and the speed limits are very low. Norway is wealthy and developed enough to have sufficient charging stations in the middle of nowhere on the long overland and coastal routes. The Achilles’ heel is of course the cold in winter. EVs don’t do well with cold…
…or rather pissed on? 🙂
About my subterranean water meter… thanks for all the suggestions and comments. I will probably tough it out for the time it takes us to finish needing this residence, although if I reach a point where I lack the capacity or inclination to go down the hole, I will insist that the water company do it themselves. Last year they estimated our consumption, and we got an exorbitant bill. I prefer to have my own eyes on the meter from time to time… In fact, as our dwelling is distant from the meter, I have a second (own) meter inside the house , so I can compare readings and make sure there is no leakage in-between.
Greeks are black. Hahahaha.
I grew up near Tarpon Springs, Florida, and floating that kind of academic nonsense in some parts of town would be suicide.
Here’s the interesting part about the car after I ran the CarFax – the vehicle was originally a Florida lease which went through an auction and ended up on a used car lot in Germany if the current owner is being honest. He definitely imported it back to the US from Germany per CarFax.
I knew from my father that a lot of Florida cars ended up overseas after being run through the auctions, but I didn’t think Germany would import Hecho en Mexico.
Jettas (model of the VW) weren’t sold in Germany in large numbers. That was a design which was a “Hail Mary” from the company to save their US market around the time when the Accord supplanted the Taurus as the #1 car in the US after Ford had the brain fart of the $5000 oval window.
Well, shut my mouth. Apple really did release a Mac Pro with Apple Silicon.
Six PCIE v4 slots. Yeah, that’s probably their Hail Mary for AI.
Gonna need a bigger boat -er- cooling system for H100.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/06/05/apple-silicon-mac-pro-debut-finally-ends-transition-away-from-intel-processors
Benny Crump took things to a whole new level with the concept of the White Hispanic.
The media here would love this situation to be about a white man keeping the city employees down. Count how many times they say “Interim City Manager” vs. his proper name, Jose Garza.
https://www.fox7austin.com/news/austin-city-executives-return-to-office
The city employees have been home for three years?!?
I don’t go into detail about everything I’ve done with regard to the situation at the tolling company after the (Texas Workforce Commission tribunal hearing decision as being without cause) termination, but the legal routes I pursued with regard to age discrimination at the state level had to go through the City of Austin, and that office ran up the white flag on my case as soon as they received a single fax from the company’s bozo attorneys.
Trying the new material for this Fall like Leno in Vegas back in the day.
Its Jesus Garza. My bad. Not that it really matters since he’s still white in the Austin media spin universe.
Nope, and now they are about to release one of the Manson family killers.
Financially, I approve of executions. Why should I be taxed for over 50 years to keep a killer alive in prison ?
Slowly returning to functionality……………..
>reboot complete.
>damage assessment running.
>old and worn.
>suck it up buttercup.
Well, I haven’t been that bone weary upon waking in a long time. Standing on concrete in the cold and damp for 5 hours after sweating thru my clothes for 5 hours really took a toll.
Slowly getting moving. Hands-stiff. Back-sore. Feet-aching.
Great life, falter, etc…
Warm and humid. There is still water on the ground from yesterday’s rain, so REALLY humid.
——————————————
@Ray, it sounds like a great trip. I spent 21 days in Stavnanger some years ago. Not seeing any males during the week was weird (except surly arab immigrants) but the city came alive on weekends. We only drove around to see the countryside one day. DID NOT LIKE the tunnel under the fjord. The water was clear as tap water.
Gas in Norway was crazy expensive even back then. They were definitely used to living in a scarcity economy. Fish they had in abundance- maybe a dozen different kinds at breakfast alone. Yum.
——————————————
Coffee should be ready… it better be. it. better. be.
n
“Financially, I approve of executions. Why should I be taxed for over 50 years to keep a killer alive in prison ?”
Time between sentencing and final appeal should be 30 days. Plus the time it took to plan the murder. Max six months. Put in one of Baron H’s heart valves immediately and just pull the plug when the time comes.
With some caveats. Except in cases where caught in the act, or with prolific and public confession (no chance for coercion), killer to be retried in distant state by uninvolved jury, and review by third party in third state.
Have to avoid judicial murder. Have to avoid coercion. Have to avoid railroading. Because there isn’t a do over after the felon has been done over.
n
I oppose government death penalties because police, prosecutors, and judges have demonstrated beyond all doubt that as a caste they cannot be trusted.
Right now, there are only two possible results of a criminal trial; not guilty, or “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt”.
We need a third option; “Proven guilty by photographic evidence”. I would hesitate to condemn a man to death based on “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt”, but if the killer was on video and the jury can SEE HIM DO IT, then I would have him hang.
Jewish religious law, called “halachah”, allows capital punishment, but requires two eye-witnesses to the crime. Video evidence would be the modern equivalent.
My Motorola Moto z4 android phone has lost a couple of apps in the last month. The installed Compass app just disappeared. As I don’t recall which compass I had installed, so I just installed the first one that was available.
The Kindle app is not on either app screen. When I go to the Play Store and search for it, I get an option to open it. There is no install or remove option.
Opening it, I get the normal, installed functionality. After I close it, the Kindle app is not on either of my app screens. When I go to the Play Store, etc., it again gives me the option to open it.
I would uninstall it if I could (knowing that all of the books loaded on the phone would be deleted). But since I can’t find it, this isn’t an option.
Any suggestions?
Sober thoughts this D-Day.
And thinking of RBT and Barbara.
Yet also grateful – our house damaged truss roof drama is moving forward. After our structural engineer added clarifying language, our home insurance left a voicemail today in which they said (in bored tones) ‘that pretty much we are in agreement with your contractor devised language for the cause of loss’
Phew.
RBT would have stated his age as 0x46.
OFD and Dr. Pournelle — also missed.
In the day of deep fakes and AI-generated video?
I got my networking sorted out. Dug a trench, laid in some liquidtite conduit, did it right. Tested everything and my switch has a bad port. Got permission to order a replacement and keep this as a spare. It was hot, but not as hot as it could have been. Even on the roof, it wasn’t blast furnace hot. Installed a new antenna support pole, and the cell booster antenna. Took down the DirecTV dish. I am trying to not go back today unless the gate installer runs into something weird. Maybe Wednesday. I’ve got to pull the rest of the DirecTV gear out of the rack and the equipment closet. I think it can wait a couple days for my stuff to come in. Makes more sense to do as much as possible at the same visit.
Good night, you are having a lot of equipment failures at the client site. I wonder if he has an old Indian burial ground on his property.
Peanuts: June 6, 1944, A Day To Remember
https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/2023/06/06
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2023/06/lest-we-forget.html
What took so long? Slackers…
https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/netflix-bypass-password-sharing-ban-b1085667.html
Netflix Shareholders Vote to Reject Executive Pay Packages
But of course greed will win out…
I wonder if he has an old Indian burial ground on his property.
– he’s out in the country and gets a lot of lightning. I wanted to replace every single piece of gear after the last big one, but he’s “self insured” and didn’t want to take the hit all at once.
So we’re doing it piecemeal, and I get paid for more labor. BTW, my experience with the lightning is that if you get a hit big enough to damage something, it’s probably damaged everything. Some will just take longer to fail, but the life of all will be shortened.
The switch in question lost a port during that big strike, I just forgot that this switch was that switch, and when all the PoE indicators lit up, I thought it was fine, or that polymer fuses had reset. Funny that with the cams, their switch lost the PoE in the affected port but the networking was fine, while this one lost the network but PoE was fine.
He’s trying to get all the upgrades and changes done before he retires in a little less than 2 years. Even high earners are cutting back. His wife asked me if I thought that people would still be buying stuff in my auctions when things got a bit harder, and they didn’t have as much spending money*… I told her that I thought more people would be buying but they’d be buying much more ordinary, everyday stuff, and not collectibles or ‘fru fru’.
n
*even in their circles, there is awareness of coming economic hard times. I don ‘t think I’ve talked to anyone this year who DIDN”T think hard times were coming. There could be selection bias in who I talked to, but I’ve got a pretty broad exposure to ordinary people. Not raving lefties, but normal folks.
Apple aficionado, Brian Tong, got to use the Apple Vision Pro for 45 minutes and is raving about it on YT.
I hope it doesn’t turn out to be the new Segway.
I have plastic, plenty of plastic.
The primary role of insurance companies is to make money for shareholders. Paying loss claims to clients falls way down on the list, probably below restocking the office vending machines.
This was driven home quite strongly during my incident with the auto accident that destroyed my Toyota Avalon. Nickel and dimeing on the claim. Fighting with the adjuster, threats of lawsuits, providing supporting documentation, letters from the Toyota dealership.
Glad that you got some positive action on the claim. It is always good to win. Trust me though, the insurance will remember and find a way to get even by raising premiums, or dropping coverage.
And in other news. Good day in Oslo. Took a Fiord cruise, a short one, but did explain some of the history of the Oslo harbor. Lots of people in the area eating. Lots of people sunning on the shores. Views of some expensive apartments, $5 million USD.
People in Norway, and most of Europe, like to dine outside, small cafes with tables on the sidewalk, open air cafes. Lots of glasses of wine.
Had good meal. Our hosts refuse to let me pay even though I offer. They still think they owe me for keeping their children. I feel the opposite. I owe them for being able to keep their children and being able to visit their home countries.
I repeat myself, but the exchange program is the best thing I have ever done. I would never have been able to experience these countries, not as a tourist, but as a guest. There is a large difference. I cannot thank these people enough.
Ah, but what do normal people without the Nerd gene think? Those are the people that need to be convinced. I ain’t paying $3,500.00 to increase my dork-o-meter.
Thanks for the invitation. That’s a lot of driving over two days, especially the round trip from Lone Pine to the Kennedy Meadows General Store. I haven’t been up Nine Mile Canyon to Kennedy Meadows since it was partly dirt road in the 1980s? You have current information, and you are an experienced back country traveler. The biggest hazards will probably be tourists on all sorts of off road vehicles, but thankfully no logging trucks since the sawmill closed decades ago.
Unfortunately, we have a Saturday afternoon dinner event, and wouldn’t be able to make the trip and get back in time. I think you might stop at the Indian Wells Brewing Company on your way home, but we will be at church and Sunday brunch until about 1300. If you plan to be there, please let me know.
Sorry about this. I have lost count of the times I have not joined you. I feel guilty, especially since Jenny has found a way to visit you all the way from Alaska. This fall might be different. After my 100 YO aunt passed, we haven’t been down to the Mission Viejo area much. I need to catch up on eye doc appointments, and we might also be there for Thanksgiving. I will try hard to make contact one of those times.
In other news, Linda drove with an 88 YO friend when she relocated to Grand Junction, CO. That was an adventure, getting the friend settled in an assisted living facility. She ran a pistachio farm near Inyokern for decades, and is having a hard time adjusting to a quieter lifestyle. They are in contact almost every day. I met Linda two weeks ago when she flew to Ontario airport. Another day traveling.
Linda’s brother’s daughter is marrying a guy from Thailand some time in August, wedding at Columbus, OH. Another trip by air. Thailand! Seems like the world is shrinking. The fun never stops. Life is good if we don’t tire.
“The Simpsons” was the first thing I thought of when I saw that Apple really produced the iGoggles which had been rumored for years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDoTUKql-ho
$3500 is a lot of money for what is going to essentially be thrown away in 7-8 years.
Yet also grateful – our house damaged truss roof drama is moving forward. After our structural engineer added clarifying language, our home insurance left a voicemail today in which they said (in bored tones) ‘that pretty much we are in agreement with your contractor devised language for the cause of loss’
Phew.
You brought in a Pro Engineer. Juries like to listen to Pro Engineers, they don’t screw around. The insurance company knows this.
“Harris County to unveil $500 guaranteed income program for struggling families”
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/harris-county-low-income-payments-18136283.php
We are going to have to do something about our large cities. I don’t know what but something.
Lynn says:
Build walls around them, and don’t permit any new housing outside the city limits.
We are going to have to do something about our large cities.
– two men enter, one man leaves?
n
You are already the King ‘O Dorks, Mr. Ray.
Norm, from Adam Savage’s Tested, is doing a much better review. Covering the quirks and not-so-great things about the headset. Watch that one on YT for a better critique. I’m not sure what kind of serious work you can get done, what apps will work, is it all onboard or cloud-based, etc. Nothing beats a real keyboard and mouse.
$3500 is a lot of money for what is going to essentially be thrown away in 7-8 years.
I think the emphasis should be on the “Pro” moniker. That probably means that the initial release is intended for professionals for whom $3500 is a lot cheaper than their current solution or where certain tasks may be accomplished more efficiently. I have my ideas on a couple of things that may spark a large demand for the “iGoggles”.
Then, somewhere down the line comes the Apple Vision consumer variant for a lot less money but without the fancy optical correction inserts and such (they will fix it in the
mixsoftware).If TC can keep things focused, at which he has been pretty decent so far, I think this could be a real game changer.
“Adams floats idea of New Yorkers housing migrants in ‘private residences’”
https://nypost.com/2023/06/05/adams-wants-new-yorkers-to-house-migrants-in-private-residences/
“Mayor Eric Adams now wants to start paying every day New Yorkers to shelter migrants in their own homes – as the Big Apple struggles to find beds for the thousands of asylum seekers still flooding into the city.”
Good luck with that.
Walkin’ ’round money.
Not sure how that’s going to work. From the very few stories I’ve heard, a lot of folks in NYC have tiny apartments and just a dorm fridge. So they shop everyday for what they want to cook. A spare room, no way.
So you have to take in an illegal alien criminal and he’s going to sleep where? On the sofa? And he’s going to want to eat.
I don’t see it happening.
The “killer app” for these goggles will be true AR; “Augmented Reality”, and that’s not here yet, nor even close. Imagine opening the hood on your car, and seeing your engine – with all the parts labelled. Imagine zooming in there to see the components BEHIND the visible ones. Imagine seeing a defective part in reality, with the part number visible in the goggles, and telling the computer to “order that part”.
Go out in the garden, and look at a plant. You can see the plant, but the goggles should be able to identify the plant, and possibly identify what’s wrong with it.
@BobSprowl:
Swiping “Up” from the Home Screen should display icons for all installed Android apps. Long Press on Kindle or Compass should offer to add to “Home”.
Failing that, install a File Manager like Total Commander or other freebie. The Kindle data is stored in:
Android/data/Installed apps/com.amazon.kindle
Copy to an SD card in the phone or an USB key in the charging port and replace when you reinstall the Kindle app.
Hope that helps!
We are going to the Indian Bells Brewery on Sat. morning on the road up. Last time we were on the way home from Kennedy Meadows and wanted to stop but they were closed and it was Sunday morning.
I do recall from 40 years ago 9 mile canyon road was dirt and the logging trucks were up and down. Sawmill in Pearsonville has been gone for years.
It could be a landlord bail-out. I think occupancy rates are still a lot lower than historical averages, and I imagine that a lot of landlords with empty apartments will be happy to house immigrants if NYFC is paying anywhere near what they are paying the hotels. That drives up occupancy, so rents can increase, and NYFC gets more tax $ from the suckers that actually pay to live there.
And the slummy apartments would seem like palaces compared to what a lot of these people have experienced in their lives, and the landlords would not have to maintain them very well to keep the funds coming in…
NOTE: I would prefer that we actually enforce our border laws, fix our worker visa program, and even build dormitories to house those actually seeking asylum, so they are not released into the general population. OTOH – I totally understand why people are coming here illegally, since there appears to be no legal downside for them. They don’t have to worry; Uncle Joe’s got their backs.
Nightraker: That helped a lot. I found 4 screens of apps that I didn’t know I had.
I moved Kindle and Compass apps back where they should be and deleted 12 games, two Contact links I’d never seem before, three File access apps, three over Compasses, three or four music players, IMDb – whatever that is, three Go-To-Meetings apps, and several retail apps.
Thanks
@bob, you will be leaking less personal data, and probably get better battery life too!
Glad there was a solution.
n
IMDb; Internet Movie Database. Everything you ever wanted to know about any movie. Or TV show. Or actor.
@bob s:
Probably the app version of the eponymous website. the Internet Movie Database, which maintains information about most movies and tv shows, and the actors and actresses who appear in them.
Shouldn’t leak much data. The others? All bets are off, there.
I personally install very few apps on my ‘droid(s), and I check permissions carefully before doing so. In fact, most of my phone usage is voice calls and text messages. That and email is pretty much it on the main phone. I keep another for such things as my password manager, and the app that talks to my solar inverter (when I’m at home). That phone doesn’t have a SIM in it, and is my previous main phone, replaced when it went out of software support. It works perfectly, despite that.
G.
Whirlwind domestic trip coming up. St. Louis, Spokane, Colorado Springs, and back home, in less than 2 weeks. Theatre, music, food that’s bad for me, and lots of time in several airports, because of layovers.
All family related. Visiting sons and only granddaughter, with stuff about my brother’s estate sandwiched in the middle. I will also be speaking to lawyers and accountants and escrow firms. Pure joy, that.
I’m trying to get myself packed, and I have separate packing and to-do lists for each city. I will see temps in the 90’s and I will see snow.
I put Pike’s Peak on the to-do list; I’m not against playing tourist, and I’ve never been up there. I’ll bring up a VHF radio and see if I can reach other states. They claim you can get 4 of them with just a hand-held.
I’ll bring up a VHF radio and see if I can reach other states. They claim you can get 4 of them with just a hand-held.
– cool, activate it for SOTA… or not, as that looks like a lot of work.
n
I put Pike’s Peak on the to-do list; I’m not against playing tourist, and I’ve never been up there. I’ll bring up a VHF radio and see if I can reach other states. They claim you can get 4 of them with just a hand-held.
If you drive up to Pike’s Peak, be sure that you start with a full gas tank. I started with a quarter tank in my 1999 Ford Expedition and ended up with less than zero. I was fairly nervous the last half of the way down. But I followed the rules and drove down in second gear so I did not have to use the brakes very often.
I highly recommend the cog railroad.
Ok, after a little research, I’m going to back off the “4 states with just a handheld” thing.
4 states, barely, with a backpack rig and a good antenna, maybe. At least, VHF FM. Other rigs, other modes, other bands, much further, but I’m not lugging a backpack full of radio gear all over.
I may still try it, just for kicks, but I don’ t expect to cross any state lines.
WA State has estate tax of 10% after the first $2.2 million.
Plus the state’s capital gains tax passed the court challenge so collections started in April.
We learned about these things within the last week as my wife helped her mother write up a new will.
Capital gains taxes in a state with a constitutional prohibition on income taxes. Coming soon to Texas.
And, no, my mother-in-law’s estate is not $2.2 million.
Hooray! I can meet you, even if you are in a hurry and only have a few minutes. It takes me about a half hour to get there, so just give me an approximate ETA. If necessary, we can exchange phone numbers or email addresses here – just let me know what you want.
I called the Indian Wells Brewing Company, and confirmed that they are open 0930-1700 seven days a week, so you should be able to get in this time. I only got their recording, and their web site
http://mojavered.com/
seems to be down, but there is a Facebook post at
https://www.facebook.com/IndianWellsBrewingCompany
That post has different hours, but I would trust their phone message. I will keep trying, and update when I can confirm that they are open.
I used to go up Nine Mile Canyon to the back country to cut firewood back the 1980s. It was quite a slog, and I eventually found closer sources. Also went to the sawmill, but their trash pile was often a waste of time. Don’t miss those trips.
@Lynn
“We are going to have to do something about our large cities. I don’t know what but something.”
Reverse three generations of educating people not to work and depend on government.
Congress, as in the
Democratscommunists, just decided that there is no need for able-bodied Medicaid recipients to be working half-time.I remember dad telling me a story about a local guy that was found guilty of some sort of relatively minor crime. Could have done real jail time at county expense, but instead the judge asked him if he had a car. Finding that he did and it was in working condition, the judge gave him an alternative sentence: He was required to gravel a quarter mile of rural county road–visit a county gravel pile, load his trunk with gravel, take it to the assigned road, dump it and spread it. Repeat until the designated portion was complete to the satisfaction of the county supervisor.
Buncha wideouts getting a salary, meeting allowance, car allowance and cashing expense checks to boot can either get creative and find some work for “struggling families” or they can quit or get moved out of the way for someone who can do the job. First order of business would be auditing all the tax-frees benefits that already give people money and goods: food stamps, rent subsidies, tax refunds for taxes they never paid, cell phone subsidies, free cable, bus passes, etc.
How about we require them to work to pay the taxes on those benefits? Most people pay almost 15% off the top from the first dime for FICA (one way or another) and then income tax.
People who take government assistance shouldn’t be able to vote themselves more.
People who don’t work shouldn’t be subsidized by people that do.
@Greg Norton
“Walkin’ ’round money.”
Party favors for a Friday night.
“Mayor Eric Adams now wants to start paying every day New Yorkers to shelter migrants in their own homes – as the Big Apple struggles to find beds for the thousands of asylum seekers still flooding into the city.”
And suddenly, New York finds they have 4 million Somalis.
“Graham”, why do I suspect that the only hat you have you wear backwards?
Bob left the keys to Nick without a list of requirements.
I suspect it’s you who are the squatter. Defecate or get off the pot. If you believe you have a majic perskripshun for a better blog I’ll chip in first-year fees to help you buy a domain name and you can give it a shot.
Devin Nunes has some interesting things to say:
https://thenationalpulse.com/2023/06/05/trump-primary-foes-are-ass-backwards-and-asinine-says-ex-congressman/
goggles should be able to identify the
plantpolitician, and possibly identify what’s wrong with it.Fixed it for you.
How about the mayor set a good example and host half a dozen families in his mansion. One family per spare room, six people in a room as that is what the immigrants are used to living in. The mayor can even provide a Home Depot bucket for each room to be used as a toilet. Make the immigrants feel right at home.
And in other news. Today is the last night in Norway. We will be staying at a hotel close to the airport as we have a 9:00 AM flight to Vienna.
Our hosts have been fantastic. Today we got to lunch with them, dinner this evening, then I think they are planning to drive us to the airport. They really do more than I expect and sometimes it makes me uncomfortable for what they are doing. I try to pay for meals but am quickly stopped. The “we owe for taking care of our children” reasoning. At what point is it enough? Only they can decide.
We hosted the older daughter as a welcome family. We could not keep her full time as we had other issues with the aunt and her declining health issues. But we took her and another exchange student with us when we went places on overnight trips and some day trips. We really liked her and the joke is we gave her away.
The middle daughter was in Utah (I think I said Arkansas earlier and have been corrected by the wife). That daughter would have had to return home and repeat her school year if we had not taken her. For that the family is really grateful.
The problem the girl had in Utah was strange. Something to do with having fermented cider in her room, and she did not know it was fermented. Having any alcohol is immediate reason to end the exchange year and be sent home. The host parents were getting a divorce and the wife accused the girl of making sexual advances to the husband. I don’t believe that for a millisecond but it was enough for the exchange program to end her year.
The girls mother called us in a panic on Friday night at 10:00 (04:00 in Norway) and asked us if we could take her daughter for the rest of the year. We knew the mother and her family as we had visited in Norway and so the girl knew us. We had hoped to have the girl for an exchange year so it worked well for us. We said yes, the wife hammered the exchange program people in New York and convinced them to let the girl stay the rest of the year with us. We had used the exchange program many times so they were familiar with us.
The wife was told by the school principal to forge his signature on the paperwork needed by the exchange program to allow the girl to stay. The wife got everything done and by Sunday afternoon the girl had arrived at our house for the remainder of the year.
I don’t believe anything about what “supposedly” happened in Utah. I think the other child in the house was jealous and planted the bottle of cider. I also think the mother wrongfully accused the girl of sexual advances to get back at her husband in the divorce process.
Anyway, after this long winded drivel, the parents were really grateful the girl was able to complete her year, graduated from the local high school, and, the biggest reason, saved from the embarrassment of returning home early. And we were more than happy and willing to take the girl, which we wanted to do from the beginning.
The problem, as always, are mistakes. They do happen.
Back when I was in college, I remember a case in Greenville, Texas: a black guy commited some heinous crime (I don’t remember exactly what). There was exactly one black guy, a middle class engineer, living in Greenville at the time. Despite solid alibis, witnesses identified him as the criminal, and he was convicted. As I recall, it took years for him to get it reversed.
Exactly, and…exactly. If the prosecutor needs to up their conviction rate, if you screwed their daughter, or maybe their wife made them sleep on the sofa last night. They have power, and power corrupts…
Photos and even videos can now be faked beyond the ability of even experts to detect. Producing undetectable fakes may not yet be easy, but it is possible. And “easy” will happen in the next few years as the AI tools improve.
Jerk software developers at Apple. Turns out the calendar app in MacOS does not automatically change time zones. The iPhone calendar app will change time zones.
The result? I thought I had a 9:00 AM flight out of Oslo tomorrow. Nope, the flight is a 3:00 PM. The difference is the time change from home and Oslo. Because of the early flight I reserved a hotel close the airport. I cannot cancel the reservation.
Oh well, we get out of our hosts hair, being guests in the apartment, and can get some relaxing time before the flight. A mistake on my part. We have been in Oslo longer than planned because another student could not get off work. We have stayed in the apartment (three nights) which is long enough. The hotel, while not necessary, is not a bad option for the final night.
Lesson learned.
I had a similar experience. I was anxious about an empty tank as I was approaching the summit. But do note, very little petrol (gas) is used on the way down, you could almost coast it – low gear recommended as per Lynn.
Even videos. When I first watched Forest Gump I was impressed that the movie editors were able to place Forest in places he could never have actually been. There are forensics cameras that will checksum the captured image and supposedly the checksum will not match if even a couple of pixels are changed.
Even with things checksummed it can be faked. Case in point was the USAF that would checksum each program on the mainframes. If there was corruption it could be detected. Our programming team needed to patch programs, quickly, and going through the USAF Design Center could take weeks.
We could send out changes to our logic tables without going through the Design Center, not so with actual code changes. We did need to do code changes. We would send out code changes hidden in our logic table changes. These code changes would be applied, and if not done properly would change the checksum of the executables. We had a trick up our sleeves. The patches were designed in such a way that the code would be changed, then in the slack area at the end of the program file, additional data was place to make the checksum match.
We had reversed engineered the checksum process the Design Center used and could apply our own changes that would make the checksum match. In fairness to our approach, the Design Center people that designed the checksum process were not the shiniest card in the Hollerith deck of cards.
I drove to the top of Pike’s Peak twice while living in Colorado. This was in 1973 long before the road was paved. Halfway down there was a check point where officials would measure brake temperatures on the vehicle brakes. My brakes were barely warm in my 1964 VW Beetle as I was using low gear. Others were made to stop and wait.