Another wet day, slightly cooler, may change as the day goes on. No one knows. Yesterday ended with light rain, some thunder, and then nothing for the rest of the night. It was a little bit cooler, so that was nice.
I did auction stuff most of the day. I also bought the cams for my client, along with a replacement switch, and surge suppressors for the ethernet lines to the outdoor cams. Maybe they’ll help, maybe not, but they are relatively cheap at $12 each, so worth a try.
Today I might head out there, I might not. D2 has a camp physical scheduled for the middle of the morning, and swim practice at 5pm, so that means I start late, and finish early. Still might be worth getting out there. Or I could wait another day and maybe some of the cams will be here too. There is value in ‘showing the flag’ and I do get paid for each visit. I do try to make the visits COUNT though.
I’m sure I can fill my day with something…
Maybe I should do some shopping. I moved a bunch of chicken to the BOL, so I have room in the freezers here. Pork looked like it was headed down on my last store trip. I’m fine with picking up shoulder, loin, or ribs if they’re cheap. I should also replace the cans that were damaged when the fruit cans ruptured. I’d prefer to do that when they are on sale, but IDK if waiting is a good idea. There is always the tension between buying when the stuff is available, and hoping that the price will be lower later. Most of the cans I bought for around $1 each, and they are almost double that now. I’m not confident that they will ever go on sale again… although the irregular and unofficial sale rotation should be hitting canned veg in a week or two at my local HEB.
Shopping regularly and having a feel for what goes on sale and when can help you stock up for less, and economize even during normal times. Supply chain issues and a worsening economy can disrupt that though, and sometimes it best to buy it when you see it.
I guess we’ll see.
If you see stuff you buy on sale, stack it up.
nick
re Pikes Peak, you don’t have to worry about gas and brakes if you walk up.
re checksums for programs or photos or other data, there’s a difference between a checksum to make sure that nothing got corrupted along the way and a checksum to detect malicious intent. If the makers of forensic cameras aren’t using a cryptographically strong algorithm … well, as the saying goes, I’d be disappointed but not surprised.
re the exchange student’s misadventures in Utah, I’ve seen similar. Have not performed off-the-books cleanup because the victim waffled and then declined, even though legal “justice” offered no remedy and left the malefactor in place and offered no relief for the victim.
This. Consulting is hard, and not for everyone. I did it for a company for 6 years and was very good at it. We had no guaranteed income, as we were paid from hours billed exclusively, with a tiny bit of some overhead work for the company – usually only a couple hours a month. I never went below 40 hours a week, and usually averaged 50. The key is building relationships with clients. Trust is earned (both ways). I had a couple larger clients which helped a lot. They were just small enough to not being able to justify full-time IT support, so they always had plenty to do. They key was always to use trips efficiently, both for their budget and my time management requirements.
I also supported a couple car dealerships for 4 years before that on my own. It was purely after business hours, as I had a regular job. They understood this and it was never an issue, as they liked my support. I stopped that work as I actually went to work for one (which folded a year later, another story) and continued supporting the other (both parties knew and were ok with the arrangement) until that business was sold. The new owners and I were not compatible…
Sunny and warm this fine day.
Title is from a song…
Wife is work from home and will do the Dr visit with D2 as there may be ‘female’ considerations. It will probably be the last visit with the Pediatrician.
Which means I have time to do some things. Just have to decide what to do…
n
Get in the truck, pop in “I Can’t Drive 55” … and then not be able to run any errands because your face is posted, wanted dead or alive.
@ITGuy1998, yeah, being independent is rewarding but also has pitfalls. Relationships are the key. I’ve been taking care of this client for more than a decade now, and we have a very comfortable relationship.
Coming from the entertainment industry I think in terms of days and half days, rather than hours. Just as a check, on my last invoice I figured my time both ways, hours and flat rate for days or half days, and they still came out similar. Days are a more convenient unit for me, although I still keep a log of hours, it’s just not critical to be accurate or complete. Since I’ll have to fix the mess eventually, I don’t want to do anything that would dissuade my client from calling me as soon as there is a problem. I can usually provide phone support immediately (and he’s become pretty savvy about resetting things) and on site support next day.
When I ‘took over’ the care and feeding of the system we did a major upgrade that was aimed at increasing reliability and serviceability. It worked to the point that often months will go by without any issues. That’s pretty good for a lightning damaged rack full of gear and more networking than some small offices.
n
Consulting – I like the work, but hate the net working and selling aspect.
Mounted new towel racks in the guest apartment. The interior walls were added later, so I hoped they would just be brick. Nope, concrete. Swiss buildings are sometimes a bit crazy…
Drilling without shattering the bathroom tiles – can’t use a hammer-drill. So I used bits designed for ceramic. They kind of grind their way through, but don’t last all that long. Managed to finish, but the bits are trash now.
Not least the spousal relationship. My wife valued security and stability much more than gross income (though she complained about that, too, whenever one of her acquaintances got something that she didn’t have) and pitched a fit whenever I didn’t bill enough some month, never mind that I billed 200 hours the previous month. It didn’t help that at first we kept a joint bank account and she spent whatever was in it without a thought for setting some aside for a rainy day; my putting my income into a personal account was the cause of much screaming.
I’ve previously mentioned here that having a good spouse or partner is a big step on the way to success but that a bad spouse is nothing but misery and poverty. I’ve also mentioned here that I’m not the first to observe this, Socrates having said something similar and the observation being no doubt millennia older than that.
One bit, four holes. The cheap bits for ceramic aren’t worth buying. I didn’t notice any improvement with a very expensive diamond (dust?) tipped bit.
>> There is always the tension between buying when the stuff is available, and hoping that the price will be lower later. Most of the cans I bought for around $1 each, and they are almost double that now. I’m not confident that they will ever go on sale again…
It will be interesting to see what happens to prices once POTUS 47 (fill in your choice) gets inflation under control – will the price of the $1 can of veg be back (close) to $1 or will the corporate greed mongers seize the opportunity to price it at, say $1.50, and then shout about the 50 cent price cut?
JimB,
We plan on leaving from OC about 8 AM and going up the 14 to Indian Wells and getting around 11, and then Kennedy Meadows by 12 to 12:30. We expect to leave the store about 2:30 and arrive at the Best Western in Lone Pine around 4 PM.
[redacted]
As long as the Fed continues to print money to cover the shortfall at Treasury auctions at a rate of $1 Trillion per year, inflation will not be under control.
$1.50. I still see Bush’s “Grillin’ Beans” on an endcap at Sam’s for $2+ per can, more than $9 for a 4-pack.
Mpox endemic! We are all going to die!
They say that a picture is worth 1000 words, but, in this case, the caption of the picture tells you who is at risk for monkey pox.
Stay out of the bathhouses.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2023/06/07/mpox-cdc-hillsborough-pinellas-outbreak-monkeypox/
The latest and greatest thing for putting holes in tiles etc. are (consumable) diamond-encrusted bits that go on an angle-grinder. Look up ASIN B09NKWLNPZ on Big River Germany for an example. Quicker than the diamond-tipped core-drill bits, and they can be run dry (but use a vacuum cleaner for the dust.)
AI continues to be The Most Important Thing In The World, and the crazy customer requests keep rolling in at work.
The dollar amounts involved make me wonder if this really is going to be seen as the long sought-after tool used to eliminate a lot of lower skill white collar employment.
During my time in the industry, Corporate America doesn’t spend money like this unless the investment lets them can people.
Whether or not AI contributes to that goal, we may not know for sure until a major tipping point is passed.
@CowboyStu, I just sent you an email. Thanks for the address.
@stu, I edited your comment to remove the email, now that Jim has it.
n
– “disproportionately”. I think the word they are looking for was “primarily”.
I guess the old joke about “s#ck one d!ck and you’re gay forever” doesn’t apply anymore? “men who have sex with men” oy vey.
n
If a person Assigned Male at Birth identifies as a woman and has sex with men, or with other AMABs who identify as women, does that count as “men who have sex with men”? Gotta say, keeping up with these things is much more difficult than it was back when there were men and there were women and everyone knew which you were as soon as you were born.
Thanks, @Nick.
“it’s a miracle, a boy without a winkle…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1dxZ8srDM4
n
you’d think some career crims would know better…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12169525/Crew-mobsters-arrested-brazen-daylight-2-MILLION-diamond-heists-Manhattan.html
Spotted on video before the robbery getting dressed.
Then “Cell phone records linked several of the suspects to one another, before, during and after the holdup, Major Case Squad detectives said. ”
– things to take into consideration when you take your inspirations from “the fifth of November.”
n
Men Who Love Women Who Love Men
>> The dollar amounts involved make me wonder if this really is going to be seen as the long sought-after tool used to eliminate a lot of lower skill white collar employment.
@Greg, are you talking about purpose-built ML (eg parsing out transaction-specific data) or human ‘drones’ generating cr@p content (eg press releases)? Or something else?
And I’ve yet to hear much about any copyright infringement from the likes of ChatGPT freely pulling data from random internet sites.
Thanks, Nick. Jim and I have exchanged info.
Phone number for Jenny is 907-867-5309.
I’m not sure that any copyright is infringed when ChatGPT just makes up quotes, citations, and caselaw.
Did you hear about the lawyer who submitted a legal filing generated by ChatGPT, and when the judge’s office checked they found that most of the caselaw cites were fake? The judge was neither impressed nor amused by the lawyer’s use of this technology.
Which answers the rhetorical question: What if Stacy’s Mom was Jessie’s girl and her phone number was 867-5309?
Since I routinely answer rhetorical questions, the obvious answer is that her name is Jenny.
Halfway to the airport from home, I realized I didn’t pack my down jacket, wool hat, and gloves.
I’ll pick up a cheap sweatshirt at Walmart and hope it’s not too cold atop Pike’s Peak. I have 9 days before I fly to CO from WA.
You know when the pilot or co-pilot do that walk-around thing on the airplane looking for problems while passengers are loaded? I often wondered how thorough they really were.
Apparently, pretty thorough. My flight was delayed an hour while they changed two tires. I feel pretty good about that, overall.
Corporate America seems to have bought into sales pitches about what the technology could offer down the road in terms of replacing low level white collar workers so they’re rolling the dice and investing in the hardware now as we enter a recession, expecting to be able to avoid rehiring people later as the economy improves and new AI models emerge offering more sophisticated capabilities than writing press releases, screening resumes, or offering function call suggestions in software development environments.
Portland Airport has a Columbia Store in the lobby, on the way to ground transportation. If the clueless don’t get the hint, the on-site shopping plaza accessible from both the train and first freeway exit includes a Carhartt store.
The shopping center also had a Sports Authority, but I imagine that is long gone and empty.
I witnessed a plane pushed back from the gate with an oil leak, looked like hydraulic fluid. About a pencil thick stream. The plane got far enough back to where the pilot could see the fluid streak on the ground. They pulled back from the gate. I have wondered if the leak was visible from the ground inspection.
Currently at the Scandic Hotel at the Oslo airport. An unneeded stay due to the MacOS calendar not automatically adjusting the time zone even with time zone support enabled. The OS knew the time had changed, apparently the calendar did not.
Our flight does not leave until 3:00 PM. We could have stayed in downtown Oslo for much less money. The room is small, the beds are small. The hotel shuttle charged us $30.00 for a shuttle to and from the airport. The bathroom at the train station was $0.91 for each of us. And a crappy bathroom at that (yeh, make your jokes).
I think if Norway could find a way to charge for air, they would.
So tomorrow, Vienna. Hoping for a good nights sleep.
Every Dilbert comic published from April 16, 1989 to March 12, 2023. All on one page.
https://ecstrema.github.io/dilbert/#Friday%20April%2019,%201991
“The Debt Disaster” By Terence P. Jeffrey
https://www.creators.com/read/terence-jeffrey/05/23/the-debt-disaster
“Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — both of whom are career politicians — made a deal this week. They agreed to let the federal debt increase without any limit whatsoever until Jan. 1, 2025.”
“For career politicians that date has special significance: It is after the 2024 elections, but before whomever wins those elections takes office. It is a date designed to minimize debate over the debt in the days leading up to the election.”
“Earlier this month — before Biden and McCarthy made their deal — the Congressional Budget Office put out a budget analysis based on the laws as they then stood. It said: “Deficits generally increase over the coming years in CBO’s projections, totaling $20 trillion over the 2024-2033 period. As a result of those deficits, debt held by the public grows significantly in CBO’s projections, rising from 98 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year to 119 percent in 2033 — which would be the highest level of U.S. debt ever recorded.””
@ Ray Thompson
“The bathroom at the train station was $0.91 for each of us.”
Is t.p. Included, or is the dispenser coinop?
I knew a military pilot who said that if the plane had a fluid leak it was no problem. It was when the leak stopped that you had a problem.
I don’t know if he survived to become an old pilot.
I knew a military pilot who said that if the plane had a fluid leak it was no problem. It was when the leak stopped that you had a problem.
I don’t know if he survived to become an old pilot.
Nah, the leak can make things bad too. My uncle had to jump out of B-52 D model (before the engine thrust reversers) that landed at Carswell AFB in Fort Worth one fine day in the 1970s. When the pilot hit the brakes, the front hydraulic brake hose blew out, the hydraulic fluid hit the hot brake rotors and caught on fire (not suppose to happen). All they could see out of the front of the plane was fire so they bailed out at 80 mph. The plane ended up in the 300 foot deep lake at the end of the runway which was a big problem since it had a “special” on it.
“Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor’s Guide to the Underworld (InCryptid)” by Seanan Lynn McGuire
https://www.amazon.com/Spelunking-Through-Hell-Underworld-InCryptid/dp/0756418631?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number eleven of a twelve book dark urban fantasy series. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB that I bought new from Amazon. There are several other Crossroads books and short stories in the Incryptid universe. I will purchase book twelve in the series when the MMPB is released.
Alice Price-Healy has been looking for her husband, Thomas Price, for fifty years since the Crossroads collected on his debt and sent him to another universe. In the first chapter, Alice crashes through a bar window, breaking several bones including a severe compound fracture of her leg which she heals with a healing tattoo.
In the second chapter, Alice is undergoes a full flensing while conscious in the snake universe, one universe over from Earth, so that they can renew her transportal, healing, breathing, warming, and etc tattoos to protect her while she is looking for Thomas. Then she goes looking for Thomas again for the umpteenth time.
The author has a website at:
https://www.seananmcguire.com/
Note: Even though the author and I share the same middle and last name, I paid for my book and was not compensated for my review. I have no idea if we are directly related.
My rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (1,053 reviews)
Sweatshirt. Windbreaker. Hat. Sunglasses. Sunscreen.
It could be sunny and bright, yet still cool or cold. Typically about 30F cooler than in the Springs.
It could be foggy and dim. It could be dark and stormy.
It’s usually windy.
“U.S. diesel demand is falling despite economic growth”
https://hydrocarbonprocessing.com/news/2023/06/us-diesel-demand-is-falling-despite-economic-growth/
“(Reuters) – U.S. diesel demand will drop through 2024 despite growing economic activity, extending a recent break from tradition where demand for the freight fuel grows with GDP, the Energy Information Administration forecast on Tuesday.”
Very simple, much of our diesel usage (transportation, heating, power generation, etc) has been converted to natural gas which is about 1/4 the cost. More is coming. Cost drives everything except when the stupid government disturbs the marketplace.
Tucker Carlson on Twitter, first episode.
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1666203439146172419
Tucker says that the Ukranians blew up the dam, not the Russians. The lack of the water will affect Crimea which is Russian controlled.
88 million views in less than 24 hours.
“Colin Kaepernick Transitions In Order To Make Carolina Panthers Cheer Squad”
https://babylonbee.com/news/colin-kaepernick-transitions-in-order-to-make-carolina-panthers-cheer-squad
“CHARLOTTE, NC – Colin Kaepernick has made his way back into the NFL as a cheerleader for the Carolina Panthers. He will be the team’s first African American Transgender Poly-Bi Cheerleader and will be joining the team on road games.”
Oh my. The Bee is letting it all hang out.
Eye bleach alert. Since Colin seems to like being on his knees he might as well be a cheerleader. Ick.
Wow! That’s more than Gropey Joe got votes, and it took him over a week for them to be
manufacturedtabulated.If the numbers are coming from .gov I assume the numbers are a lie.
“Deepmind’s AI Is Learning About the Art of Coding”
https://www.wired.com/story/deepminds-ai-is-learning-about-the-art-of-coding/
“AlphaDev has made small but significant improvements to decades-old C++ algorithms. Its builders say that’s just the start.”
“But last year, an AI system developed by engineers at Google’s Deepmind improved on great by just enough to matter. The system, which Deepmind calls AlphaDev, was tasked with coming up with a new way to sort short sequences in numbers in C++, the popular coding language. It meant going under the hood and having the AI build new algorithms in assembly code—the instructions that bridge the gap between programming languages like C++ and computer hardware. When a C++ developer tells the computer to “sort,” those commands are converted into machine-readable code that tells a computer’s memory and processor exactly what to do: where to move data, and how to change it. It’s where bits meet the metal.”
“That comes with significant constraints, of course. “These are tiny, tiny programs,” he adds—totaling no more than a few dozen instructions in assembly code. But those tiny programs often represent big bottlenecks for computer performance, having been optimized as far as people can push them. Overall, AlphaDev’s new C++ sorting algorithms are 1.7 percent more efficient than the prior methods when sorting long sequences of numbers, and up to 70 percent faster for five-item sequences. At scale, these improvements add up, Mankowitz says. Since the AI-written code was submitted to Libc++, a major open-source library for C++, he estimates the algorithms have been used trillions of times a day.”
This may be the limit for AI on coding.
I’d be more impressed if the AI came up with a significantly faster Json parsing library.
std::sort() has kinda been done to death, and one of my favorite C++ interview questions is to ask candidates which is faster, C’s qsort() or the C++ std:: sort(). Then I ask them to explain their position.
Sorting is O(n log n) for the general case. That isn’t going to change.
What’s really concerning is that I remember reading that the Master Method of O() analysis was proven mathematically so a lot of courses will eventually drop the algebraic analys of running times in favor of simply teaching the formula. That compounds the issue of dropping statistical analysis in that the students really lose touch about why the time is n log n in most cases because they’ve never gone through the math, making it easier for the snake oil salesmen.
A Tampa Bay Yucs cheerleader throwback uniform would have been more in line with Colin getting his freak on.
Teaching AIs to code, what could possibly go wrong?
and is this the same google that said publicly several years ago that they were seeing emergent behavior in their datacenters?
n
I like the inCryptid series… The monkey boyfriend/roller derby one kinda wandered, and the constant prejudice awareness and wokeness was annoying. This one looks fun though.
n
Google fired an employee for saying that he believed that he saw self awareness in one system.
Right now the big vendors don’t care. Their consumer business has fallen off of a cliff.
The short term problem is a scarcity of the key GPU chips.
And none of this is “green” by any stretch.
Don’t like your job? better not quit….
8 people, 45 bags.
n
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12171185/Boeing-used-counterfeit-tools-NASA-rockets-lawsuit-claims.html
After the first time, they worked with Boeing AGAIN….
n
>> Currently at the Scandic Hotel at the Oslo airport. An unneeded stay due to the MacOS calendar not automatically adjusting the time zone even with time zone support enabled. The OS knew the time had changed, apparently the calendar did not.
@Ray, do you use Outlook on your device? Can’t personally vouch for the Mac version but with the Win versions I’ve used over the years I never saw an issue with changing time zones.
YMMV
OMG, when I was traveling for work Outlook would ALWAYS get the time zones wrong. I had to put the flight time in the title of the appointment, or I’d never know what time the flight actually was.
They clearly built outlook for desktops, never considering that the computer itself would move. That design choice haunted Outlook until at least 12 years ago when I stopped using it.
n
@Lynn
“Very simple, much of our diesel usage (transportation, heating, power generation, etc) has been converted to natural gas which is about 1/4 the cost. More is coming. Cost drives everything except when the stupid government disturbs the marketplace.”
And coincidentally, natural gas is a lot harder to store than diesel.
>> 8 people, 45 bags.
Definitely wasting bags, (which somehow, lol, causes climate change,) they need to watch a fee clips from Dexter during new hire orientation.
Or there’s always this approach: (might want to turn down the sound if you just ate) https://www.google.com/amp/s/observer.com/2015/02/the-americans-3×2-the-grossest-scene-of-2015/amp/
Yeah, climate change. As if it didn’t.
The youtube vid I’m watching has a “context box” about “climate change” from the UN… because while he’s restoring the painting he says “climate change” 4 times. Oops, 5 times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0_AuhqUN2U
n
>> ‘Best guess is these kids had decided they wanted out of the business,’ the U.S. official said.
Wait, what? The cartel has a call center?
Press 1 for an issue with dismembering a body
Press 2 if your drug shipment weight was incorrect
Press 3 to puurchase hand grenades or bazookas
Press 0 to speak to a guerilla or mercenary
>> The youtube vid I’m watching has a “context box” about “climate change” from the UN… because while he’s restoring the painting he says “climate change” 4 times. Oops, 5 times.
Always a handy phrase for an impromptu game of ‘drinking bingo’ (non-alcoholic libations where appropriate of course)
– so their recommendation engine works. Works well in fact. And the pedos exploit that by using it to spread, just like any other thing on social media. Although ‘exploit’ isn’t quite right when the system is just doing what it’s designed to do.
n
Wait, what? The cartel has a call center?
– apparently some sort of time share scam.
n
SF Bart Ridership:
2020 before Kungflu: 140k
Kungflu crash to 5k
2023 “recovered” to 40k (off 72%)
Begging for state help.
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/06/07/san-francisco-supervisors-beg-sacramento-lawmakers-to-save-their-city-from-a-doom-loop-n556452
PLT’s always have someone to blame.
Sounds like the Digital Equipment Corporation Bliss compiler, 40 years ago. Or the common language optimizer that was written in the 90’s. Or the code generator written for the Alpha processor.
The optimizer used even more arcane tricks than Dave Cutler did, but at least no one was ever expected to do maintenance on the optimizer’s generated code.
Cutlerisms:
In some assemblers, branch statements are costly and jump statements are even costlier. I’ve heard Cutler used to write statements that just added to the Program Counter to save one byte and a teeny bit of time, at the cost of completely unreadable code.
He left DEC to go to Msft and helped them produce NT (by copying VMS). Windows NT = WNT = V+1 M+1 S+1.
After he left DEC, the VMS engineering team had a party when they removed the last line of original Cutler code from VMS.
DEC was populated by geniuses who couldn’t sell ice water in Hell.
Sheriff Grady Judd never seems to have a problem filling a whole afternoon of arrests with the same basic pedo sting operation out in the stucco shack developments out near the Western Way area of the Disney property.
I’d never been out to that complex until we got a little lost hurrying back from lunch on the last trip. Geesh, that is creepy – one stop shopping for the pervs.
Sun was pretty good with deploying the hookers and steaks to cover their inadequacies and generate sales. Sitting in one interview with a company in Portland, a former Sun compiler engineer told me that my project at GTE probably paid a 60% performance penalty using their C++ toolchain instead of my homebrew cross-compiled version of G++.
My solution for running down memory leaks was totally verboten Red Hat Linux and an early version of Valgrind on my Pentium 75 at home. The Solaris tools were useless.
My camera order is shipping in 4 separate boxes, arriving in 4 shipments. Three from B&H, one from the manufacturer. How does that make sense?
n
>> Gotta say, keeping up with these things is much more difficult than it was back when there were men and there were women and everyone knew which you were as soon as you were born.
It was easier when all that you needed to know was your and her ‘degree of consanguinity.’
>> My camera order is shipping in 4 separate boxes, arriving in 4 shipments. Three from B&H, one from the manufacturer. How does that make sense?
Consider who runs B&H?
>> Phone number for Jenny is 907-867-5309.
All I noticed at first glance was the Alaska area code and I wondered why someone would post ‘our’ Jenny’s number… and then I looked at the rest of the number…
AI deepfake technology.
Just the image though, voice by a radio personality.
https://auralcrave.com/en/2023/04/23/charles-barkley-in-fanduel-commercial-whos-young-chuck/
Dilbert Reborn June 8, 2023
https://www.reddit.com/r/dilbert/comments/1440a45/dilbert_reborn_june_8_2023/
Included, when the dispenser is not empty. Happened one time. For charging for bathrooms, the bathrooms are in horrible shape.
I wasn’t using the Outlook calendar but the Apple calendar. The Apple calendar allows me to sync calendars between my MacBook, iPad, and iPhone along with the shared calendar on the wife’s devices.
The calendar on the iPhone and iPad will automatically adjust to the OSes time zone. Not so with the calendar application on the Mac. I can manually select the time zone. Maybe there is a setting that I missed.
I do use Outlook for my email client.
Off to Vienna today. The breakfast at the hotel was really good. A tremendous variety, the second best I have ever seen. The first was in a hotel in downtown Oslo from six years ago.
In Vienna we will stay in a hotel as there is no room in the apartment of the person we are visiting. Typical of European towns. Tiny places to live at really high prices. I sometimes feel claustrophobic in these places.
The exchange rate is in our favor in Norway. When I first visited is was six kroner to one US dollar. It is now 11 kroner to one US dollar. Stuff is still expensive even with the favorable exchange rate
I am not certain about Vienna as they use the Euro which is fairly close to 1 for 1 with a slight advantage to the Euro.
I don’t carry cash anymore as everything that uses money will use a credit card. Even the train station toilets. It would seem the cost of the transaction would far exceed the money received. I don’t know if transaction fees are charged in Europe. My credit card does not charge foreign fees, which for my bank issued credit card is 4%.