Mon. Aug. 21, 2023 – lots to do this week, 1st full week of school too…

By on August 21st, 2023 in culture, decline and fall, ebay, march to war

Hot, yep. Humid, yep. Miserable outdoors, yep. It does seem like this has been going on for longer than usual, outside of the drought year. Funny that I’m not seeing huge scare stories about the drought.

Lake at the BOL is still higher than last year too.

I did mostly small jobs all day yesterday. Other than cutting the grass in the back yard, I was doing non-essential or low priority jobs. Some for auctions, some for household cleanup, some just domestic bliss.

One of the things I did that definitely could have waited, but fits in the cleanup and auction categories, was going through a couple of pairs of boots in the closet. Had to determine if they were for me, and fit, or if they needed something before going to the auction. I ended up cleaning, conditioning, and even touching up the color on several pairs. At some point I picked up a box of leather paints and leather dyes. It’s pretty cool to do some quick fixes and have a dramatic improvement in look. Most boots and shoes look much better just with a leather treatment and a brushing. It’s definitely a prep to have good quality footwear and the tools to maintain it. Plus it is a lot cheaper to keep a pair nice than to replace them, or to get a used pair and bring them back to like new condition.

Today I should be able to take some stuff to my local auctioneer. Wife will be happy to have the bins out of the foyer. I should also list some high value items on ebay. It would be nice to do a couple of quick sales and make some money. Since I’ll be home this week and coming weekend, this will be a good time to list some things I think will sell right away.

While doing the other auction stuff I’ve also got to start pulling stuff together for my upcoming swapmeet/convention/show… It would be nice to make some real sales there too.

Focus this week will be on selling and getting ready to sell, so tangentially on money… Money is a prep. Earning it, spending it wisely, saving it, and making it work for you are all skills you can improve. Work on your money skills.

And stack. Always stack.
nick

81 Comments and discussion on "Mon. Aug. 21, 2023 – lots to do this week, 1st full week of school too…"

  1. nick flandrey says:

    Up to feed the kids and boot them out the door…

    Anyone who is in the heavy rain area, and is fine, please share with the group.   If you are not fine, let us know too, when you are safe and you can.

    It looks like it was generally overblown, but that is the way our system works now.  Doesn’t mean that localized tragedies didn’t occur.   I will say it’s odd watching someone else get a hurricane.

    But it’s also possible that we’ll get our turn in the barrel soon enough.

    n

  2. brad says:

    Boots. I bought a pair of hiking boots (brand CMP) some years ago. All leather, and they took a beating for years, but they are now done.

    Went back to the online shop this Spring, to buy the same brand. Nothing is all-leather anymore. Instead they are all the typical, modern walking boots with mostly synthetic uppers. Having no choice, and hoping for the best, I bought a pair. I’ve done maybe 10=15 hikes this summer, averaging about 5 miles each. That may not sound all that far, and maybe it’s not, but we’re in the mountains, so it’s not a stroll down the street either.

    Anyway, inside the back of the boots, the fabric is starting to work loose from whatever is underneath it. I have to be careful to smooth out the wrinkles  before lacing. I expect another few hikes, the fabric will be completely loose, and the boots will be trash.

    Why? I understand your average soccer mom wants modern looking walking shoes, because she’s never actually going on a serious hike. Fine, but why make that the only option?

    There’s a serious mountaineering store near the town we used to live in. I’ll have to go back there to get some real hiking boots.

  3. Greg Norton says:

    The A/C is having trouble keeping up in my office and the back of the house.  Hopefully it will catch up soon.

    Just a single unit for your house ?  If desperate, throw one of your window units in the window of the back of the house.   It is going to be hot all this week.

    Our system in Florida at five tons wasn’t adequate for 2700 sq ft given the humidity. Our master bedroom was never right.

    We were given a choice 22 years ago – spend  $17,000 to split the system and install two three ton units – the right way to do the job – or $7,000 on the five ton, directly replacing a four which was really inadequate.

    Since we were still on PMI with the mortgage during pre-bubble Florida real estate in an 8% (!) 30 year environment, I couldn’t justify the $17k.

    The first thing the new owners did in 2011 was replace the AC, but, based on the permit, it looks like they had to make the same choice I did and opted to keep the single system. Maybe it works with the high speed blowers and the right zone controls.

    Rates are drifting back towards 8%. When we bought the Florida house, we thought we lucked out at that rate. Now, absent the property tax ‘reform’ going through on the November ballot, it could crater the Texas real estate market.

  4. Denis says:

    Brad, the Meindl “Identity” line are all leather. I have both the walking shoes and the walking boots. Excellent and comfortable. Not cheap, though.

    https://www.identity-leder.de/identity-welt/

    My hunting boots are also leather Meindls. Holding up beautifully after 15 years of hard use, and so good that I bought a spare identical pair.

  5. Nick Flandrey says:

    Currently  82f.  Bus was late b7t not terribly.   

    N

  6. nick flandrey says:

    Someone flew a commercial drone over the area just south of me.   It made a couple of big circles then went on its way.   Big like Predator sized.

    I went to adsbexchange.com hoping to look back in time by half an hour to see who it was, but they seem to have removed their historical feature…   that sux.  Flightaware filters and doesn’t even show some traffic, and it’s delayed by 15 minutes.   That delay would have worked in my favor today IF I’d jumped on the site instead of eating breakfast, and IF they weren’t filtering out traffic from whoever was flying the thing.

    n

  7. Greg Norton says:

    I went to adsbexchange.com hoping to look back in time by half an hour to see who it was, but they seem to have removed their historical feature…   that sux.  Flightaware filters and doesn’t even show some traffic, and it’s delayed by 15 minutes.   That delay would have worked in my favor today IF I’d jumped on the site instead of eating breakfast, and IF they weren’t filtering out traffic from whoever was flying the thing.

    Set up your own “ADS-B Out” receiver. $50 worth of hardware, an antenna, plus whatever PC or embedded system you use for the data logging.

  8. brad says:

    @Denis: Thanks for the recommendation – I’ll have a look! Being a German brand, I’m sure I can get them here.

  9. nick flandrey says:

    Despite the inflammatory language, there is some interesting info in the article.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/banking/article-12416969/Americas-bank-branch-bloodbath-laid-bare-New-Jersey-sees-highest-proportion-bank-closures-state-firms-like-Wells-Fargo-PNC-abandon-1-000-locations-branch-affected.html 

    My local BofA branch does a booming business.   Lots of small businesses needing cash to pay their illegal workers.   Lots of hispanics cashing checks.

    n

  10. EdH says:

    Things were fine for me here in the high desert.  Friends in town said there was localized flooding and power outages.  

    NOAA weather recording from the nearest airport (KWJF)  went offline about 4pm yesterday, but the personal weather station nearest to me says 3.2” total rain yesterday, which feels about right. Just sprinkles today.

    It also says winds hit 18mph occasionally, which is less than usual.

    All alerts have been canceled, but localized flooding and ponding is still a real issue.

    I imagine most of the homeless encampments in the normally dry river and creek beds have been swept away.

  11. CowboyStu says:

    2.19 in of rain in my NW portion of Huntington Beach.  Looks like it is mostly over here. 

  12. dkreck says:

    1.02″ here but more out to the desert. Tehachapi pass trains not running probably due to flooding at Sand canyon between Tehachapi and Mojave. Several flash flood warnings last night out that way. Lots of aftershocks near Ojai but all 2 & 3 range.

  13. MrAtoz says:

    Off to Vegas tomorrow. MrsAtoz has her surgery on Wednesday. She still wants to fly to Crooklyn on Sunday. We’ll fly into JFK. We sprang for Jet Blue “Mint” class with the sleep pod. Jet Blue back, “Mint” for her, I’ll be in the cargo hold to save some loot.

    I’m taking my travel guitar on this trip. The Mogabi. I bought Rick Beato’s course. He is really dry as an instructor, so I’m looking at Lauren Bateman’s course. Maybe GuitarTricks, too. I can strum a mean Eminor chord. LOL. Hi, Ms. Jenny.

  14. dkreck says:

    Oh Hwy 58 too.

    SR 58

    [IN THE CENTRAL CALIFORNIA AREA]
    Is closed from 3.4 mi east of Edison /at Towerline Rd/ to Randsburg Cutoff Rd /in Warren/ (Kern Co) – Due to flooding – Motorists are advised to use an alternate route

  15. drwilliams says:

    @Denis

    ”so good that I bought a spare identical pair.”

    Good practice whenever you find some article of clothing that works for you. 

  16. nick flandrey says:

    Can he lick himself?  And has he been properly neutered?

    n

  17. drwilliams says:

    More background on what a Biden insider Weiss was from the start:

    https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/08/21/hunter-biden-document-dump-over-the-weekend-n572475

  18. MrAtoz says:

    Can he lick himself?  And has he been properly neutered?

    If it IS Butto, yes and yes.

    Also, LMFAO!

  19. nick flandrey says:

    Lazy Girl Jobs.    Oy vey.

    Rise of the Lazy Girl jobs: Demand for posts that offer working from home and are low effort are in huge demand among Gen Zers – these are the 25 most sought-after roles 

     

    The internet is moving past ‘quiet quitting’ – when someone does the bare minimum at work. But a new phenomenon that piggybacks on this premise has emerged – the ‘lazy girl’ job.

    n

  20. ITGuy1998 says:

    Glad to see the big storm in CA turned out to mild. My in-laws in Laguna Woods didn’t have any issues. My wife has other family in various areas of Southern CA and none of them reported anything major.

    I dropped off both dogs this mooning to be spayed. I had contemplated doing one at a time, but in the end I decided to have both at the same time. Hopefully we can keep them both inactive until they heal. Two golden retrievers. Yeah…

    The HVAC talk here, along with me speaking nicely of our systems to my neighbor just last week, has caused my upstairs unit to begin to falter. It still runs, but won’t keep up with the high temperatures. Both are 13 years old, so I’m going to get quotes to replace both, but I can wait on the downstairs unit until its cooler if necessary. Once I have the upstairs unit replacement scheduled, I’m going to try checking the charge and adding more refrigerant, if necessary. I have all the equipment and a bottle 401a. If I mess something up, well, the system will be replaced anyways. I can do a new system, but existing is more involved.

  21. MrAtoz says:

    You’ll eat your cerals and like ’em, Skippy!

    Tufts’ Food Compass…It’s Worse Than You Thought

    Frosted Mini-Wheats are 3+ times better for you than eggs, cheese, and beef. Bacon isn’t on the list because it causes Insta-DeathTM.

  22. drwilliams says:

    I used 4 lbs of butter in chocolate chip cookies last week. 

    A pound of bacon and a dozen farm eggs went for breakfast. 

    I was out of 16-penny nails so I had a side of railroad spikes. 

  23. SteveF says:

    drwilliams, how big was that batch of cookies? And what did you use to mix it?

    I use a pound of butter when I make a double batch of choc chip cookies. Nothing fancy about the recipe but everyone says they’re some of the best cookies they’ve ever had. I deduce that that’s because I use butter and large eggs rather than “healthier” vegetable shortening and small eggs.

  24. CowboyStu says:

    …….between Tehachapi and Mojave…….

    I have driven that on 58, then a right on a FS road and up to Lake Isabella.

    WRT Randsburg:  My SIL and I are looking to stop in to The Joint there on the way up to  Lone Pine.  Then Indian Wells Brewery on the way back.

  25. JimB says:

    I was up late last night watching for flooding. Our house and garage were fine. It was raining too hard to go beyond our roof overhangs, so I didn’t see the extent of the damage on the downhill street at the end of our driveway. This morning, it was raining lightly when I took the trash out. The street self-graded just fine, but in the process broke through and deposited 6” of sand across our driveway and mailbox jog, which are unpaved. This will take heavy equipment to restore, but everything is passable for now. I have a neighbor with a grader, and he has been waiting for moisture to do some work around us. He has it now!

    It was overcast and 64F; I needed a light jacket to take out the trash. Still raining lightly. We are expecting 0.25” of rain today, then clearing. One forecast says we might get more rain tonight, but only about a quarter inch. My official rain gauge, a brass flower pot with straight sides, measured 5.5” total for the storm. That is definitely a record since I have been checking rain. Adjusting for evaporation, we probably got more than 6”.

    We had almost no wind throughout the storm, which is unusual but good. We were under a high wind warning yesterday, but we only had a few breezes. The storm went almost exactly over us. The combined NOAA site refreshed, and I lost the exact path, but it was close according to the radar map. We were lucky, because the heavy rain was to the east of us.

    Our forecast for the next few days says almost no wind, so drying will be slow, probably more than a month. Humidity will be with us for a long time. Fortunately, our high temperatures are expected to be under 100F for the rest of the month. Lots of sun, so there is a possibility of instability, especially over the mountains. This can produce thundershowers and flash floods.

    There are major road closures. Highway 14 is closed to the south, with opening estimated at midnight tonight. Highway 395 is closed from Highway 58 to Adelanto. This is an area that sometimes floods, but the damage must be great, because it is estimated to open on Friday. Wow, that is a major trucking route. It was once called Three Flags Highway because it goes from Canada to Mexico. It is also closed north of us, with expected opening on Wednesday. Same for the road to Death Valley. Highway 58 is closed somewhere around Tehachapi. This is a major truck route that goes to Bakersfield and beyond.

    My wife had a doc appointment today in Lancaster, but we postponed it on Friday. The office was surprised when she told them we might not be able to get through because of the coming storm. Some people have limited situational awareness. As it turned out, we could have gone by a longer route, but there would probably be delays due to cleanup crews. Too early to venture out of town.

  26. nick flandrey says:

    Filling out paperwork for a new Dr and I notice this in the privacy statement.

    Law Enforcement, National Security and Intelligence Activities: In certain circumstances, we may disclose
    your medical information if we are asked to do so by law enforcement officials, or if we are required by law to do so.
     
    We may disclose your medical information to law enforcement personnel, if necessary to prevent or decrease a
    serious and imminent threat of injury to your physical, mental or emotional health or safety or the physical safety of
    another person. We may disclose medical information about you to authorized federal officials for intelligence,
    counterintelligence, and other national security activities authorized by law 

    – I believe this was one of the many things Obamma did as part of his “gun crime” EOs.   VERY dangerous, btw, as many tyrants have used purported mental health issues to justify all sorts of crimes and oppression.  Note the “emotional health”.  If that isn’t a grab bag, nothing is.

    n

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  27. nick flandrey says:

    And on the lighter side, I got this in an email from one of my auctioneers…

    This past Friday during load out one of our beloved warehouse cats went missing. He has a habit of jumping in cars while we are doing load out. His name is Killer and he is very friendly. If you accidently ended up with a Cat, We would love to get him back. HIs sister fluffers is very lonely without him.

    –free cat with every purchase!

    n

  28. nick flandrey says:

    And this came today too, wrt some oblique discussion of items to protect hearing…

    http://enews.aeroprecisionusa.com/q/MI4ynHaf3R8Bowlj6fDGwhVYvGaG-dk01xu_sCwZhTt8mEkQ9k99OklDI 

    “We’re paying your tax stamp”

    n

  29. Lynn says:

    This past Friday during load out one of our beloved warehouse cats went missing. He has a habit of jumping in cars while we are doing load out. His name is Killer and he is very friendly. If you accidently ended up with a Cat, We would love to get him back. HIs sister fluffers is very lonely without him.

    That is a bad habit, especially at a transient place like that.

  30. nick flandrey says:

    And google is very helpful with search suggestions – except when you want something they don’t like you to have.  As I’ve noted previously, they’ll guide you to every local head shop, but won’t give you any online tobacco retailers.

    They also won’t autocomplete some (suggest topics) searches that involve painkillers…

    I guess they are not interested in seeing articles about their autocompleted search terms.

    n

  31. Lynn says:

    “Hawaiian Electric eyes bankruptcy after Maui wildfires in ‘prudent scenario planning’”

         https://www.utilitydive.com/news/hawaiian-electric-eyes-bankruptcy-after-maui-wildfires/691333/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202023-08-21%20Utility%20Dive%20Newsletter%20%5Bissue:53763%5D&utm_term=Utility%20Dive

    ““Like any company in this situation would do, and as we do in the normal course of business, we are seeking advice from various experts,” Hawaiian Electric and its parent company said Friday.”

    Driving your utilities into bankruptcy seems to be a blue state of things to do nowadays.  Now the State can take over the daily business of the utility and make them into a tax collection entity par excellence.

  32. Lynn says:

    “Palm Springs is totally cut off and 911 is down as Storm Hilary soaks from coast to desert – with a MOAT surrounding LA’s Dodger Stadium”

        https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12428701/Tropical-Storm-Hilary-soaks-coast-desert-barrels-Nevada-25-million-people-flood-warnings-Palm-Springs-submerged-cut-911-desperate-Californians-climb-trees-escape-mudslides.html

    Wow, those are some serious pictures of flooding. Better roads flooded than people’s homes.

  33. Ken Mitchell says:

    “Hawaiian Electric eyes bankruptcy after Maui wildfires in ‘prudent scenario planning’”

    Why not? Pacific Gas & Electric was almost forced into bankruptcy for their responsibility in several California wildfires, including the Paradise fire. 

  34. drwilliams says:

    @SteveF

    One bag milk chocolate, one bag white. 4x batch done twice. XXL ss mixing bowl, not sure volume, about 18” diameter. Baked on two 12×18 shallow stoneware sheet pans. 

  35. Brad says:

    Lazy-girl jobs? That list had some strange entries. Accountant and translator, for example, can both be very demanding. Hotel night auditor may sometimes be boring (surf on your phone?), but it’s not well paid, and you get the crazies.

    Software engineer – lazy only if you’re a diversity hire. Ask Lynn. That said, the good women programmers I have known were much less obsessed than the men – it really was an 8-5 job for them.

  36. Lynn says:

    “Hawaiian Electric eyes bankruptcy after Maui wildfires in ‘prudent scenario planning’”

    Why not? Pacific Gas & Electric was almost forced into bankruptcy for their responsibility in several California wildfires, including the Paradise fire. 

    PG&E has been through bankruptcy twice.  You cannot persuade me this was a good thing for the ratepayers.

        https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-06-17/pge-bankruptcy-new-pge-looks-like-old-pge

  37. SteveF says:

    good women programmers

    Might as well say “invisible pink unicorns”, in my experience. Basically competent, yes, a few have been. Good? Nope.

    No doubt hinges on the definition of good.

  38. Ray Thompson says:

    good women programmers

    I have known a couple that were quite competent. I personally would have liked to have met Grace Hopper or Margaret Hamilton. Both could have run bytes around my bits.

  39. drwilliams says:

    “Both could have run bytes around my bits.”

    Or laughed at your hanging chad. 

  40. lpdbw says:

    good women programmers

    I’ve worked with probably 20 women progarmmers in my career.  I’d say 2 of them were good progarmmers. Several others were actually fairly good at data analysis and working out business requirements if not so good at design and implementation.   Most were promoted to management or sales support in short order.

    I knew one who was a 2-pointer:  Black and female.  Princeton AA  grad in math/CS who couldn’t program, didn’t understand databases, couldn’t write good English, and was always trying to get rich quick on some internet scam or another.  She had 3 online stores, some with Amazon fulfillment, and paid people on fiverr to write her sales blurbs on her mommie blog.

  41. Paul Hampson says:

    Frosted Mini-Wheats are 3+ times better for you than eggs, cheese, and beef. Bacon isn’t on the list because it causes Insta-DeathTM.

    Been eating two eggs cooked in bacon grease, with bacon, sausage, or ham and often cheese for breakfast nearly every day for at least 10 years now. Gonna die some day I guess but I expect to make it to 78 tomorrow.  Those frosted Mini-Wheats would send my blood sugar into the stratosphere.

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  42. Lynn says:

    “I Rented A Tesla For A Week And Am Totally Sold On Gas-Powered Cars”

        https://thefederalist.com/2023/08/21/i-rented-a-tesla-for-a-week-and-am-totally-sold-on-gas-powered-cars/

    “While planning a week-long trip to the Seattle area recently, I wondered aloud to my husband if we should rent a Tesla. Neither of us had ever driven an electric vehicle before. The price difference between the long-range Tesla Model 3 and a standard mid-size gas-fueled vehicle was pretty negligible.”

    “1. Battery Drainage Is Stress-Inducing

    2. Few Charging Station Locations and Length of Time There

    3. Personal Safety at Charging Locations Can Feel Dicey

    4. Texting While Driving Is Required

    5. No Convenient Manual to Consult While Renting

    6. How to Lock the Car? 

    7. Don’t Expect the Cost of a Battery Charge to Always Be Lower than Gasoline”

    Hat tip to:

       https://thelibertydaily.com/

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  43. Brad says:

    As SteveF says, it depends on your definition of good. My wife is a good programmer. We had two women do some web development for us: one was good, the other competent. Some of the women in my PhD program were good, some were DEI. The former resented the latter, for obvious reasons…

    I haven’t ever seen a woman as good as the best guys I have known. That is at least partially due to male obsessiveness: tech is not just a job – it is life. It is also due to bell curves – men have a broader bell curve than women – more at both ends…

  44. dcp says:

    And google is very helpful with search suggestions – except when you want something they don’t like you to have.

    To re-phrase, “Their idea of SEO is not the same as your idea of SEO.”

  45. Lynn says:

    good women programmers

    I’ve worked with probably 20 women progarmmers in my career.  I’d say 2 of them were good progarmmers. Several others were actually fairly good at data analysis and working out business requirements if not so good at design and implementation.   Most were promoted to management or sales support in short order.

    I’ve worked with five women programmers, mostly in the 1989 to 1995 time frame.  One was a super star who considered me dirt (and told me to my face that I was dirt).  Until I walked through her code after complaining bitterly that her code did not work and put frees in for all of the memory that she allocated.  She was leaving the frees until the end of the project but my module depended on her module and I would run out of ram on our DecWindows boxen rather quickly.  She actually agreed with me that was necessary at the time.

    The other four were average programmers, good enough.  One of them filed a HR complaint on me for being a male chauvinist pig (yes, she really put that in the complaint).  I was instructed to stay away from her at that point but, I was her Senior Analyst.  It was crazy and she was soon laid off. 

  46. Lynn says:

    One of them filed a HR complaint on me for being a male chauvinist pig (yes, she really put that in the complaint).  I was instructed to stay away from her at that point but, I was her Senior Analyst.  It was crazy and she was soon laid off. 

    BTW, I was a male chauvinist pig because I kept on asking her to code in English.  She wrote her C code using Mandarin based names which were total mystery to the rest of us.  How I was a male chauvinist pig for asking her to write code in English was a mystery to me.

  47. Alan says:

    >> (from Saturday) Alysha Duran is shot dead by cop in Westminster, Colorado, after stopping car on wrong side of road and reaching for her gun

    He’ll probably use the “I feared for my life…” screed and run for the Union Rep.

    Cops have a dangerous job, but c’mon, he shot her through the back window.

    From the article:

    The fatal shot fired through her rear driver’s side window, ultimately killing Duran and finishing in the windshield of the car facing her on the road. 

    And one of the four primary rules of firearm safety:

    Always Be Sure of Your Target and What’s Beyond It

    Don’t shoot unless you know exactly what your shot is going to strike. Be sure that your bullet will not injure anyone or anything beyond your target.

  48. paul says:
    Gonna die some day I guess but I expect to make it to 78 tomorrow.

    Happy Birthday! 

  49. paul says:

    Frosted Mini-Wheats are nasty.  The “sugar frosting” tastes like plastic.  The original Shredded Wheat is pretty good with A spoon of sugar. 

  50. Lynn says:

    “Biden may declare a ‘national climate emergency’ to further the Green New Deal by non-democratic means: ‘Just like COVID’”

        https://www.theblaze.com/news/biden-may-declare-a-climate-emergency-to-further-the-green-new-deal-by-nondemocratic-means

    “Democrats have had trouble advancing the whole of their radical Green New Deal by democratic means, so they’re now calling upon President Joe Biden to invoke abstract threats and exploit real tragedies to get their way.”

    “Proponents of the climate alarmist legislation that would see the state’s power grow further at the expense of the populace were not placated in the least by the green handouts resultant of last year’s “Inflation Reduction Act,” which authorized well over $600 billion in spending on so-called renewable energy and climate change initiatives.”

  51. CowboyStu says:

    I am going to transmentality to a male chauvinist pig, when I grow up.

  52. Denis says:

    … wrt some oblique discussion of items to protect hearing…

    Upvote for “oblique”!

  53. drwilliams says:

    Fat-fingered a downthumb and it would not undo. Color changed back and forth but did not deincrement 

    Let us know how the transmentalization works, if you grow up. We’ve been waiting for a role model. 

  54. drwilliams says:

    Obla-dique

    Obla-dah

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  55. Lynn says:

    “BREAKING: Black Atlanta liberal arts college Morris Brown implements mask mandate, social distancing measures amid new Covid scare”

        https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-black-atlanta-liberal-arts-college-morris-brown-implements-mask-mandate-social-distancing-measures

    Well, isn’t that special. Masks for all !

  56. MrAtoz says:

    BTW, I was a male chauvinist pig because I kept on asking her to code in English.  She wrote her C code using Mandarin based names which were total mystery to the rest of us.  How I was a male chauvinist pig for asking her to write code in English was a mystery to me.

    And, of course, you were automatically guilty of being a MCP. Was the HR rep a female?

  57. MrAtoz says:

    I received three scam emails today purporting to be from Mcafee about renewing my anti-virus software. I haven’t used anything Mcafee for decades. No response button, only “Call us at xxx”. With the number obfuscated with periods and dashes. The scam made it through the Google spaminator. We use Google for our email records. Just like Mr. Lynn.

  58. Lynn says:

    BTW, I was a male chauvinist pig because I kept on asking her to code in English.  She wrote her C code using Mandarin based names which were total mystery to the rest of us.  How I was a male chauvinist pig for asking her to write code in English was a mystery to me.

    And, of course, you were automatically guilty of being a MCP. Was the HR rep a female?

    Our HR was the female secretary to the company president.  She had known me for a decade at this point.  

  59. Lynn says:

    “C and C++ Prioritize Performance over Correctness” by Russ Cox
       https://research.swtch.com/ub

    “The original ANSI C standard, C89, introduced the concept of “undefined behavior,” which was used both to describe the effect of outright bugs like accessing memory in a freed object and also to capture the fact that existing implementations differed about handling certain aspects of the language, including use of uninitialized values, signed integer overflow, and null pointer handling.”

    “The C89 spec defined undefined behavior (in section 1.6) as:
    Undefined behavior—behavior, upon use of a nonportable or erroneous program construct, of erroneous data, or of indeterminately-valued objects, for which the Standard imposes no requirements. Permissible undefined behavior ranges from ignoring the situation completely with unpredictable results, to behaving during translation or program execution in a documented manner characteristic of the environment (with or without the issuance of a diagnostic message), to terminating a translation or execution (with the issuance of a diagnostic message).”

    “Lumping both non-portable and buggy code into the same category was a mistake. As time has gone on, the way compilers treat undefined behavior has led to more and more unexpectedly broken programs, to the point where it is becoming difficult to tell whether any program will compile to the meaning in the original source. This post looks at a few examples and then tries to make some general observations. In particular, today’s C and C++ prioritize performance to the clear detriment of correctness.”

    In other news, water is wet.

  60. SteveF says:

    On one contract thirty or so years ago, I followed a Chinese guy who did provide documentation for what he’d done in the past six months… in simplified Chinese characters. Poorly handwritten characters, in fine blue ballpoint on blue graph paper, making them even harder to read. I was asked if I could get anything out of them because they knew that I could read a little Japanese, but Japanese =/= Chinese and even if it had been Japanese, I was nowhere near fluent enough to translate that mess.

  61. Lynn says:

    I received three scam emails today purporting to be from Mcafee about renewing my anti-virus software. I haven’t used anything Mcafee for decades. No response button, only “Call us at xxx”. With the number obfuscated with periods and dashes. The scam made it through the Google spaminator. We use Google for our email records. Just like Mr. Lynn.

    Yes, we are getting fake invoices from various scum of the intertubes also.  Mostly $376.42 bills from Geek Squad being reputedly charged to my credit card with an attached receipt in a Word document.  I don’t open those on my life.

  62. nick flandrey says:

    Those frosted Mini-Wheats would send my blood sugar into the stratosphere. 

    – yes, put me right to sleep, and the box they came in tastes better.

    I am eating one egg, 2 strips bacon, and sometimes one slice of bread for breakfast.   Lunch is three oz. sliced ham, and maybe an oz or 2 of cheese or a handful of chips, but usually not.

    Mid afternoon snack, if out driving, some sugar free beef jerky, couple oz.

    Dinner- whatever I want, and cook for family.  Bedtime snack is couple oz smoked almonds mixed with M&M candies or just couple oz peanut M&Ms.  W/out bedtime snack, no energy left to get up in the morning.

    Lost 30 pounds since the lockdown started.  It’s accelerating too, around a pound a week atm.

    n

  63. nick flandrey says:

     I don’t open those on my life.  

    – and yet someone in my Dr’s office thought it would be a good idea to send TEXTS with a link to pay your outstanding office visit fees.   Um, NO.   Not clicking on links asking me for money.  EVER.

    n

  64. nick flandrey says:

    HEB had the “picanha roast” on sale.   It’s the sirloin cap, removed as a roast.   Sliced into steaks and skewered with the right seasoning it becomes “picanha” steaks, ala Brazilian Churascuria.

    It’s really a pretty good roast too, as it’s flat and cooks quickly.   

    $5.49/ pound for choice.   The cooler said $8.49, but the vac pack meat was marked correctly.  It rang as $5.49.    I bought 5 roasts averaging around 3 pounds for the freezer.  The sixth is in the oven tonight.  One got sliced and seasoned as steaks.

    It’s been a while since there was  a good sale on meat.

    n

  65. Robert "Bob" Sprowl says:

    Made it to 78 (age) yesterday…

    13
  66. Greg Norton says:

    My local BofA branch does a booming business.   Lots of small businesses needing cash to pay their illegal workers.   Lots of hispanics cashing checks.

    BofA still coasts on the pre-NationsBank merger reputation among immigrant communities going back to the San Francisco Earthquake rebuilding effort.

  67. Greg Norton says:

    “BREAKING: Black Atlanta liberal arts college Morris Brown implements mask mandate, social distancing measures amid new Covid scare”

    Well, isn’t that special. Masks for all !

    Morris Brown isn’t a real school. I’m surprised that place still exists.

    A mask mandate at Clark, Spelman, or Morehouse? *That* would be interesting if they could make it stick. I doubt it will happen, however.

  68. JimB says:

    Made it to 78 (age) yesterday…

    Congratulations, and welcome to the club. I turned 78 last month.

    I used to think I was a baby boomer, but found out I am a member of the Silent Generation. Fitting. Not.

  69. Greg Norton says:

    “The C89 spec defined undefined behavior (in section 1.6) as:
    Undefined behavior—behavior, upon use of a nonportable or erroneous program construct, of erroneous data, or of indeterminately-valued objects, for which the Standard imposes no requirements. Permissible undefined behavior ranges from ignoring the situation completely with unpredictable results, to behaving during translation or program execution in a documented manner characteristic of the environment (with or without the issuance of a diagnostic message), to terminating a translation or execution (with the issuance of a diagnostic message).”

    IIRC fread() behavior is undetermined with regard to the buffer contents if the I/O fails.

    I had a running debate about that with our lead at The Death Star. He was an old Windows guy who trusted the buffer to be initialized to zero on I/O failure, but I distrusted the buffer if the function call failed.

    After having my Linux code rewritten three times by Patent Boy – management’s rationale as to why he was lead – I finally told him, “Next time it breaks, you’ll get the call at 3AM.”

    He stopped rewriting my code.

  70. Greg Norton says:

    “BREAKING: Black Atlanta liberal arts college Morris Brown implements mask mandate, social distancing measures amid new Covid scare”

        https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-black-atlanta-liberal-arts-college-morris-brown-implements-mask-mandate-social-distancing-measures

    Barely real school. Fake newspaper.

  71. Greg Norton says:

    After having my Linux code rewritten three times by Patent Boy – management’s rationale as to why he was lead – I finally told him, “Next time it breaks, you’ll get the call at 3AM.”

    The real stink in our group at the Death Star, however, was the behavior of select() with regard to the timeout struct on Windows vs. Linux. Winsock is not the same as the Berkeley/Posix socket API, and Patent Boy used to cite a Microsoft standard like it was the friggin’ Bible.

    Linux was developed to meet Posix documentation with a clean sheet design. Application code written in C is sacred going back to Kernel 1.0 as much as possible. RTFM!

  72. drwilliams says:

    I Rented A Tesla For A Week And Am Totally Sold On Gas-Powered Cars

    We also don’t believe EVs are particularly environmentally friendly since they need batteries that require the strip-mining of rare earth minerals such as lithium and cobalt.

    https://hotair.com/headlines/2023/08/21/i-rented-a-tesla-for-a-week-never-again-n572570

    Three errors: Neither are rare earths, and they are elements, not minerals.

  73. nick flandrey says:

    I wouldn’t use the phrase “doomsday  prepper” in this context.   I am pretty sure the proper phrase is End of the world cult, or more likely, muslim terror cell.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12430225/Two-Brit-doomsday-preppers-planned-build-nuclear-dirty-bomb-Austrian-police-claim.html 

    n

    (because they are “brits”  but not named, in Austria, I’m thinking naturalized, not native.)

    (and what’s up Austria?   must be several investigations winding down/paying off… or maybe just luck.)

  74. drwilliams says:

    Still no emergency military response in Lahaina, allegedly because the Governor of Hawaii has not made a request.

    It’s instructive to watch the PLT’s using the kungflu playbook to inhibit the flow of information.

    Too bad there will not be consequences for any of them in Blue3 Hawaii, beyond a slight dip below 90% in the next election.

  75. Greg Norton says:

    Furries Ahoy! in Japan. “Human” dogs are as lazy as real dogs.

    Between the outlet mall and Ikea on Saturday afternoon, I saw three dogs in baby strollers.

    Publix (Florida HEB) banned all emotional support companions and other pets in the stores last week. The exceptions are real service animals – dogs and small horses (?!?) which help blind people.

    I don’t mind seeing the dogs running around at Home Depot/Lowes, but Nike?

  76. Nick Flandrey says:

    Leading economist warns Americans to ‘hunker down’ and ‘save your pennies’ ahead of a possible recession – after it emerged households are spending $709 more a month than they were two years ago 

     

    ‘Save your pennies because unfortunately the economic outlook is going to get worse before it gets better,’ said Nancy Lazar, chief global economist at Piper Sandler.

    – shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone here.   Still, another data point, another shadow on the wall.

    n

  77. drwilliams says:

    Most of my favorite moments in Trump History.

    https://twitter.com/Trump_History45

    I wish they had a photo of when Donald J. Trump dropped the White House on Hillary, the Wicked Witch of the Hamptons, and gave her Uranium Slippers to Dorothy.

    3
    1
  78. Nick Flandrey says:

    I want my helper monkey.

    n

  79. JimB says:

    Second day floating without AC, in August! In over fifty years, that has not happened. Feels like Fall: scary. It will warm up. I should be enjoying it, but no. Modern perversity.

    Rain is over, except for instability in the late afternoons. As long as it is still very cool, that will not happen. I can’t even find the remnants of the storm on the radar map.

    All day, my thoughts have gone out to those who were less fortunate with the storm. There is much damage.

  80. Denis says:

    I want my helper monkey.

    SteveF will doubtless be along presently 🙂

Comments are closed.