Cool, almost cold, then warming. Clear for a few days according to the national forecast. Yesterday was nice, starting around 64F and getting warmer. Cooler after sundown of course. With the breeze, it was chilly in shorts.
I didn’t get done much of what I wanted to do yesterday. Sooprise! Not. Spent a good part of the day waiting for and expecting to be interrupted by my wife getting home. Her changing flight times made that longer than I expected and really broke up my day. So that is my excuse. I did get some auction stuff done, and some sorting. Continued feeding CDs into my computer for ripping and storage. I like ripping CDs better than DVDs since they are so much faster to rip. I can really make progress on a stack of discs.
I have been mixing in the occasional DVD, and found one that was rotten in a way I haven’t seen before. I mention it because of our previous discussions about media longevity. It was an expensive and well produced copy of Edward Scissorhands (10th anniversary). Some DVDs are better than others, with thicker discs, thicker coatings, better packaging, etc. This was a better one, and yet something seems to have gotten between the base disc and the protective coating. The result is the reflective layer is a darker color in an irregular donut shape, almost as if you trapped a circle of oil between two glass plates. I’ve never seen one fail in this way before, and it is completely unreadable. The packaging is in good condition (no indication of moisture or heat) and there isn’t a scratch or mark on the disc surface. Weird.
Today I really do need to get some of the stuff done I’ve been pushing off. I’ve got auction, home, and holiday stuff to do. I need to just get moving and let inertia carry me along with a busy and full day. I am feeling better, I think the cold is almost done, so that should help. I just wasn’t feeling great yesterday, after being up late and having a mild headache most of the day.
To that end, time to get to it.
Stack. Stack. Stack. And then stack some more.
nick
Other people’s brawls. I, and the other lieutenants who did this, was preventing a few minutes of drunken idiocy from landing a PFC in the brig and getting brought before the company or battalion commander the next morning. A Saturday evening spent walking around Dongducheon* and the cost of a few sodas and snacks was a cheap price.
For myself, I don’t brawl. When I fight, I kill or disable as quickly and efficiently as possible, a few seconds per person. (Here’s another Hollywood lie for you: Protracted battles to the death, with momentum trading back and forth over the eight minutes that the fight takes, don’t happen.) Tends to disturb onlookers, even those that I’ve saved from a mugging.
* That’s how Wikipedia spells it. We always called it TDC, Tong Du Chon.
Kind of like having the duty driver available for a ride home and back to get your car. No names taken, no questions asked. And many Chiefs and LPO’s offering the same. PLEASE don’t get a DUI where the command has to take notice.
As an aside, one thing the military does really well that the corporate world does very poorly is peer training. In the Navy we were expected, and evaluated on, developing our juniors to prepare them for the next promotion, watch, school, everything. As well as preparing ourselves for the next level. It is probably an artifact of the high turnover and the fact that most enlistees are so young and inexperienced.
Corporate takes their bright young stars and moves them all over the company to learn. It’s not quite the same, but you can tell the up and comers by how many different parts of the company they’ve worked in in a short time.
They certainly didn’t work too hard on developing the kids as people, or on a personal level.
n
Took me a couple hours to get to sleep, not my usual. I’m gonna be grumpy today.
n
And you were previously Sneezy. Maybe tomorrow you can be Bashful.
Can I be Dopey, please, please, please?
The military is still allowed to use IQ testing where the corporate world cannot do the same without a lot of red tape being involved.
I mentioned in a previous comment that I’ve been putting together an example using SpringBoot, which is a really powerful framework for creating web applications.
I’ve just finished the example. Total code with/without SpringBoot? Both just over 500 lines. Sure, with the framework, you don’t have to write any database code, but you have to add all the framework-specific stuff. Plus, you have to structure your data the way the framework wants, not the way you want. Example: compound database keys have to be encapsulated in an extra class.
The main advantage is less configuration: SpringBoot comes with a preconfigured web server that “just works”. That’s nice. The main disadvantage is the continual “Why do I have to do it that way?” Ok, maybe that’s just me still on the learning curve. Aside from that, your code now depends on a gazillion external libraries. In a real project, your maintenance schedule is going to be partially driven by their update schedule.
I still don’t like frameworks…
Sorry, plugsy McSpongeBrain The Last already has that moniker.
And ray gets to be “Stinky”. Oh, not a dwarf? Should have been…
n
I have mixed feelings on software frameworks.
On the one hand, they force you to do things their way. If you choose a framework which is well suited to the need (eg, a framework for creating a web site back by a database) you’ll get 80% of the needed functionality out of the box or with minimal programming or configuration and can get the next 10% with some effort. That last 10%, though, requires either heroic effort or simply can’t be done. Once you’ve committed to using this framework and have developed your application, you’re locked in. The application won’t be tweaked to use a different framework or no framework; you’ll have to completely rewrite. Finally, as Brad says, using a framework to some extent holds you hostage to the maintainers or sponsors.
On the other hand, you can often get something up and running for a proof of concept or a minimal viable product very quickly. In working with startups (or even pre-startups, a few people who had an idea and were willing to put a few thousand dollars into it) I was able to make an initial web app in a weekend or even in an evening using Groovy/Grails. Aside from that use, many frameworks are mature: stable, reasonably bug-free, and likely to be around for the foreseeable future. Most components of the Spring family of frameworks are safe to recommend to a cautious CIO.
Your security will depend on the library repository admins, which has been lacking in particular on NPM and, in some cases, PIP.
Hot Skillz, tho.
I had to school a younger developer on the finer points of signal driven I/O when he was mystified that his Hot Skillz Node.js emulation of a Splunk server was terminating the network connection to the client upon reception of the complete Json structure, resulting in the client reconnecting and sending the complete packet again.
Young’n had never seen signal driven I/O on a socket before, having never done sockets in C without the fancy event driven facility available in the implementation language runtime.
To be fair, I had only seen signal-driven socket I/O in grad school, but Splunk depends on the technique heavily to maximize performance of their feeds.
My implementation of something similar only terminated the socket connection when it sensed a disconnect by the client. Plus I used Tcl, the capability of which Node.js is essentially rebuilding, reinventing the wheel.
Again, Hot Skillz!
WRT Jeep Cherokee, wife and I have been driving them for decades. However, I should take my current Jeep Grand Cherokee to a collision repair service to have the model name updated. If we can’t have Washington Redskins anymore, how can we be driving a Jeep Grand Cherokee?
WRT clothes and leather goods, this is where I go and sufficiently close to my house: https://www.bootbarn.com/sale/bbexpress/?prefn1=availableStores&prefv1=0018
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/10/16/you-are-the-colonizer-they-want-to-kill-n584792
Common treatments are effective in curing muslim extremism. 9mm and .223 are the most common, but others are just as effective.
Note to Sneezy, Dopey, Grumpy, and others previous referenced: The Disney channel is showing a fully restored version of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ tonight.
Says Matt Rousch of TV Insider: “Whistle while you watch a gloriously restored 4K version of the 1937 animated classic that launched Disney’s tradition of turning iconic fairy tales into enduring feature-length films. What better way to mark Disney’s 100th anniversary than to revisit this groundbreaking movie, the result of Disney’s restoration and preservation team collaborating with the animation studio’s artists, working from Walt Disney’s original negatives with new technologies to bring Snow White’s delicate watercolors back to life. Nothing to be Grumpy about here.”
One of my childhood favorites. I have several ‘Grumpy’ t-shirts, hooded sweatshirt, and a visor that I purchased on various trips to Disneyland. Hard to find items.
No ammo shortage here yet…
https://apnews.com/article/state-fair-texas-shooting-dallas-dbcfbeb1751d1712ee84ea21571b3879
Needed to replace the disposer. One of the blades is loose and hitting the side. It has been doing so for months. But now it has gotten really bad. I was going to run the disposer to destruction except for the noise that is now really loud.
When I went to Home Depot to get another disposer the kid that I asked for help to get one off the upper shelf told me I should get a ⅓ HP as that is more powerful than a ½ HP. After my shock wore off I asked how he arrived at that decision. He said, simple, 3 is larger than 2. I then asked if he understood fractions. All I got was a puzzled look and I walked away before he might have told me fractions are in the garden area.
New math and school system failing again.
I got the disposer installed. What should have been a one hour task turned into three hours. No extra trips to Home Depot but I did have to rework the plumbing slightly. I have a couple of items to return as I bought them in anticipation of possibly needing the items.
About that “gloriously restored 4K version”, I wonder what was edited? Maybe a dwarf or two have become dusky?
I have it on LaserDisc. I’m cool. I might have it on DVD. I don’t have a 4K tv anyway.
No one watches Disney Channel anymore so Burbank isn’t going to make a statement tonight and p*ss off what’s left of the family fan base. They’ll wait to let Brie’s waistline do the talking on November 10 with the release of “The Marvels”.
Plus, The Mouse might be able to sell a few linear TV ads outside of a Coach Prime game on ESPN.
The film deserves an airing on ABC in prime time without edits, but that would be heavily pirated.
If you’ve replaced the disposal in the last 10 years, nothing has changed for the Insinkerator install.
Of course, if you put in a disposal in the last 10 years, they only last 2-3 years before going kaput anymore.
Be sure to recover and re-install the little gizzy which goes around the electrical cord as it exits the disposal at the bottom. That’s code in Texas and is not included with the disposal.
Mon. Oct. 16, 2023 – back to work you slacker.
Hey, I am not a slacker, I am just old and tired.
We have been teaching our software to perform non-organic chemistry for the last three weeks. It is not going well. Our thermodynamic functions really want carbon based compounds in it somewhere. Especially our Gibbs Free Energy Minimization function.
Don’t make the mistake I made, BE CERTAIN you have punched out the knockout in the drain line of the body of the disposal for the dishwasher drain. That was a dumb mistake. Dumber that we didn’t discover it until months later when our tenant complained the dishwasher was slow to drain.
n
Strain relief. Yes, I reused the little gizzy.
This disposal was installed about 25 years ago. We don’t use it much as we toss most of the food garbage in the trash. The old unit was a Kenmore that served us well. I removed everything so I could put in all new. The alignment of the drain was different on the new unit than was on the old unit.
Naturally I did that. They don’t call me Dopey for nothing. Actually, on this unit the plug unscrews using the wrench that is used to manually unjam the disposal. And don’t feel special, I made the same mistake on my first disposal installation at my first house. I was adding the dishwasher and the disposal and somewhere in the process left the dishwasher drain plug installed. I found out rather quickly the first time the dishwasher ran.
I am surprised the dishwasher was able to drain any amount.
The next Boost module. Boost.Chemistry.
Date_Time works. I speak from experience. However, writing one time calculation at the tolling company for the weird date time format the company’s own tag reader used internally, I left a precaution:
/* DON”T touch this unless you know exactly what you are doing */
ptime duration = …
Someone had a question for me, Windows related, so I plugged it in for the first time in months.
The first thing it did, before I even logged in, was to phone home, so there was an error message waiting for me, that it couldn’t install Win11 when I did get logged in. Seeing as it is an 6 or 7 year old Pavilion … not a big surprise.
After letting it charge & do its little subservient grovel online to it’s true masters at Microsoft I unplugged it to go sit down and research my friend’s question, and it died. Seems the battery (or its internal charger) has failed in the last 6 months. Bah.
“The moral dilemma exposed yet again by Israel’s war against Hamas”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-moral-dilemma-exposed-yet-again-by.html
“We’re witnessing preparations in Israel for a massive counterstrike against Hamas after the latter’s recent terrorist onslaught. Tragically, many innocent people are very likely to be caught up in that counterstrike. Many will probably be injured or killed. Morally speaking, that’s repugnant at the very least, if not actually forbidden, under the moral and ethical code of most (but not all) mainstream religious faiths – but it’s going to happen, regardless. Can it be justified?”
Sorry, tough. The Gazans elected Hamas to be in charge. They are collectively responsible for Hamas’s actions.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/consumer/article-12611515/How-does-food-inflation-compare-rest-world-Fascinating-map-reveals-countries-seeing-prices-rise-fastest.html
– the article doesn’t consider that the official inflation rate has been jiggered for political reasons and is really much higher than reported.
n
– spend less, save more.
– chase unicorns
– earn more.
Yup, it’s true but it’s a lot like saying that all you need to do to lose weight is eat less and exercise more.
n
That talk about the Seven Dwarfs reminded me of a colleague, who would occasionally remind us that “Six of the Seven Dwarfs are not Happy.” I always got a chuckle.
Many thousands of Gazans will die unnecessarily in the Israel/Hamas war, because Hamas ALWAYS uses human shields. In this case, the people of Gaza who have bee warned by Israel to evacuate, and the Hamas butchers who are preventing them from doing so.
And Egypt will allow foreigners to leave Gaza for Egypt, except Hamas is preventing THAT.
All of those deaths will be the fault of Hamas, but most of the left-wing media will blame Israel, because the “media” invariably support Hamas.
“First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people”
A phrase I read for the first time today, but which explains how the fates of Jews and Christians are intertwined. (Repost from 2016)
Posted by William A. Jacobson
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/10/first-the-saturday-people-then-the-sunday-people-2/
If you haven’t read it, take the time.
I worked with people who put their 401(k) money into the “stable value” option of the plan which is insane to me.
If the company doesn’t match with their stock in some kind of ESOP scheme, at least put the matching funds into whatever option mirrors the Wilshire 5000. Let the house’s money ride.
It’s not the house’s money. It’s YOUR money.
Agressive or “growth” funds/stocks/strategies are ok if you are young and can afford the time to rebuild it, not if you are older like the people this article is aimed at.
TWICE I lost half or more of my retirement “investments”. I am not in a position where I can recover from that again.
n
“Six of the Seven Dwarfs are not Happy.”
But only one is actually Grumpy.
>> Reale recommends the 4 percent rule which means assuming you will have a 30-year retirement and will spend around 4 percent of your total savings each year.
Good luck living on 4 percent of your nest egg, especially with the “transitory inflation” and Bidenomics.
>> Agressive or “growth” funds/stocks/strategies are ok if you are young and can afford the time to rebuild it, not if you are older like the people this article is aimed at.
I’ve used this scenario, with realistic numbers, to bash into my kids’ heads.
Re the goings on in the ME, as the LSM have dragged up every “ex-” or “retired” so and so talking head they can find to support their need too fill 23 ½ hours a day of coverage, one might wonder who is scheming to use this as cover to hide “what?” Akin to the old ‘dump it into the Saturday newspaper on page 24.’
>> Corporate takes their bright young stars and moves them all over the company to learn. It’s not quite the same, but you can tell the up and comers by how many different parts of the company they’ve worked in in a short time.
The best manager to work for is one that recognizes someone bright and becomes their mentor and knows how and when to showcase their mentee’s talent.
You’ll also notice the bright ones getting the overseas rotations…and not turning them down.
Ace found a yard sign generator on the web:
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/In%20This%20House%20We%20Believe%20-%201.JPG
and it’s really cool:
https://zachmu.github.io/yardsign/?line1=IN+THIS+GARAGE%2C+WE+BELIEVE%3A&line2=REAL+ENGINES+HAVE+8+CYLINDERS&line3=DEAD+TERRORISTS+ARE+GOOD&line4=DEAD+COMMUNISTS+ARE+BETTER&line5=CHINA+RELEASED+A+BIOWEAPON&line6=CLIMATE+CHANGE+IS+NOT+SCIENCE&line7=NOW+IS+A+GOOD+TIME+TO+STACK
“You’ll also notice the bright ones getting the overseas rotations…and not turning them down.”
I have nominations for the Gaza rotation starting Thursday.
Students who called for Jewish slaughter absolutely should pay the price
By Andrea Widburg
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/10/students_who_called_for_jewish_slaughter_absolutely_should_pay_the_price.html
The progressive/leftist/communists have spent years destroying peoples lives for the mortal sin of showing support for a duly elected president of the United States. That destruction has included many well-documented acts of student-on-student violence, often tacitly supported by the college administration.
I hope every one of the people in those college organizations are followed for years and outed wherever they go. I hope their employment prospects are damaged and any company that hires them is in turn made to pay the price, until, finally, their last chance for employment is Perkins Coie. At that time we can fence the building and see if they can create a utopian prison world from the blueprint that they lied and schemed to force on the rest of the country.
There is a talking head industrial complex centered around MacDill. The Faux News affiliate in Tampa is owned by Faux parent, and the studios are probably humming tonight.
“Booming Texas could be the most populated state by 2100, new study finds”
https://houston.culturemap.com/news/city-life/texas-population-96-million-2100/
“The population study by moving experts moveBuddha estimates Texas will be home to nearly 96 million people by 2100, which amounts to a 213.8 percent population increase. The Lone Star State will far outshine California, which is currently the most populated state with more than 39 million people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.”
I’ll be long gone so I won’t care but the ethnics of the population will not be 60% white.
Beyond Faux News, Nexstar, Scripps, Tenga, and CBS corporate all have stations with satellite feeds within 20 minutes of MacDill, max.
Strangely, the CBS affiliate is run by Tenga while the CBS-owned station is independent. Of course, they all serve the agenda so it really doesn’t matter.
“Sweep with Me (5) (Innkeeper Chronicles)” by Ilona Andrews
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1641971371?tag=ttgnet-20
Book number five of a six book paranormal fantasy romance science fiction series. Please note that this book is a novella, not a full length novel. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) illustrated (kinda) trade paperback published in 2020 by the Nancy Yost Literary Agency that I bought new on Amazon recently. Note that “Ilona Andrews” is the pseudonym for a husband and wife writing team. And yes, this is science fiction, there are spaceships, teleportation devices, beam weapons, and space stations.
BTW, this series is very much like “The Princess Bride” book. A lot of magic, a lot of good old human sweat and tears, many good guys, and quite a few bad guys. Ah yeah, maces and swords. And poison.
Dina Demille is an innkeeper in Red Deer, Texas. Only her Victorian inn is not like a typical bed and breakfast, it is an intelligent magical haven named Gertrude Hunt for aliens coming to Earth or using Earth as a way station. Dina does have a permanent guest, a retired Galactic aristocrat named Caldenia who is hiding from several bounty hunters, who paid for permanent room and board.
There are many inns like the Gertrude Hunt on Earth, that is because Earth has been designated as Neutral Ground for the various Galactic races, many of whom don’t get along. That’s why Caldenia is safe within the confines of Gertrude Hunt, the inn has many powerful weapons to protect itself and guests. Several of the bounty hunters are still chasing Caldenia for the massive bounty and have taken on the Gertrude Hunt Inn to their dismay.
Every winter, Innkeepers look forward to celebrating their own special holiday, which commemorates the ancient treaty that united the very first Inns and established the rules that protect them, their intergalactic guests, and the very unaware/oblivious people of [planet] Earth. By tradition, the Innkeepers welcomed three guests: a warrior, a sage, and a pilgrim, but during the holiday, Innkeepers must open their doors to anyone who seeks lodging. Anyone.
The authors have a website at:
https://www.ilona-andrews.com
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (9,902 reviews)<
“Microsoft completes $69B Activision Blizzard deal, its biggest merger ever”
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/10/microsoft-finally-owns-candy-crush-as-it-closes-69b-activision-blizzard-deal/
“Activision CEO Bobby Kotick can now look forward to his next $375M chapter.”
Tried to use a major hotel chain website to make a reservation.
I autofilled the username/password fields, and they were good credentials.
However, their website said I must change passwords for “security”.
So I clicked on the reset password button, and it said to check my email.
The email had a button to press to confirm, which I did.
The button took me to an error page
I tried again, hours later, and still no joy.
So I tried their “customer service” click.
Which gave me a dialog box, and I pasted in the error.
It brought up some context help, based on an extremely dumb simulation of AI. No option to send an email, but there were buttons to do things like fill out a complaint form.
So I clicked on that.
Guess what? It told me to log in to continue filling out the form.
I’ll phone the reservation number tomorrow when I’m fresh. I may even tell them to fire Sanjit and Argen and hire an American do do website implementation. And maybe test it this time.
>> The Faux News affiliate…
And speaking of ‘faux news,’ this apparently is real…
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/15/1205950946/in-a-first-californias-ebony-alert-will-help-track-down-missing-black-people
Don’t they already put their pictures on cartons of chocolate milk?
Yeah, yeah, getting off the lawn.
>> “The population study by moving experts moveBuddha estimates Texas will be home to nearly 96 million people by 2100, which amounts to a 213.8 percent population increase. The Lone Star State will far outshine California, which is currently the most populated state with more than 39 million people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.”
I’ll be long gone so I won’t care but the ethnics of the population will not be 60% white.
~double the number of electoral votes.