Cool and clear again/still. Yesterday turned into a beautiful day. Sunny, warm, nice breeze. Hoping for more of that today.
Spent yesterday continuing to address the tub issue in the morning, and then doing a couple of pickups in the afternoon. I decided to use epoxy to fix the pinhole, and then proceed with fixing the drain line. I have some heavy duty industrial fiber reinforced epoxy I picked up at some point. It is past its best by date, but it cured fine. IDK what the normal open time was but it kicked in a few minutes for me. I backed the hole with foil tape, then smeared the bare iron with the epoxy. As soon as it started to kick, I patted it with my fingers to shape it. Today I’ll do the drain line, if I can figure out the connection to the old lead drain. Furnco fitting to the rescue- I’m hoping.
Today I’ll have to hit the Home Depot or Lowes for the Furnco fittings, then do my pickups. It would have been more efficient to roll today’s pickups into my “big loop” yesterday, but it just didn’t work out. Sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve also got to get a couple of bins together for dropping off at my auctioneer Thursday. That shouldn’t be a problem.
So a standard day, with the exception of the added plumbing nonsense. Speaking of which, I should probably pick up some pex too, and start running the trunk lines in the attic.
It’s a great life if you don’t falter. So don’t falter.
Stack!
nick
Last year, I had statements from three employers (because I did a bit of part time work at two schools on the side). My main employer had the tax statement online basically immediately. The second sent it by email in early January. The third came by post, just this week, so 7 weeks into the year. Which is kind of late, but it’s government, so…
I suppose if all three offered download, all three would have very different systems to navigate, and different security measures to deal with.
Of all the options, email was the easiest. However, email is notoriously insecure: Literally anyone along the path can read your mail. Secure mail options universally suck, because there is no real standard for it.
30 to 50 years old, with advanced STEM degree, pilots with at least 1000 hours preferred. I find the bit about pilots weird and obsolete.
Actually, I also cannot see why anyone in the target age-range would volunteer. I could see having done this in my early 20s, maybe. But by the time you are 30, your life ought to be on some sort of useful trajectory. Taking a year out to live in a big box seems…unattractive. And anyone whose life is not yet on a useful trajectory by the age of 30, is surely not anyone that NASA wants.
Ah, I suppose there might be motivations after all. But I think your friend would regret taking a year away from the Child.
Get woke go broke.
I think people expected “Madame Web” to be bad, but the trailer teased some serious “girl in costume” time led by Dakota Johnson, which the questionably-qualified director failed to understand and deliver.
Still, no one has p*ssed away money and destroyed franchises like Disney.
Pixar. Lucasfilm. Marvel. All smoking ruins.
Well, except for “Howard the Duck”.
Who’s ready to take the kids down to see “Deadpool”?
The head fake rally in DIS is mystifying. Someone is spending a lot of money to try and protect The Weatherman’s job.
Someone also put a lot of pressure on Google this weekend to demonetize select Disney critics channels on YouTube.
What about free speech, Bob?
Lots of people say the right words to show their support for wokeness. Not so many people really believe them and live them.
How many people really support a 6-foot, mentally ill guy smashing and injuring girls in a girls’ basketball game? Cluebat: Pretty much the same number want to watch woke superhero movies.
Bad superhero movies have always existed but not at the budgets currently being thrown around by Disney as they continue their blind date with Bankruptcy.*
* I’m paraphrasing a line from a bad superhero movie from 25 years ago, “Mystery Men”, which seems like Shakespeare in comparison to what is currently rolling out of Burbank – a film where one superhero’s power, as portrayed by Paul Reubens, was flatulence which made people faint.
Hilarious, awesome, flick. Thanks, I’m gonna add it to my cult classics marathon.
The PLTs go full long pork. I guess bug eating didn’t fly (pun):
Gabriel, Blow the Trumpets: New Scientist Offers ‘More Subtle View’ on … Cannibalism
Groomers gonna groom.
On reinstalling Windows:
I’ve never had to do that with macOS. Occasionally, I have to reboot after an install, but that is usually to bypass security for a low-level driver of some sort.
I’ve been using Macs since the original Apple Macintosh.
Macs are the best combination of hardware and software, evah!
I have to say that to keep my ticket to Elysium current.
Cool clear and very damp this morning. Coffee in my cup, headed for my belly, soon to join the bacon.
n
I’m so old that I remember the Mac fanatics (you know who you are) never tolerating a dissenting word about the glories of macOS. But then, after OS X came out, Mac magazine writers gushed over its glories. “And you don’t have to reboot your machine twice a day anymore!” But it’s not a cult. Reaaaaallllly.
Apple has always controlled their hardware and software, now more than ever. Microsoft has the burden of supporting complete cr*p hardware as long as the drivers pass WHQL.
The big downside of complete control is that Apple has nothing in the pipeline if AI turns out to be serious. Right now, real AI means using Intel and Nvidia, and Cupertino burned both.
Just now I had to reboot my Mac M2 Air. The function of emptying the trash hung up and would not end, stuck for several minutes. I had to force quit Lightroom earlier in the day.
I generally have to reboot about once a week as something just will not work correctly. I think it is a problem with the software I run, most Adobe products and Parallels. Something goes wonky in the OS and a fresh restart is required. I suspect Adobe is the big culprit.
I did have to do a reinstall of MacOS about a week after I bought the product. The screen was no right, the mouse quit working, and none of my installed apps would start. I have no idea what happened.
If you're looking to kill 15-30 mins of your day…
Here's a survey from the University of Kent that I saw on Reddit. It's about conspiracy theories and whatnot.
https://universityofkent.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8ICkX7mBre5IGpM
>> It’s a great life if you don’t falter. So don’t falter.
Have you considered cloning? nick2 could be working on the new website! 😉
>> Bad superhero movies have always existed but not at the budgets currently being thrown around by Disney as they continue their blind date with Bankruptcy.*
I’ve thought from time to time it would be a cool job to be the “SVP of WTF Were You Thinking” with an office next door to the CEO and a standing meeting to review the dailies.
We used to use Adobe stuff for biz and force quitting it was regular. When our need dropped, I dropped the Adobe stuff and bought the Affinity apps. They are not subscription-based. There is a learning curve, but it’s just me using them.
Oof. I started that survey, but abandoned it. I understand what they are trying to achieve, by presenting the same questions differently, but after the umpteenth time, I got fed up with it.
Pretty much by definition, fanatics are most likely to finish it. Not sure that is actually their goal.
Also, there is no attempt to distinguish between believing in fruitcakes and their “hidden truths” and believing that governments aren’t always honest (see Assange and Snowdon).
I understand why they need to do that, but I agree. From a survey taker perspective it's extremely annoying.
Their response to another survey taker complaining about the repetition: “Huge apologies for the repetition. Unfortunately it's the only way we can develop a scale: by tweaking the wording so we avoid missing nuance between constructs..”
Look at the credits for an Adobe product sometime. All fine Irish names.
Once not required by external obligations I removed every vestige of Adobe products. Probably 15 years ago or more. Ugh.
I can’t recall the exact last time I had an Intel or M2 desktop OSX install hang, but it was a Parallels issue. I decided it wasn’t worth the money and aggravation and bought a windows (Toshiba) laptop.
A lot of companies use Palo Alto Networks VPN services these days so this development isn’t good.
I used Palo Alto at the last three jobs.
The Death Star used to be one of the leaders in that space, but they never developed a decent Mac version of NetClient. Gee, I wonder what happened there.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/palo-alto-networks-plunges-by-most-ever-after-cutting-outlook/ar-BB1iEiSQ
I used VMware Fusion exclusively until Apple dropped Intel.
I still have Fusion on the last version of OS X which my primary MacBook Pro supports, the last 15 inch laptop Apple made with a DVD burner.
Funsion runs Windows 8, compounding the obsolete software/hardware combination – Oh, the horror!
Moving forward, I will keep a relatively current ThinkPad T series around for portable Windows.
Yes, Lenovo.
Our school uses a Cisco VPN. Not my favorite company, but it works.
For home access from elsewhere, our ISP’s fiber-modem supports a VPN. They say they don’t support Linux, which is just lazy tech support. It works fine. It just isn’t in their support scripts.
For privacy across the Internet, or to pretend I am somewhere else, I use the paid version of Private Internet Access (PIA).
I used to be very active in the Cypherpunks community. (Then got married again and then had another kid, and free time almost completely dried up. Funny, that.) A couple members were constantly pushing the “the TLAs are spying on every communication”, “the spy agencies have dirt on every politician and are using it to control them”, “the FBI and NSA are forcing computer manufacturers and the big software companies to put backdoors in everything”. OK, Tim, that’s very nice. Now take the pill the nurse gives you. Yah, we generally were sure that the TLAs would like to have all that power and infiltration, but it wasn’t as bad as the conspiracy theorists were saying.
Then there were revelations about the NSA having pressured Microsoft to put a backdoor in some encryption layer. Then Wikileaks. Then Snowden.
And it kept piling on.
And before long it became evident that not only were the nutjobs on Cypherpunks right about almost everything, they didn’t go far enough.
Cisco AnyConnect is garbage security, but that is strictly my opinion.
The only reason that Cisco developed a 64 bit Windows IPSec VPN client/driver is because we forced their hand since the Death Star had NDA access to the Aggressive Mode VPN spec Cisco maintained and developed a clean sheet implementation for a very large customer.
Intel Management Engine is the “one ring to rule them all”. Every one of their CPU chipsets have it going back to ~2009.
AMD has something similar in their PC class processors.
I keep my Ye Olde MacBook Pro around as a potential Linux system because AFAIK, it lacks the IME. The big problem is drivers, particularly for power management, however.
Hmmm. Looks like SiriusXM bumped their monthly from $6 to $23.
I will cancel, and let them repent at leisure for a bit.
But that reminds me that I need to check all my subscriptions, forgot to do that in tbe new year. There is usually a surprise or two.
I haven’t had any significant use of an apple product since 1990. My client uses ipads as an interface to his whole house control system, so I know how to set the ip and wifi, and start an app, but that’s about it.
Wife uses iphones and ipads, but mainly as an ereader.
n
Sirius and Spotify destroyed the music industry in the US indulging what I call the $20 Reeboks Dream.
All-you-can-eat media for single digit dollar amounts per month was never going to work. The companies built on the basis of that model are either increasing rates or … gasp! … accepting ads like traditional media.
Think movies, TV, and music sucks now, just wait until Congress sells of the terrestrial broadcasting TV and radio bandwidth to The Real Life Tony Stark in exchange for the promise to fulfill the other obsession of my generation, The Pizza Box Dream.
I’m beyond p*ssed off at work today after some credit went to overseas developers for something hot.
Of course, if it blows up, they’ll want to defer blame.
Ah, well. Lunchtime over.
IIRC, Dr. Pournelle stated many times his a belief that capitalism without some regulation would lead to selling human flesh in the market.
Under Trump, we were residents of Ferenginar, somewhat removed from pure capitalism thanks to the Grand Nagis/Orange Man putting his thumb on the scales, but the life-imitating-“Star Trek”-art we’re currently living is “Patterns of Force”, complete with infirm “Fuehrer”, which just ran recently on MeTV’s Saturday night broadcast.
Huh, I wonder what my bribe was to stick around here ? I enjoy the hound out of this place and the camaraderie. I don’t care if it is an echo chamber or not, I like it !
I hang out on usenet and reddit also. There is no camaraderie there whatsoever, just nerds beating each other up in the corners.
Being able to point at Ray as evidence that you are not the gassiest person on Earth?
Being able to luxuriate in 40F temperatures in February while some of us have to dig out from a foot and a half of overnight snow? (Not me, not today, but I’ve had to do so in the past and I probably mentioned it here.)
Being able to muse to yourself, You know, if I could get a few hundred 30mmx113 shells, I could ask MrAtoz to fly my Apache and shoot up the next New Year’s party which scared my dog, if I had an Apache?
Joining the rest of us in speculating on Nick’s non-prep hobby? Streaking at pro football games? But he mentioned that they do merch swaps and sales, and the only merch a streaker would need is a domino mask to conceal his identity.
Being able to luxuriate in 40F temperatures in February while some of us have to dig out from a foot and a half of overnight snow? (Not me, not today, but I’ve had to do so in the past and I probably mentioned it here.)
It is 80 F here today and the wind is blowing 20 mph from the Gulf Of Mexico (a water saturated souther). A norther front is coming soon.
A bunch of comments from Monday…too many open tabs…the curse of a powerful PC…
>> The furor around the Hugo awards continues apace. First, the apparent censorship of Western stories that might offend China. Then the quiet dumping of all the Chinese votes. Turns out those were somehow orchestrated by the party, but were legimate votes by locals enthused by having WorldCon in their home country. Oops…
“…dumping…votes.”
Hmm, just practice for November 5th…
>> We have had a lot of problems with thee Brightline Train in Brevard county. Seems people got WAY to used to the Florida East Coast trains and have been running the crossings.
Big difference between a 35 MPH train and aa 75 MPH train.
Darwin Award contenders. And at 75 you won’t even feel the impact.
>> Perfectly believable. Ultimately, batteries will be efficiently recycled, but the tech isn’t there yet.
Back in the day my dad was office manager at scrap metal dealer in Brooklyn. I remember the corner of the outside yard where they “recycled” car batteries. Pick-axes were the tools of choice. Some holes from the pointy end to let the acid drain out and then the flat end to break open the case and extract the lead. Low-tech but fairly efficient once you were experienced at it.
>> Interesting that it’s more economical to get lithium out of tons of earth than it is to get it out of lithium batteries.
Many cases where manufacturing is easier from the raw material than recycled. Be wary of the labelling that touts “Made from 100% recycled material.” What’s missing is the phrase “post-consumer.” The former is just residuals from the manufacturing process that can go back into the manufacturing process the same as the usual raw materials. The latter is stuff from recycling bins.
>> Anyone heard from the Proud Boys lately? Or the Oathkeepers?
Serving their J6 sentences. No Starlink dishes.
>> PET bottles have replaced a large portion of the cans, and they are worthless.
Here there’s a big collection effort on behalf of the ‘Friends Of’ group that supports our county animal shelter. They collect, and sell to a bulk recycler, primarily aluminum cans, but also clear, clean, PETE (#1) water and drink bottles. IIRC they were getting 65 cents a pound for the cans and 25 cenys a pound for the bottles.
The city stopped collecting glass but still take it in at drop-off locations. They crunch it and mix it with their asphalt. Not sure if they have a surplus. I’d guess not given the effort required to do drop-off vs. pick-up.
>> Oh, and W caved so she’s ordered starlink for the BOL now that it’s available again. That sucker isn’t cheap.
Just wait until D1 and D2 find out. They will be scheduling movies in for BOL visits.
And no “thin pipe” excuses to keep H1 off the web. 🙂
>> Speaking of Discover…
With Charge Offs Soaring, Capital One To Buy Discover, Creating Credit Card Giant
– didn’t Capital One make their bones with secured credit cards? IE. the highest risk borrowers?
I don’t see a benefit to either company with a merger.
Discover has a proprietary interchange network. Capital One wants to use that network for their Visa and MasterCard transactions, thereby bypassing the common V/MC network and saving fees.
Secondarily, half of all the yoga pants wearers in corporate support functions (HR, Purchasing, etc.) will become redundant.
>> We had lunch with my parents today at a local Pho restaurant. One of the other customers drove in a silver Rivian truck. None of us could figure out what was the specialness of the vehicle as it was rather plain looking. Even the Cybertruck looks special compared to it. And a $100,000 truck has better look special in your driveway.
The Rivian R2 is being releases next month. It’s a smaller SUV that should compete with the Tesla Model Y. Supposedly with a ‘starting’ MSRP of $48K. My issue with Rivian is their dearth of service centers. So far they have a total of 31 locations covering just 19 states. Three in Texas, with each location covering ~10M people.
RE network problem: Wi-Fi has the same issues. A cold start usually clears the problem – about 90% of the time. And the problem is only with my desktop system. Good response time in loading from the net, then a few hours later it starts slowing down and finally nothing connects. I usually have three or four tabs open but sometimes 20, spread across two or three browser windows. The number of open tabs doesn’t seem to matter. I’ve have the problem occurwiht just window/one tab open. Edge, Chrome and Brave all have the problem. I think/hope its a Windows driver issue.
I buil the system several years ago and have upgraded it several times: AMD K19 Ryzen 7 5700G, 32 GB RAM, ASRock X470 MASter SLI/ac (AM4), ATI AMD Radeon 570 Graphics wiht 8 GB of DD5 memory, Samsoug 500 GB SSD 970 EVO Plus for the boot drive with about 30% in use.
People are going to hate me, but I have built my last AMD system. For some reason the hardware and device drivers are just a little bit better on Intel cpus.
OK, not a hardware problem but a device driver problem that accumulates over time. You sir, are in device driver hell.
I do reboot my main PC every Monday morning. You would think that a Windows 11 x64 Pro 32 GB ram machine would not lose memory fragments but it does. And the backup to the USB external hard drive over the weekend is ALWAYS lossy. To the tune of 8 to 12 GB of ram each time it runs. I shut every app down after the USB external write and I am using 10 to 13 GB of ram, makes me unhappy so I shutdown, wait ten seconds, and boot. I use an older version of Robocopy that does not crash like the newer versions do.
Discover has a proprietary interchange network. Capital One wants to use that network for their Visa and MasterCard transactions, thereby bypassing the common V/MC network and saving fees.
Secondarily, half of all the yoga pants wearers in corporate support functions (HR, Purchasing, etc.) will become redundant.
One of my relatives is a senior VP of Discover with a thousand people working for her in transactions. Her group handles only a billion or so transactions per day (Discover handles three billion transactions per day). I hope that she gets to keep her job. She was planning to be the next president.
xkcd: Light Leap Years
https://xkcd.com/2897/
No, no, no, no. That is not how things work. Randall is messing with us again.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2897:_Light_Leap_Years
My relatively new primary desktop is a Ryzen 5 5600 (just the number, no X, 3D, or G) paired to a Asus commercial motherboard using 32 GB of Crucial RAM and a relatively older Nvidia GT710 card. Everything just worked when I transplanted the hard drive from my old Q6600 Intel system and entered the new license key.
I haven’t had any problems – knock wood – after nearly a year.
I would only use Intel for a Windows laptop, however.
With the desktop I wanted just enough system to run Docker for science experiments. Unfortunately, with AI being the most important thing in the world, I may not get back to those experiments until I have a different job.
Who knows — it may be another year or maybe that will happen next week!
Doh! I have 64 GB installed on that machine.
A matching pair of DIMMs is in my wife’s new machine, a Ryzen 7, which will let me run 128 GB combined in whichever machine lasts longer.
I’m sure Microsoft will find a way to use every byte before long.
Fortunately, RISC V already has 128 bit extensions in the spec.
The “Lower Decks” animated “Star Trek” series went to Ferenginar last season!
I’ll have to pull that episode.
“Ozempic Users Slash Snack Buying At Supermarkets, Survey Finds”
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/ozempic-users-slash-snack-buying-supermarket-survey-finds
I am very tempted to try Ozempic but I do not have a medical reason other than just being fat.
I’m sure Microsoft will find a way to use every byte before long.
Fortunately, RISC V already has 128 bit extensions in the spec.
Don’t worry, I am sure that AMD has x128 extensions already made up in a safe somewhere.
“New app always points to the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy”
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/new-app-always-points-to-the-supermassive-black-hole-at-the-center-of-our-galaxy/
“iPhone compass app made with AI assistance locates the heart of the Milky Way.”
I wonder what RBT would have thought about this.
Being overweight increases the likelihood of all causes of death (except starvation, naturally). Sounds like justification enough. Consult your doc, of course, but unless there are good reasons for you not to take it, the prospect of losing 20% of your weight sounds like a good reason to take it.
@stevef:
Only for as long as you continue the shots, unless you implement a more frugal diet, according to reports.
G.
There are several drugs in the same famly as Ozempic. Most are only approved for treating diabetes, but at least one is approved for weight loss. The others may be prescribed off-label.
No insurance plans cover it for weight loss. Yet. There are efforts afoot by big pharma to
bribepersuade lawmakers to force coverage.Mounjaro is still on my radar, partly due to Bill Quick’s success with it. The cost is prohibitive and there are side effects to manage. But as others point out, being fat is a huge hazard all on its own.
OTOH, you can try a very low carb/ketogenic/carnivore diet for far less money, and most people have good results. Using a variety of dietary approaches, currently “hypercarnivore” (70% or more meat in my diet), I have lost 65 pounds. In the process I’ve improved most lab markers, which the exception of LDL which is, frankly, irrelevant as a health measurement.
Unfortunately, Im at a plateau with 40 or 50 pounds left to go to ideal weight.
I’ve added sauna and resistance training and a weekly 40 hour fast, and the scale is nudging down again. Time will tell.
I know one person who’s ok with needing to be on the drug for the rest of his life, because the benefit is worth it.
I know another person who plans to lose the weight and then stop the drug and “eat sensibly” to keep the weight off. Best luck to him.
Ozempic/Rybelsus/Wegovy/Semaglutide is very expensive out-of-pocket ($500-1000/month perhaps). Insurance may cover it with the right diagnostic code (diabetes, for example), but I hear most plans are not covering it just for weight loss. Though, many of the over-40 crowd that are also very overweight are probably pre-diabetic anyway, so that may be a path to coverage. Though, you'll need your doctor/pharmacists to send that diagnostic code to your prescription plan if you want hope of coverage. Of course, because it's not covered by most insurance for weight loss the left is already crying that this class of drugs is for the privileged few.
My wife is diabetic and on a similar drug, Mounjaro/Zepbound/Tirzepatide. She likes it, but as soon as it was approved for weight loss and not just diabetes it was nearly impossible to get for a few months (demand far exceeded supply). Ozempic works by activating one receptor and Mounjaro works by activating two receptors (the same one Ozempic does plus another). Apparently, the next version is on its way that will work by activating three related receptors.
This class of drugs is all the rage. This looks like the path forward for weight loss. As you pointed out, it's already affecting snack food revenue. Aren't these the drugs that caused Weight Watchers to shift its business model away from counting points, doing weigh-ins, and having motivational speakers? Dieting may be dead.
I’ve slashed my snack food buying too. Just because of the prices. What was a 75¢ bag of chips is around $2 now. I’m too cheap. I like Fritos and Nacho Cheese Doritos and Cheeze Its a lot but not at $5 for what was a $2.50 bag a couple of years ago.
It’s kind of strange, too, that I cut out soda and snacks and yeah, I dropped 20 pounds and saved a fortune. (Have you priced Levi’s lately?) The stuff doesn’t taste right anymore after not eating any of it for a couple of years.
We did a brisket last year. It was great. Splurged and bought a loaf of Mrs. Bairds white bread. The stuff was inedible. Foamy plastic texture and no taste. Smelled ok.
The Ozempic stuff… I read somewhere it can give you the squirts and when you stop taking the stuff you still have the squirts. I forget where I read that.
But if Better Living Through Chemistry works for you, go for it.
I experienced this when I quit drinking soda. A year or so later I was somewhere and super thirsty and fountain soda was the only option. So, I got a small pour and drank it. I was disgusted. It’s almost as if high-fructose corn syrup had a nasty aftertaste that I couldn’t detect when I was guzzling a gallon of soda everyday. Interestingly, the sodas bottled in Mexico don’t taste that bad, but then, they’re sweetened with cane sugar. So, I’ll occasionally treat myself to a glass bottle of soda when I’m at a taqueria. Outside of that, the American mass-market sodas taste like I’m drinking a chemistry set. 🤮
The other day I treated myself to a Cadbury Creme Egg. I hadn’t had one in years. 30 seconds into chewing it and it tasted like I had a mouthful of wax.
Same here. She’s only been on it for 3 months, and on a very low (testing) dose, but she’s already noted that her appetite has fallen substantially. So far, no intestinal problems. We have TriCare & Medicare for insurance, and it took the doctor a few tries at getting the proper insurance code to cover it.
Oh, good to hear. I’m not going crazy.
Oscar Mayer sandwich meat has gone plastic and tastes funny. When I last looked, other than the Hard Salami, the second or third ingredient was High Fuctose Corn Syrup in all of the flavors. So, whatever HFCS actually is, it’s not sweet and I have the feeling it’s not benign like the cellulose powder, aka saw dust, added to Kraft, etc. Parmesan cheese.
“The Solar System’s Missing Planet Has Only One Place Left to Hide”
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-solar-systems-missing-planet-has-only-one-place-left-to-hide
“A recently submitted study to The Astronomical Journal continues to search for the elusive Planet Nine (also called Planet X), which is a hypothetical planet that potentially orbits in the outer reaches of the solar system and well beyond the orbit of the dwarf planet, Pluto.”
Dadgumit, somebody lost a planet now. How in the world did they do that ?
It’ll turn up on a table in a locked room in the White House living quarters.
The 2004 Ford van was due for inspection. The ABS light comes and goes. After about a week in the shop, they gave up. There are no codes in the computer.
It’s inspected now. I’ll go buy the sticker tomorrow or Friday.
Starting in 2025 you don’t have to get your car inspected. That’s one PITA off of my to-do list. You still pay for it when you renew your plates. The fee wasn’t eliminated, what a surprise. To think that .gov would stop charging a tax…. heh.
RE network problem: Wi-Fi has the same issues. A cold start usually clears the problem – about 90% of the time. And the problem is only with my desktop system. Good response time in loading from the net, then a few hours later it starts slowing down and finally nothing connects. I usually have three or four tabs open but sometimes 20, spread across two or three browser windows. The number of open tabs doesn’t seem to matter. I’ve have the problem occurwiht just window/one tab open. Edge, Chrome and Brave all have the problem. I think/hope its a Windows driver issue.
I buil the system several years ago and have upgraded it several times: AMD K19 Ryzen 7 5700G, 32 GB RAM, ASRock X470 MASter SLI/ac (AM4), ATI AMD Radeon 570 Graphics with 8 GB of DD5 memory, Samsung 500 GB SSD 970 EVO Plus for the boot drive with about 30% of it in use.
Oops, I posted that this morning on yesterdays thread by mistake and didn’t realize many read the previous days thread also.
A couple of corrections. My system as a Samsung 500 GB
SSDNVME 2.0 970 EVO Plus for the boot drive and four sticks of DDR4-3000 PC4 G SKILL TridentZ ram. Memory usage usually runs about 20-24 %.>>
30 to 50 years old, with advanced STEM degree, pilots with at least 1000 hours preferred.
Hmm, sounds like really they’re casting for the next season of Survivor.
I worked in an oil camp for several years, and they do know how to feed you. I gained a few pounds, and switched from coffee with 2 cream 2 sugars (or more) to using fake cream and artificial sweetener. Several years later, tried to switch back because eventually I got a chemical taste with the artificial sweetener, and other things tasted wrong, like maple syrup tasting like dirty dishwater and sugar not tasting sweet anymore. I decided to switch to black coffee, as that was the only thing I used the sweeteners in. Several years later, I can taste sugar as sweet, but it really makes me wonder what the artificial sweeteners and flavors are doing to those who use them.
@Bob Sprowl
That sounds like a caching issue to me, but I don’t recall offhand how to clear or manage the network cache in Windows (and never did for W10 or W11).
There is a scene in one of PJ Farmer’s World of Tiers books wherein the protagonist comes back to Earth after many years and orders the burger and shake he has been dreaming of … and is horrified by the taste.
>> The big downside of complete control is that Apple has nothing in the pipeline if AI turns out to be serious. (emphasis added)
Still waiting for something definitive…
“Letitia James says she’s prepared to seize Trump’s buildings if he can’t pay his $354M civil fraud fine”
https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=107381482
“Four days after a judge ordered former President Donald Trump to pay $354 million in his civil fraud case, New York Attorney General Letitia James told ABC News that she is prepared to seize the former president’s assets if he is unable to find the cash to cover the fine.”
“”If he does not have funds to pay off the judgment, then we will seek judgment enforcement mechanisms in court, and we will ask the judge to seize his assets,” James said in an interview with ABC News’ Aaron Katersky.”
This is just wrong. Totally wrong. I cannot believe this.
Hat tip to:
https://www.drudgereport.com/
30 to 50 years old, with advanced STEM degree, pilots with at least 1000 hours preferred.
Hmm, sounds like really they’re casting for the next season of Survivor.
Hopefully not that Naked Survivor show that I see adverts for.
No, Survivor has of late cast mostly losers, queers, wimps, weirdo’s, incompetent, lazy, dorks, and fools.
“Tesla Cybertruck engineer responds to EV’s rust claims – it ‘can be cleaned off easily’”
https://www.the-express.com/lifestyle/cars/128470/tesla-cybertruck-engineer-responds-ev-rust-claims
“A Tesla Cybertruck engineer has cracked the code behind what appears to be rust cropping up on the EV’s newly delivered models.”
““It’s surface contamination only and can be cleaned off easily. Bar Keeper’s Friend used here works well, citrisurf77 can also loosen the deposit and simply wipe it off.”
>> Moving forward, I will keep a relatively current ThinkPad T series around for portable Windows.
Yes, Lenovo.
Yup, agreed. ThinkPad line only though. Good deals from time to time in their Outlet.
>> Hmmm. Looks like SiriusXM bumped their monthly from $6 to $23.
@EdH, is that for the car or just their app?
Maybe not a domino mask… but I do need to hide my identity…
https://www.amazon.com/CHHR-G-string-Cartoon-Elephant-Underwear/dp/B06XB84GNW?th=1&tag=ttgnet-20
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@bob, it occurs to me that whenever I get issues with slowing, it’s always windows downloading or scanning, or compressing something in the background. Do you run resource monitor when it happens to see the state of your CPU, memory, and network traffic? If it is slow enough, the disk use section will show the files being written, which is how I determined that it was windows downloading or otherwise updating. It will also show if there is any other net traffic going on.
—–
got popped by the state troopers today for expired registration on the Ranger. I’ve been meaning to take it in…. but haven’t. Now I have to.
—–
Time to get some dinner going.
———–
@lynn, IDK what I bribed you with either. Mostly I don’t even read the screeds, just hammer them as soon as I recognize the source, but the word ‘bribe’ stood out. Funny what catches in the mind of the mentally ill.
n
Huh, whodda thunk it. Mental issues. Nah, can’t be…
The celebration of mental illness continues apace.
n
Never heard of the show, but if the shoe fits…
n
>> Huh, I wonder what my bribe was to stick around here ? I enjoy the hound out of this place and the camaraderie. I don’t care if it is an echo chamber or not, I like it !
+1,000 for the comrades
>> Joining the rest of us in speculating on Nick’s non-prep hobby?
Wait, I thought we settled on adult-size Funco Pop furries?!
got popped by the state troopers today for expired registration on the Ranger. I’ve been meaning to take it in…. but haven’t. Now I have to.
You are not alone. As far as I can tell, about half of the local vehicle owners stopped inspecting / registering their vehicles at the start of the Koof Wars.
Sounds like the state troopers are going for the easy hit now. If you ask me, they should go for all of the paper license plates flying around out there. I’ll bet that at least half of them are fakes.
Alan, it was originally for truck & app was included, but I never really used the app.
I recall reading that the best way to use “the app” was to turn on the radio in the car and use a baby monitor to listen in the house. Decided I didn’t want it mucking things up on my pc’s.
I looked at the Sirius website, and can’t find any indication of a $6 monthly charge. Perhaps it was an old introductory price that would go to current cost after that introductory period.
They have a couple different levels that top out at $23. The top level – the one I have – works on the Highlander, and my Echo device. I listen to SiriusXM (the “Bridge” channel at the moment, sometimes Classic Rock channel) about 9 hours a day. I figure I am getting my money’s worth. It also works via the app on my phone, but I don’t use the app often.
Several people on reddit have asked me to explain my method, or lack thereof, of ranking books. Since the infamous xkcd on star ratings came out,
https://xkcd.com/1098/
, my bottom rating for a book is four stars. That means that I could finish the book and it was a good book.
The xkcd:1098 is explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1098:_Star_Ratings
Five stars means that the book was very good and is a candidate for possible rereading.
Six stars means that the book (and the possible series also) was awesome and rereadable. Many of my six star books are comfort books and I reread them when stressed out.
I want to believe that’s possible.
What’s been proven so far is that the average person who loses a lot of weight with those drugs gains back most of the weight when they stop taking it. Maybe 75% of the lost weight. A fair assumption is that peiople take the drug and then go back to eating like they used to.
Dr. Eades jumps to the conclusion that the weight lost contains muscle, and the regain is all fat, and you lose lean body mass as a result.
No one has studied the result of losing with the drugs and then eating only keto when you stop them.
Carbs are not your friend.
A fair assumption is that peiople take the drug and then go back to eating like they used to.
– heck, I know a guy who got the stomach band and still tried to eat like he used to.
Low carb, or better described as “no sugar” works if you are ruthless and honest. You absolutely can’t “cheat”.
WW never did work for most people, and the counting calorie approach is not a good one.
n
Reduce portion sizes, push away from the plate earlier, avoid highly processed foods, and get enough fat to induce satiety.
Those steps will drop the easy pounds of fat.
Cutting sugar in all forms helps enormously, especially once you start reading labels and finding it everywhere. Like in ketchup.
n
Nick, check your email. Definitely not urgent.
WW never did work for most people, and the counting calorie approach is not a good one.
I am having a total brain failure on today on whatever WW is. The last couple of days have not been good, I am working on an algorithm teetering on the edge of the abyss. Any false moves and the entire simulation goes off the cliff along with whatever few brain cells I have left. And two users are waiting of course.
As much as you can, buy food, not “food-like processed stuff”. My rule of thumb is that if it has an ingredient list, it’s not food.
Not that I live up to my own standards. I do like some kinds of snack food – ie, total junk – and will eat canned soup or hash for convenience – ie, mostly junk.
Until recently I was thinking that sugar was the problem, but now I’m not sure. See, eg, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUtxeioima8 . The problem might be the combination of seed oils and other highly processed ingredients. Of course, people today are less active than they were fifty years ago.
>> got popped by the state troopers today for expired registration on the Ranger. I’ve been meaning to take it in…. but haven’t. Now I have to.
Is that a ‘fix-it’ ticket in TX or fine/points/court?
Weight Watchers.
They want Trump Tower for the symbolism.
Mar-A-Lago is protected under Florida law since it is his primary residence.
DeSantis crushed Disney. What’s New York going to do? Invade?
@alan, there is a phone number on the ticket to call, I think it’s a fixit ticket. The trooper just said “call the number” when I asked him. I’ve got a month to take care of it.
I decided just before Christmas to address some lingering issues and the truck reg was one of them. Lost my momentum though.
n
@Alan
Glass recycling driven by non-monetary incentives, i.e., bragging rights (tons per year) or mandates of some sort.
Collecting glass is more expensive than buying the sand that it replaces in asphalt; crushing handling and delivered glass is an order of magnitude more expensive. And crushed glass cannot be used in concrete, so they need to keep it in a separate raw material stream.
I’m continuing to feed dvds and CDs into the machine as I sit here doing other things. It usually goes well, but there are some discs that just won’t rip properly. I’ve been putting those to the side if they are something I really want. It’s not just the individual disc either, because every copy I have does the same thing. Ultraviolet is one. I’ve tried 5 different copies and they all fail the same way. I’ll wait and try them with the other program when I get to the blurays. Or I’ll try them again when I replace this DVD reader. That will be sooner rather than later. I’ve about worn this one out.
n
Cook more Mexican with ingredients out of the Hispanic foods section or, better yet, from a Hispanic grocery.
Less HFCS.
Learning to read the labels may slow down your impulse shopping.
Gas production gives you that fuller sensation (Mr. Ray, step in with the voice of experience) but it’s short-term, as your body adapts. Unfortunately the gas is produced from material that humans don’t digest , so it’s not diverting calories.
I gave up 99% of the sugared sodas 30 years ago. In those days I tried switching from coffee in the afternoon, but swigging soda for a couple hours seemed contraindicated by good dental health. I switched to soda with artificial sweeteners and still don’t have the high-calorie version more than once a month.
Most people can acclimatize to any artificial sweetener in a week or too, and simply stop noticing. Trick is to read labels and stick with one. That’s the primary difference between Coke Zero and Diet Coke.
“There used to be a term in the industry of something being the Cadillac of the industry. Well, Cadillac itself is, you know, sadly not the Cadillac of the industry anymore.”
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2024/02/21/pro-palestinian-group-of-harvard-employees-removes-names-loses-a-prominent-professor-n3783348
Huge Study: COVID Vaccines Do Have Serious Adverse Side Effects
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2024/02/21/huge-study-covid-vaccines-do-have-serious-adverse-side-effects-n3783340
Reparations?
The Daily Chart: Meat-Eaters
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/02/the-daily-chart-meat-eaters.php
Papua New Guinea…
We just need to forgive each other and give ourselves permission to forgive ourselves, too. Mistakes were made on all sides and we all just wanted what’s best for everyone. Those who can’t forgive others for decisions which were made on the basis of the best science available at the time are clinging to their bitterness and need to be watched lest their hatred erupt into terroristic violence.
>> I am very tempted to try Ozempic but I do not have a medical reason other than just being fat.
@lynn, has your MD mentioned Metformin? Old-time diabetes drug, pennies a pill. Helped me take some weight off and then maintain the loss. Of course, YMMV and IANAD.
A Historic Betrayal by the National MS Society – An Organization founded By & For Caregivers
https://gerodoc.substack.com/p/a-historic-betrayal-by-the-national?r=6fzx9
I recommended the “Bud Light treatment” in an earlier post, AB InBev is a global company with multiple product lines, and can weather the loss of a flagship product, albeit with some difficulty.
The MS Society, as noted, is a non-profit built on the backs of volunteers, aka unpaid volunteers. That helps a lot when it comes to hiding the fact that it skims half a mill off the top to pay one puffed-up idiot (and expense account, no doubt) who thinks she works hard going to meetings and getting dressed up to go to parties. Plus another $3.4 mill for the other suits.
Volunteers and donations makes them vulnerable. Don’t contribute to the MS Society. Dissuade your friends and acquaintances from doing so. Call the local chapter and tell them that you will not contribute as long as they are affiliated.
Slow the donations, get volunteers to pull back. With a little effort, a death spiral should get started.
This is what happens when people don’t pay attention. The ex-prez has done the damage and will retire, doubtless with pension. The stupid **** that initiated this whole thing was doubtless hoping to be on the track to land a similar job in future. Commit her name and face to memory so she can’t pop up elsewhere without a name change and extensive plastic surgery. Her LI page is gone for now, but it will be back.
And don’t forget the long list of “uncompensated” go along/come along directors in the above link, allegedly putting in 5 hours a week and not riding herd on stupid while distracted about seating for the annual ball. Uncompensated director jobs are often padding the resume in anticipation of the call for a compensated position based on “experience”. I’m hoping someone does a little work making sure their association with this debacle is documented and “internet forever”. Tracking them down and requesting a phone interview would be a good start. Experience in killing off an organization is probably not high on the attributes list.
>> Aren’t these the drugs that caused Weight Watchers to shift its business model away from counting points, doing weigh-ins, and having motivational speakers?
My wife does WW and AFAIK they still count points and do weigh-ins and meetings. The meetings seem to be where they make the bulk of their money. They’ve also done work to update the points with more zero point foods. Wife finds it hard to use up her daily points allocation.
ADDED TO THE ABOVE:
I did a quick search and found no background on K “Rhymes with Tumor”.
I noted that AI is already expanding her internet presence.
And low and behold, on the first page, a summary of a deadlink page that includes her email addy at the society. Bet that mailbox is full.
>> So, whatever HFCS actually is, it’s not sweet and I have the feeling it’s not benign like the cellulose powder, aka saw dust, added to Kraft, etc. Parmesan cheese.
It’s criminal to let that powder to even be called cheese. Ugh.
Violin and Guitar
Juan Gris
https://uploads2.wikiart.org/images/juan-gris/violin-and-guitar-1913.jpg
I’m pretty sure I see a cello there, and isn’t that a tubular bell peaking out?
Steve Miller wrote his own obit:
https://korval.com/2024/02/21/steven-richard-miller-1950-2024/
I wonder if we all should do this.
So Furries are people who wear animal costumes. So what do you call a person who wears a lizard suit ?
https://twitter.com/seananmcguire/status/1099078189966536704
Brandon.