Wet. Cool or warm, but probably wet. Yesterday started with an inch of rain and thunderstorms. The day cleared with occasional short spatters of rain, but ended with a beautiful sunset, and a pleasant night. Today might get rain, might get lots of rain, or might not. I’m hoping ‘not’.
I didn’t get a lot done, but I did finish one repair. Got the sprinkler pump connected to the piping. The local hardware store didn’t have the exact replacement fittings, but I was able to make a combination that got the job done. I wasn’t the only one standing in front of the limited stock holding pieces up and trying combinations…
Since I was chatting with my fisherman buddy, and working on the dock anyway, I decided to work on a low priority but also low involvement project- fixing one of the propane patio heaters. SHOULD have been straightforward. The gas pipe that goes between the tank and the burner assembly rusted through at the tank end. Yes, the chinese made all the rest of the commercial grade product from stainless steel, brass, and copper, but chose to make the one crucial tube out of steel. Fuskers. I figured to replace the pipe with a hose. Simple fix. Except that out of 20 pounds of gas fittings, I don’t have the miniature one they used at the top of the pipe. So there is a box of parts waiting for next time.
I mention it because that sort of design cheapness really chaps my nether regions. The pipe could have been a rust resistant metal like all the other pipes in the heater. Or it could have been a stock or semi-stock hose assembly. But they chose to make a custom part, and made it from inferior materials. It’s very far from a “green” or renewable approach, and probably didn’t even make economic sense compared to a stock part. And it failed, rendering the entire multi hundred dollar device unusable. I’ll fix it, because I like fixing stuff, but it should have lasted for years longer.
Oh, and there was ONE steel screw in the whole heater too, and of course it was rusted solid. Quittin’ time in Shenzen, ‘just get it out the door’ mentality.
In the plus column for me, while I was poking at the heater, my buddy was fishing, and giving me a lesson on baits and hooks. Staying on the dock so I could chat with him was a big part of my decision to spend time on a low priority task.
It’s also an example of how even if you buy quality (and it’s a very heavy duty commercial grade patio heater) you aren’t guaranteed long service life or repairability.
It’s Spring, time for spring cleaning and all the start of the season maintenance tasks. Take a good look at your stuff and make sure it’s in good repair. If not, fix it, or make sure you have access to the parts you’ll need. Or plan to do without if it breaks. That’s why “two is one, and one is none.”
Stack some backups.
nick
Farce post!
Talking out of both sides of their mouth is standard for liars. They hope that you don’t notice. If you do, they’ll deny, claim that that part doesn’t matter, or attempt to blame you for noticing.
I had a slip-and-almost-fall a little while ago. The old sneakers I use for yard work and going into the chicken run have no tread remaining at the ball of the foot and the slate tiles which make the stairs up from the patio were wet and I was rushing because I needed to get things done before a video meeting. No impact to my knee but the effort to keep from hitting wrenched something.
I’m sure this is because of Anthropogenic Global Warming (which is real! and we’re all gonna die!!!) because there was never been rain in March before Bad Orange Man cancelled the treaty which would have saved us all.
Whch would heal in a week, f you were 30. In a couple of weeks, at 40.
Now? We don’t ask about now..
Stupid TSA. They now photograph everyone going through security. The sign says the photo will be deleted once the plane lands. Yeh, right! Who verifies that?
The TSA would not accept my federally issued VA card. Their automatic scanning machine does not recognize the card. Such card being specifically stated as valid on the TSA website. The incompetence runs deep in all federal agencies.
Stop repeating yourself, sir.
Windows used to have fairly decent memory leak detection and bounds checking available via third party products, but I don’t know what that scene looks like now. IBM bought Rational ~ 25 years ago and put the knife to Purify.
Linux has Valgrind, which has saved me a lot of head scratching, particularly with memory leaks using C++.
Once the intern got your software running on RHEL via Wine, I thought they were moving on to compiling the engine on Linux.
BTW, for anyone interested, Fedora 40 is out. That will probably be the basis of RHEL 10.
One word of caution about Fedora 40, however, for those of you into Hot Skillz. Node and npm core dump with “illegal instruction” when executed from the command line of Fedora 40 running on my POS “road” laptop. I’m not a big Node user so I don’t worry about it, but YMMV.
With most of them speaking ghetto and difficult to understand.
In fairness to TSA, most of the Delta staff sound the same.
@Nick
Do you–or anyone else reading this–have any experience with hyaluronic acid, either as an injectable treatment for osteoarthritis or a supplement?
@Ray Thompson
Print the webpage. Is it easy to find by google search? Carry a copy with you next time. Ask to speak to a supervisor, and have them look it up on their own website.
Laid-off techies face ‘sense of impending doom’ with job cuts at highest since dot-com crash
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/15/laid-off-techies-struggle-to-find-jobs-with-cuts-at-highest-since-2001.html
from AoSHQ:
Watch the stampede of woke programmers to the DEI office. Hopefully they will find it already closed.
have any experience with hyaluronic acid
– not with that name, or any variation…
————–
64F and dreary this morning.
Coffee is ready though.
n
Which will accomplish nothing. If there’s anything that incompetent government “work”ers hate more than serfs who don’t immediately knuckle under, it’s having to admit that they were wrong. To a first and second approximation, they flat refuse to do it.
I have a friend who sometimes plans for the incompetent government worker.
He looks up the name of the head of the agency (and tries to find his/her nickname). He brings a copy of the relevant regualation with him. When the Supervisor of said incompetent refuses to correct the mistake my friend gets the names (and badge numbers if they have one) of both persons and then says, “The regulation is clear and since you can’t read, I am going to call my cousin (agency Head, Nick name if he has it) and get you (approptiate strong adjective for the situation) fired.”
He sometimes wins but he always leaves them wondering how long until they will be fired.
“Data scientist”. Quota hire. A White/Asian male need not apply.
One of our group did recruiting at University of Houston last fall, and he said that none of the students were interested in talking to him about C/C++ work.
Hot Skillz!
A Passport Card still works. Or at least it did in November.
The change in procedure I noted was that they didn’t just look at the ID to verify it was me. The TSA scanned the barcode.
Where Boeing and the US are headed.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/planes%20and%20shit.jpg
Related
Layoffs – some good folk will inevitably get hit. However, I expect most of this is cleaning out deadwood after hiring too many people.
On the other hand, getting hired is not easy, even for the talented. Getting through clueless HR drones, who think Java is coffee, C is a letter in the alphabet, and Lisp us a speech impediment.
I have only ever found one job the hard way, and it was a pain. Otherwise, it has always been “knowing someone who knows someone.”
Oh, by the way, old age triumphed today 🙂
Drizzle has precluded outdoor work today, so I’ve been doing auction stuff. I’ll be back in the world monday, and need some stuff in the pipeline 🙂
Still a joint aching 65F and saturated.
n
FWIW, even in light drizzle, starlink is … variable.
n
Yeh, and TSA can hold a person for 23 hours for no reason at all. I would not push TSA as those little abusive power brokers will use any means possible to show who is boss.
It does. That was one of my fallback options. I had my driver’s license with me but in my opinion, the stuff on my driver’s license is none of TSA’s business. Although I would be naive to think they don’t already that information, along with my bank account numbers.
And in other news. I am currently at 32K feet using the Delta in-flight WiFi. It work surprisingly well for trivial stuff. I don’t think it would work well for streaming, but checking email, this site, and a few others it works OK.
————start whinge ————–
when you have to think about standing up, don’t want to because you are pretty sure it will hurt, or have a multi-step process to do so …. you might be getting a little tiny bit out of shape, or just plain old and beat up.
Cold and damp, with physical work, followed by sitting still is not a recipe for living pain free.
————end whinge————–
I rearranged the nine cases of water bottles in the supply closet under the stairs at the office last night. We have a delivery coming next week. I manged to pull a tendon or something in my right shoulder. Dadgumit, this is getting old. I used to load and stack over a thousand bales of hay with my grandfather in his three story barn with a couple of my cousins.
Jerry was talking up that article when I heard the show today while doing errands.
Mrs. Carpro must still shill for Blue Oval Certified. The co-host was off today, and Jerry had a hint of panic in his voice when a caller started sharing a 2023 F150 hybrid horror story, the vehicle purchased through the program.
5000 miles.
I turned the program off when Jerry started justifying ADM with stories of Cybertrucks going to auction and selling for $40k or more above retail. “Its a free country …”
I was kinda surprised this week with one co-worker who I suspect was a spousal visa deal. She’s been with the group almost as long as I have and seemed clueless about the code inspection and merge procedures.
What the heck has she been doing for two years?
We have to declare our status as “Hybrid” or “Remote” on Monday, and about half of the team has expressed an interest in “Remote” even though nearly everyone lives within 20 minutes of campus or less.
LexisNexus may have sold them your driving habits, purchased from Ford and gathered from the tattletale system in the new F150s, developed with Prudential (?).
GM definitely sells the telemetry as part of Smart Driver.
My wife’s VA employee badge works, but that has embedded RFID which the patient cards may not have.
I went through a recruiter from Experis/Manpower when she cold called for the tolling company gig.
Never again.
I found out later that she was having sex with a member of management and had zero experience working as a recruiter prior to landing at Experis that Spring. Management never wanted to hire me, but they did want the recruiter to succeed. She now works for Google in HR.
It may or may not be pedos all the way down, but bl*w jobs are the currency of the realm in Corporate America.
I’ve only heard bits and pieces of the story, but, after my firing, there was a huge scandal at the tolling company involving Experis and my management chain, later followed by a housecleaning.
“The 6% commission on buying or selling a home is gone after Realtors association agrees to seismic settlement”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/15/economy/nar-realtor-commissions-settlement/index.html
“In a sweeping move expected to dramatically reduce the cost of buying and selling a home, the National Association of Realtors announced Friday a settlement with groups of homesellers, agreeing to end landmark antitrust lawsuits by paying $418 million in damages and eliminating rules on commissions.”
“The NAR, which represents more than 1 million Realtors, also agreed to put in place a set of new rules. One prohibits agents’ compensation from being included on listings placed on local centralized listing portals known as multiple listing services, which critics say led brokers to push more expensive properties on customers. Another ends requirements that brokers subscribe to multiple listing services — many of which are owned by NAR subsidiaries — where homes are given a wide viewing in a local market. Another new rule will require buyers’ brokers to enter into written agreements with their buyers.”
I have paid a lot of real estate commissions over the years.
Hat tip to:
https://drudgereport.com/
The NAR has one of the choicest pieces of real estate in Chicago. Their very real building is the fictional location of Bob Newhart’s office, shown in the opening credits of his original CBS sitcom.
We went to the building looking for Bob’s statue while playing tourists in the city, but the entire area was a construction zone then (March 2019) as the Chicago Tribune building across the street was being gutted for what I imagine were eventually very expensive condos.
Five years ago. Yikes!
“Children of Time (Children of Time, 1)” by Adrian Tchaikovsky
https://www.amazon.com/Children-Time-Adrian-Tchaikovsky/dp/0316452505?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number one of a three book science fiction apocalyptic series. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback published by Tor in 2015 in the UK and by Orbit in 2018 in the USA. I have purchased the second book in the series and will read it soon.
This story in set in the far, far distant future. Maybe 10,000 years in the future. Maybe 50,000 years in the future. The first rise and fall of humanity on Earth resulted in hundreds of colony planets across the galaxy, all colonized via sleeper ships traveling at near light speed.
The second rise and fall of humanity on Earth resulted in the Gilgamesh, a huge ark ship of a half million survivors sleeping their way to the one of the former colony worlds. But when they get to the colony world, it is protected by a very hostile heavily armed space station dating back to the first rise of humanity with unknown technologies.
My rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (41,006 reviews)
Lynn
New toilets in Boeing airplanes:
https://accordingtohoyt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/432564759_2653643968132615_1939473731471161948_n.png
From:
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2024/03/16/orphans-of-the-memes/
“Biden”
https://areaocho.com/biden/
“Woman is murdered by an illegal immigrant… crickets.”
“Tranny dies of a drug overdose:”
Biden is a scumbag. This is not new, he has always been a scumbag. I remember Biden running the Clarence Thomas SCOTUS hearings in the US Senate. Biden was a scumbag too when he invited a delusional woman to make a mockery of the hearings for a good man.
Biden is a thief, liar, plagiarist, pervert, and worse. Every crime committed by the illegal alien invasion force that he and the test of the Dems have unleashed on this country in their quest for perpetual power is the albatross that will drag them to hell eternal.
Gneiss Sounds in Houston?
Looking at a token Irish green hat.
You left out oathbreaker and traitor.
You left out oathbreaker and traitor.
You know, in order to be an true oathbreaker, you have to believe in the oaths. I believe that Biden is a psychopath and will swear to any oath you put in front of him. He just does not care.
Also, Trump.
“I know you are, but what am I?”
Trump is almost certainly the most-investigated President in US history and probably the most-investigated elected official in US history. The demented obsessiveness of his opponents (81 million of them, if the 2020 election is to be believed), the constant trotting out of risibly false charges and claims, and the leaking of his tax records and other private information is very strong evidence that there is nothing real to hold against him. If Trump had so much as missed a rent payment – living rent-free in libtards’ heads doesn’t count – it surely would have been reported as The Crime of the Century.
Like to see the case for Trump’s plagiarisn alongside Biden’s decades
I wouldn’t be surprised.
As someone else would say to anyone saying that – “Sweet Summer Child”
In my mind, the evidence is clear.
Megyn Kelly : “Why didn’t Wikileaks report dirt on Trump?”
Julian Assange: “ There isn’t any!!!”
https://twitter.com/myhiddenvalue/status/1759460474306146658
Classic liberal move – deflect all conversation about your traitor leader by blaming Trump. Sad.
“Your truth”
I interrupt your scheduled rants about US-American politics to mention that it has gone midnight here, so the Feast of Saint Patrick has begun. May the glorious man bestow his blessings on you all.
>> “Right now, Ford EV owners need an adaptor to use the Tesla Superchargers. Ford says as a thank you to its EV customers, its making the Fast Charging Adapter available at no cost to new and existing customers enrolled in the BlueOval Charge Network through June 30, 2024. After that it will cost future EV owners $320 to purchase one (including estimated tax and shipping). Ford says its retail EV customers are the first in the industry to have the opportunity to order the Fast Charging Adapter.”
I would get that in a heartbeat if I owned one of them there EVs.
Most of the EVs built for the US will have switched over to Tony’s NACS fast charging receptacle on the cars for M/Y 2025. This adapter is just a stopgap for 2024 (or older) models. Once again the market-leader’s design became the defacto standard.
Bidden’s lying is well documented. He did it again a day ago. He does it so often, and has done it for so long, people just say “Oh that’s just Joe…” which would be fine if he was the town drunk sitting on the last barstool telling tales. BUT HE”S NOT.
His plagiarism is also well documented and extensive.
He has abused his official powers, the one that is easiest to find is him telling the American Chamber of Commerce that he threatened Ukraine with withholding their aid if they didn’t do what he wanted. He’s BRAGGING about it on video.
To my knowledge he’s never built a business, hired or fired employees, or made legitimate millions of dollars through work.
He amassed his fortune while nominally acting as a public servant and paid by the taxpayers. Trump amassed his through businesses that employ thousands.
Don’t forget about his racism either, if that sort of thing bothers you.
There is no honest way to draw an equivalence between the two. Their misdeeds are orders of magnitude different.
nick
NYFC looking especially vibrant these days…
– import third worlders, get the third world.
n
Windows used to have fairly decent memory leak detection and bounds checking available via third party products, but I don’t know what that scene looks like now. IBM bought Rational ~ 25 years ago and put the knife to Purify.
Purify was incredibly slow but did a great job on the Sun workstation.
This guy is still at it…
Don’t put stuff you want to keep in trash bags.
I thought he’d put together investors to look a long time ago.
–ah he did, it’s the council that’s the obstruction.
– taking up valuable officer time… F me, how does anyone put up with an attitude like that?
n
“Civil servants”: Two lies for the price of one
Also, the whole “trump’s as bad as biddn” assertion completely ignores Bidden’s mental and physical state, and his visible issues. He’s not fit for 5 more years. He’s not fit to finish out his term.
Trump is vigorous and as engaged and visible as ever.
I’d prefer a choice of someone younger than either, but I don’t have that choice. And even if Biddn quits, the party hack chosen to replace him will be just as unappealing as he was.
n
“Federal Court Halts Biden Admin’s Corporate Emissions Disclosure Rule”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/03/16/federal-court-halts-biden-admins-corporate-emissions-disclosure-rule/
“The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted Liberty Energy’s request for an administrative stay against the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) corporate climate risk and emissions disclosure rule, according to a court filing. The regulation requires medium-sized and large public corporations to disclose climate change-related risks and data on the emissions created directly by their businesses in financial reports.”
Just another thing for the lawyers to sue companies over. Besides that, people do not have the right to know everything about companies. Plus the cost of gathering those numbers is not cheap. Especially accurately gathering those numbers. Rest assured, once published, companies will be taken to task over the numbers if they are understated in the slightest.
We used Purify on Sun at GTE until IBM bought Rational and Sun sales people worked my management with the old Hookers-n-Steaks marketing.
During my last year at GTE, mid-1999 until May 2000, I would take the C++ code home on a Floppy disk, compile it on Linux on my (then) blazing fast Pentium 75, and then use Valgrind to isolate memory leaks.
Thanks to Sun’s cr*p compilers, my Linux box ran the code much faster, even under Valgrind.
One Sunday, the “Toy Story 2” release weekend, having corrected code at home on a floppy kept me from being fired by phone when management realized I snuck out to see the movie instead of working.
Using a Tesla charger which hasn’t been upgraded means that the Ford will occupy two stations.
Hit the Love’s in George West, Texas this weekend to see why that won’t go down well.
Also, Ford repeatedly warns against “fast” charging in their owners’ manuals, which is probably a way out they are going to use long term against warranty claims.
“Civil servants”: Two lies for the price of one
Most civil servants that I have run into are amazing people and want to help.
I have run into one civil servant who threatened to have me arrested and called security on me at the federal Passport office in Houston. I called her bluff and told her that Tom Delay, our US House member, had arranged to get a temporary passport for my wife. The civil servant at the the passport office turned beet red and started stamping my wife’s paperwork for the temporary passport.
Tom Delay’s office then helped my Japanese born wife get her USA birth certificate. The civil servants there were amazing, they jumped through many hoops over two years and got her a USA birth certificate signed by President Clinton’s Secretary of State. Credentials are everything in today’s society, even for Native Americans.
Think I’m gonna call it an early night. No fire. I was going to sit and listen to the radio with the patio heater running, but it’s cool and wet… and I did a bunch of sitting already today.
Better to get up earlier tomorrow and get to work.
n
Goodnight, nick, and thanks.
>> You know, in order to be an true oathbreaker, you have to believe in the oaths. I believe that Biden is a psychopath and will swear to any oath you put in front of him. He just does not care.
Psychopath? Really?? I think you give him too much credit…psychopath puppet-masters, sure; psychopath puppet, not so much.
>> Like to see the case for Trump’s plagiarisn alongside Biden’s decades
I wouldn’t be surprised.
there is nothing real to hold against him
As someone else would say to anyone saying that – “Sweet Summer Child”
In my mind, the evidence is clear.
@RickH, some citations please…
>> And even if Biddn quits, the party hack chosen to replace him will be just as unappealing as he was.
Umm…”just as unappealing?” No choosing, the second Plugs heads for his final ride on Marine One, Dougie will be drapery measuring at 1600.
>> Using a Tesla charger which hasn’t been upgraded means that the Ford will occupy two stations.
@Greg, how so?