Hot and humid again. And still. It didn’t feel as hot Saturday because of the patchy clouds, and light overcast, but it was still 90F in the shade at 6pm. Various parts of town got some dribbling spatter, but no real rain that I could see.
Headed out to do a pickup, some material for pipe refurbishment, and ended up chatting with a guy for an hour. The pickup was at the liquidation of an auctioneer I used to buy from all the time. That was pre-covid. His wife died and he quit selling shortly after. Stuff just sat for 5 years and he finally had to get rid of it because the landlord died and they want the land back… One of the interesting things was that the neighborhood, a real shite hole, looked like it might be improving and even gentrifying. People were fixing up houses, and building new houses on the lots. Unfortunately, the re-birth didn’t happen. It was still pretty much the same neighborhood, although he said that hispanics moved in and drove out the blacks that had been there forever. I see that particular demographic change all over Houston, and even other cities. Millions of illegals have to live somewhere…
So I chatted with him for a while, then hit Goodwill looking for shirts and pants, but ended up buying some vinyl albums. Place was busy with resellers and hipsters.
On my way home I ended up stopping to help a guy unconscious on the road. I see people sleeping in the open all over Houston now, but this guy was half on the road, half on the sidewalk, and well dressed. It looked like he’d fallen and hit his head. By the time I got back around, parked and headed toward him, a lady and another guy were there too. He woke up, seemed sorta ok, admitted to drinking the night before, and didn’t want to move from where he was. I gave him a bottle of water, and left. Started rethinking that as I drove away and decided to circle back and see if he’d moved or improved. He hadn’t. He was passed out again in the same spot.
The other people had left him too. The thing I was thinking was that heat injuries present like drunkenness- slurred speech, confusion, shuffling … so I checked him out again. Got him sitting and talking. He was only sweating from his scalp. No slurring, no odor, and it’s 5pm, 10+ hours since he was drinking. I got more of his story, tried for a medical history, but got no response to questions about blood pressure, diabetes, blood sugar, etc. He’d lost his phone, but still had his wallet in his pocket. No one I could contact for him. His speech was clear but he went from passed out to voluble to passed out. I asked if I could touch his arm, and he was cool and clammy. That isn’t good. It’s almost as bad as hot and dry. And then he passed out again. Time for 911. His breathing went from normal to shallow and rapid shortly after the call. That’s another bad sign.
The big red bus arrived, two HFD EMT’s got my synopsis, and he sat up and was chatty again just as they arrived. One of them felt his skin and they quickly got him on the trolley and into the ambulance to transport him. That was it for my involvement, and I headed home.
I am sharing the story because I’m still thinking and re-thinking about it hours later, and it helps to put it in words.
Why did I notice him? There are bums all over Houston, especially “inside the Loop” which is the area closer to downtown. Many are crashed out during the day.. but they are in the shade, they will cross their legs or arms, something to suggest that it’s intentional. This guy was sprawled, head on the sidewalk, legs and feet over the curb and in the street, arms splayed out. In full sun. Bums aren’t clean or well dressed. This guy was both. He was wearing shorts and a collared shirt. His small backpack/bookbag was next to him. He was on my left, on the cross street, and 50-60 feet away.
It just didn’t look right and caught my eye. Because I pay attention to the bums, I knew that he didn’t look like one, and wasn’t in the right place to be one.
It’s hot. I know people are at heightened risk of problems when it’s hot. That added to the ‘not looking right’. It caught the attention of an older black woman, a middle aged hispanic man walking with his family, and me– so I knew I wasn’t reacting inappropriately, the other people saw something concerning enough to park and get out of their cars, and check. As I was trying to get the guy sitting up, I said “come on and sit up, you don’t look like the kind of guy who should be laying in the street” and the lady said “that’s what I thought too”… so I felt like I wasn’t overreacting, or misinterpreting the situation.
Since I’m not an EMT or professional, and because the guy seemed to have control of his faculties once he sat up, I couldn’t dive into a medical assessment, and if he was just drunk, I didn’t think calling the cops would improve his situation, even if they’d respond, so I talked to him. Tried to find out his mental state, and if there were any other problems he was aware of having. Since he wasn’t answering health questions, it seemed like he’d just had too much to drink, and I’m sure that was the hispanic guy’s conclusion when he left after I initially did. But even if he’d been drinking, it didn’t mean he wasn’t having a heat related health emergency.
I thought about it. He was passed out when I arrived, when I returned, and then again while I was talking to him. He had literally not moved an inch. His head was in the same puddle of sweat when he laid back down. In between he seemed lucid and not drunk but wouldn’t try to move, or drink the water I gave him. Didn’t add up to “let him lay on the street.” It also didn’t match up with the other cases of heat illness I’ve seen, except for the clammy skin. 100+F in the sun and the guy is clammy. He’s clearly not thinking straight. And then he falls over again…. so yeah, 911 and get him some real help.
I hope he’s ok. He said he was 3 month sober until the night before when the woman he met encouraged him to drink with her. I asked him if he had a sponsor I could call, if he was in a program, if there was anyone I could call, but he’d lost his phone. Couldn’t even give me his sponsor’s name (IDK if that’s normal but the second A in AA is “anonymous” after all…) People used to carry “In Case of Emergency” cards in their wallets, now it’s all on their phones. Having a couple of contacts on a card in your wallet would be a GOOD IDEA ™.
It’s been 15 years, 7 months, and 13 days since I quit drinking.* I never did a program or went to meetings, but I am familiar with the basics from friends who went that route. It’s not something I think about much, and not part of my identity as it seems to be with so many people who can’t wait to tell you they’re “in recovery”. And yet it comes up surprisingly often. I am amazed by the number of people over the years I’ve “testified” to, or given some encouragement. I hope it’s helped them and not caused them to look at me and go “o h h e l l n o, I’m not turning out like him!” 🙂 Maybe it was the heat, or maybe this guy just fell off the wagon and his body reacted badly to it, or maybe he had another medical issue, or maybe he had all three things going on. I didn’t feel right walking away from him once I got involved.
Moral of the story? Keep your eyes open. Know what is normal for your area and the people in it. Act if you see something wrong. If it doesn’t look right, trust your unconscious brain to be bringing stuff to your attention, and then GIVE it some attention. And there are still good people out there, that are willing to overcome their reluctance and see if they can help. (not me, the other folks that stopped)
Awareness is a prep. Local knowledge is a prep. Basic first aid is a prep. Acting on what you see takes practice and cultivating a willingness to do so. It’s a skill too and needs exercise.
It wasn’t the stacks that helped this time, but I’m sure they will help in the future. Stack like your life depends on it.
nick
* I don’t keep track of the elapsed time anymore, I do the math when I need to.
@Nick: Good on you, for helping the guy. Sounds like heat stroke, unless he had other medical problems.
With IDS – I assume that’s what Crowdstrike is doing – the goal is to have code and data, including rule set, running out of the lowest level cache which the developer can manage can squeeze everything into, ideally confined to one CPU core of the VM or physical machine.
The speed and space requirements don’t leave a lot of room for input verification.
The last job had a pretty novel solution to the problem until the DevOps pinhead talked management into walking away and layering rules on top of SecurityOnion like everyone else did.
Management bit because SecurityOnion is container based and, potentially, a 100% cloud solution. HotSkillz!
In their job postings on the website, Cloudstrike emphasizes a “remote first” environment.
In theory, like Solarwinds, the company is based here, but Solarwinds at least has a physical mailing address out in the Fancy Lad “California Lite” part of Austin west of Mopac.
Cloudstrike shows nothing on their website checking quickly.
At this point, I wonder if Microsoft let Cloudstrike bypass the driver qualification testing as a trusted partner.
More likely Windows for Workgroups 3.11. That’s where the networking was added. Might be NT 3.1 or 3.5. It looks like WfW 3.11.
With IDS – I assume that’s what Crowdstrike is doing – the goal is to have code and data, including rule set, running out of the lowest level cache which the developer can manage can squeeze everything into, ideally confined to one CPU core of the VM or physical machine.
The speed and space requirements don’t leave a lot of room for input verification.
C and C++ pointer validation beyond zero / not zero is incredibly hard. I have had some really bad problems with memory reuse in my calculation engine over the years so I developed a solution.
I wrote a valptr method that keeps a list of all allocated memory spaces and sees if the suspect pointer is at least in an allocated memory space. That has stopped some of the worst of the bad pointer problems. But, it is expensive to run as it can run through thousands of memory banks checking a pointer.
Having a Fortran interpreter in your software that users can dump thousands of lines of untested code is dangerous. They routinely write code for a base case and then change a fundamental parameter, forgetting to change that parameter in their code causing a nasty crash. I call valptr with all user data and then scream about bad pointers to them.
WfW 3.11 also had a kinda-sorta way to run 32 bit code which made it popular for internal applications in the client-server era.
The downside for commercial software vendors was that WfW still required a Winsock stack for TCP, which was a $300 bolt on in the early 90s.
BillG integrated the stack into Windows 95 to kick off the push for Internet pr0n into the home, but Windows 95 was not as popular in IT departments for infrastructure use because it also discarded the third party memory managers, specifically QEMM.
“When Convoy Collapsed, the Uber for Trucking Left Behind Collateral Damage”
https://www.inc.com/issie-lapowsky/when-convoy-collapsed-the-uber-for-trucking-left-behind-collateral-damage.html
“A mountain of venture capital poured into the old-school freight industry. Then came market reality, and business owners got a harsh education in the true costs of digital disruption.”
Judging your risk is incredibly hard in business. I know this as I am considering shutting down my main business.
You are a good man, Nick.
Cloudstrike, has, well, struck.
Some fool in a giant potato sack wearing sandals, reeks of cow dung, who identifies as Sam from Birmingham. Buffer overrun anyone?
I second that!
G4U, Nick.
I suspect there will be a massive class action lawsuit against Cloudstrike with companies asking for reimbursement for costs. Even individuals who incurred costs associated with flight delays. A local family is stuck in Hawaii for three additional days. Those hotels, and meals, are not cheap. Is the airline providing vouchers? If so the airlines are incurring significant costs because of a failure on Cloudstrike.
I suspect there will be a massive class action lawsuit against Cloudstrike with companies asking for reimbursement for costs. Even individuals who incurred costs associated with flight delays. A local family is stuck in Hawaii for three additional days. Those hotels, and meals, are not cheap. Is the airline providing vouchers? If so the airlines are incurring significant costs because of a failure on Cloudstrike.
This. Some of these companies have huge costs and huge deductibles on their business interuption insurance. They are going to look for blood. And they have good accountants abd good lawyers. Cloudstrike may have a billion or five in liability here.
Microsoft will be first in line for liability since their Azure admins applied the patch without staggering the rollout.
The whole point of Kubernetes Hot Skillz tech is to offer a diversity of hosts and staged rollouts of application changes. Customers depending on “The Cloud” should still manage a few in house systems along with purchasing service from AWS and Google.
Kubernetes originated at Google, and Linux hosts run by everyone except Microsoft were not affected.
I worked across a parking lot from a “transportation logistics” company in Austin for a couple of years which the web site indicated was VC funded. The tech job postings involved lots of buzzwords and Microsoft tech.
The company looked like it was filled with “brogrammers” and sorority girl types who bugged out of the office right at 5:00 PM pre-Covid.
It is probably the type of place my wife’s nephew envisions managing with his J-school degree background after he leaves the Army.
If he leaves the Army before the shooting starts that is.
At our school, the current top manager is leaving after only a couple of years. She was a huge disappointment for those of us in the trenches: management by spreadsheet, and keeping her administrative staff happy – and she couldn’t care less about the people actually doing the teaching and research. Unfortunately, her replacement will probably be the same, because the top management of the school (the board, etc.) looks for that kind of manager. Classic MBA-style thinking. It’s just a shame, because there’s a lot of positive someone in that position could do, but none of it has happened.
Anyway, one more year full-time, and then maybe one individual lecture to be nice to my immediate boss (who is a good guy).
I just ordered Firefly on DVD from Big River. $6 plus tax. It should be here in a week. It’s a four disc set.
From Aaron Sorkin, the creative mind who inflicted the concept of Zuckerberg as an anti-hero on America with a script that made even a washed up soap opera has been like David Selby look good.
Mittens 2024.
Sorkin must be back on the cocaine.
https://dnyuz.com/2024/07/21/aaron-sorkin-how-i-would-script-this-moment-for-biden-and-the-democrats/
86F with bright overcast. Probably the coolest it’s gonna be today. Maybe I should start with outdoor stuff.
n
– yeah, not so much.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13655255/Indianapolis-man-shot-road-rage.html
and the author seems confused about who is the “victim”.
n
Not weird enough for you yet? Just wait…
The article says the people involved are a chinese speakers, so they are having trouble getting the story out of them. Hard to believe LAPD doesn’t have any translators that can do the job.
n
My in-laws play the “I Don’t Understand English” game all the time.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13643479/child-sex-abuse-scandal-california-candle-headless-baby-goat-man.html
The headline should read, How a crazy woman, a fame seeking overzealous prosecutor, inept cops, and a mania about satanic influences in society led to the destruction of dozens of lives, and the waste of millions of taxpayer’s dollars.
The result was one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in the history of the US.
NO ONE was ever convicted of a crime.
Here is one of the biggest understatements ever made…
n
The “Corn Pops” have gone soggy…
Biden drops out. The democrats will be in chaos. The Camel will be the candidate.
Yep, plugs is toast. The best decision DOCTOR Jill Biden will ever make. Let him enjoy his remaining years.
Just because plugs endorsed The Kamel, doesn’t mean she is it. By not resigning, plugs may have ensured we won’t have the first female POTUS ( if even 6 months). Nobody wants The Kamel. If she is the nominee, and, tRump beats her, we won’t hear from her again.
Time for Kankles to rear she/he/its ugly head.
tRump/vAnce 2024!
tRump/vAnce = tRAnce?
The endorsement was not part of the official letter but came at the end of the post on X.
Brawl!
Big Mike is coming.
A debate between tRump and The Kamel could be more entertaining than when tRump demolished Kankles.
Someone commented tRump will be the GOAT for defeating the only two females who got the Dumbo nomination for POTUS. Maybe the Dumbos should run ADMIRAL Levine since men are better at being women than women according to the Alphabet People.
Nice!
tRAnce 2024!
Holy crow..
Joe Biden QUITS presidential race after debate disaster: President endorses Kamala Harris as he admits ‘it’s in the best interests of the country’ for the Vice President to face Donald Trump
n
Larry Correia summed it up best.
Old Yeller has been taken behind the barn.
Paul said
Hmmm. I just checked Amazon, and the cheapest cost I see for the “Complete series” is $25. What link did you use? Thanks.
>>Big Mike is coming.
https://www.whec.com/national-world/obama-praises-biden-for-stepping-aside-but-stops-short-of-endorsing-harris-as-the-democratic-nominee-for-president/
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/president-election-world-calls-michelle-33292547
Stack more popcorn!
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0037X40PS?tag=ttgnet-20
Then click the See All Buying Options button. Huh, it’s all different now. Ok, try the middle option where it says $3.24.
$3.24 plus $3.99 shipping.
Amazon prices are just wacky.
The blue ray version I see is not for US market players.
@Paul; Thanks!
@paul, I just tried following your instructions, and the best price I can get is $14.34 with shipping, and no cheaper shipping options. I did find the $3.99 shipping option is $14.99 total. I tried signing out of Amazon, and it made no difference. I have forgotten how to delete just the Amazon site’s cookies, and don’t want to delete all cookies. Just an experiment.
This reminded me of Bob Thompson’s comments on different Amazon prices depending on whose account is active. FWIW, I don’t order much from Amazon, fewer than six per year, and I have sometimes found prices to vary a lot.
Anyone have any suggestions?
I honestly do not know. When I ordered Firefly there were three options about $6, a couple at $7, and then it went to $12. All free shipping.
The group of $x plus $3.99 shipping started at $3.
Maybe tether your phone for a different IP address?
Reminds me, I gave up on DVD players because I couldn’t gain control until after watching all of the Feebie warnings and advertising on a typical DVD. Just getting to the main menu takes several minutes on some movie DVDs. The only way I can skip that carp is to watch DVDs on my computer. Another way is to rip the disc to a file and watch it on TV over my network. I don’t have a dedicated little computer for the TV, and wouldn’t do that, because my wife would never have the patience to learn how to use that. She can barely figure out the streaming options and find shows with the awful UI on our Samsung TV. A friend says the UI will be mostly the same if I buy a Roku, but I am thinking of trying that anyway. Wife wants DirecTV back, but we had analog DVRs, and I have told her if we go back to DTV, the UI on the new equipment will probably be very different. She is not happy.
You could try incognito browsing. Or a VPN.
Amazon is whack.
It would be nice if there was competition that was as easy and convenient to use. Like maybe there would be something – let’s call it a search engine — that would let you search for an item and it would show you all the various options for it. Maybe even categorized by price, national source, and whether the vendor hates America.
And here’s as strong an argument for “Ahoy, Matey!” as any I’ve seen.
I just tried my phone for the Firefly DVDs, and the results were better, with one option at $10.37 including $3.98 shipping. That was without signing onto my Amazon account. I don’t believe I have ever ordered anything from Amazon on my phone, and I was prompted to log on, which I did not.
I forgot to mention that I do not currently have Prime.
This reminded me of Bob Thompson’s comments on different Amazon prices depending on whose account is active. FWIW, I don’t order much from Amazon, fewer than six per year, and I have sometimes found prices to vary a lot.
Anyone have any suggestions?
Amazon is heavy server side, light client side. Everything is tied to your login. That way you get the same behavior no matter which client you are using.
Try logging out and see what happens.
I have DirecTV (latest equipment, 4K box), and the on-screen UI is still the same. Top left button on the remote shows the program guide. Top right button shows saved/recorded programs. Not much difference in the UI.
Happy enough with DTV. Use it for over the air stuff, and a few other channels.
WRT to Amazon UI, search results depend on your prior browsing and purchase history.
I suspect the difference in pricing might be 3rd-party sellers with only one available at that price. And some 3rd party sellers have different shipping costs.
Perhaps the price @Paul got was the last one available at that price. (Assuming everyone is looking at the US store from a US geolocation.)
Instead of that, I have watched whole movies on YouTube using the Brave browser on my phone, cast to the TV. No commercials! I have no desire to “own” any movie, as long as this method is so easy. We don’t watch recent movies. We are mostly occasional TV watchers, so anything that is much of a hassle is not my interest. Trouble is, wife won’t invest any time learning the streaming UI, and wants TV the way it was with our old analog DTV DVRs, which don’t exist anymore.
Wife says her friends recommend Netflix, but she doesn’t know much about it. I have suggested we get a free trial (if such exists,) but she says she doesn’t have the time to spend some intensive time getting familiar with Netflix or any other subscription service. All we have now is YT TV, and it works well enough for me. I won’t watch anything with commercials, so only watch what YT TV shows in their cloud DVR, which works quite well. There is more to watch than I have time.
Log out and flush your browser’s history, cache, cookies, etc.
Even then, Amazon has your last known IP address so it may not matter.
Rip the movie track and create a new DVD.
If you’re sailing the high seas, ffmpeg will create NTSC DVD MPEG2 from just about any source, but you may have an issue with the anamorphic ratio.
Hmm. I could go for that… except we did some renovation and got rid of the place where I had the antenna mounted. Also have been told that DTV no longer allows self-installation here, and I will not let them come inside my house. Besides, their cost seemed exorbitant compared to streaming. I want to make streaming work, but thanks.
Oh, I also want to stay rid of AT&T, because they worsened DTV. Still have them for our cell phones, but am thinking of dumping them in favor of T-Mobile. A whole ‘nother story. If this keeps up, I will never get sufficient sleep 😉 .
The blu-ray player I bought with the TV went wacky. It seemed to work, sounded fine. None of the buttons worked. Nor the remote. So I bought this, just now it was $73 :
https://www.newegg.com/sony-bdp-s1700/p/0W3-0004-00034
Unlike the old player it will let me skip the previews. On most DVDs I’ve played so far that is. I still have to skip to the next track but at least I don’t have watch all the carp. Some discs let me hit Menu and I can skip all of the junk. It’s random. It does go from track to track pretty fast. The picture is great to my eyes.
DirecTv? Never again. It was $143/month when I dropped it. I put up a cheap antenna from Walmart and I get the Austin stations in HD. Sub channels in 720, I think. Sure, weather over Lake Travis kills the signal once in a while. But the picture quality blows DirecTv out of the water.
I have a Roku. It works well. I had Sling so someone could watch Nascar and college football. Someone died and I canceled Sling. That was about $75 a month. The Roku is unplugged.
I turned the TV off the night he died while EMS was here. Turned it on a couple of weeks later to watch DVDs. And that’s what I do most evenings, watch a movie.
I have two hip high stacks of DVDs I’ve bought. Plus three knee high stacks of DVDs that Mom insisted we bring when she move here. I figure it’s watch them or toss them in the trash to get rid of the clutter.
I have a stack of stinkers I’ll never watch again. I’ll give them to the Library Thrift Shop or Goodwill.
On the Amazon site, enter this in the search box
B0037X40PS
Then click on the item.
You’ll see new and used prices. (Text copied from screen, but formats weird here)
Clicking on the $3.13 item line will show a box on the right (on my laptop) with pricing in that range. (Although the product image is strange.) Those are third-party vendors, so can’t vouch for them.
The pricing might be influenced by the Affiliate Tag in the URL that Paul provided (automatically added on this site). That’s why you search just for the ASIN (Amazon product number) as described above.
Horrors! I did that once, and had to start over rebuilding convenient browser operation. Was like starting with a new computer. Never again if I can avoid it. Chrome=based browsers can flush based on sites, so I have done that, but might not work for Amazon. I could use a different browser, which might be worth trying. I actually have more trouble with Walmart than Amazon. Probably the same issues.
Changing my IP address is trivial.
DTV offers a streamng service, no antenna required. I only know that due to commercials I’ve seen.
Whether it has any hardware at all, a remote control, or a bizarre user interface is outside of my knowledge.
I’ll have to look into this. I have an old android that has no cel service. I bet I could use it on wifi for this purpose.
I don’t have Prime. I’m a cheapskate! Wait, I’m “economical”. Like Jack Benny. You get free shipping with orders of $35 and up, I just add stuff to my Wishlist. It gets here just as fast as when we did have Prime.
That worked, but how would I get that string of characters you just went me? Maybe I am thick-headed.
BTW, it worked when I was either signed onto my account, or not. If I just searched for the DVD title, I got the higher prices.
Remember when PBS was awesome? We watched the The Six Wives of Henry VIII and it was good stuff. After that they had Elizabeth R with Glenda Jackson.
I just found a box set called “The BBC Tudors Collection”. Henry VII is there. It’s 12 DVDs total. I don’t know where or when I bought it. I hope it’s as good as I remember. That’s a couple of weeks or so to watch.
Huh. I also have the Lord of the Rings trilogy set. The receipt says I bought it from Frys.com in 2013 for $40. Bluray. I just looked in one case and it’s five discs. Yikes. Maybe it’ll be better than the books.
I don’t need DirecTv or Roku or an antenna. Not for a few years.
I salute you, Jack. He was one of my favorite comedians. I am also “economical.” I have gone on and off Prime a few times to get a better deal on an order. Once, Frontier Telco gave me a free year of Prime. In that year, I used if a couple times, but never investigated all the programming. We had an analog TV connected to DTV back then, so most of those services wouldn’t have worked anyway. Prime is now on my short list of services to try, mainly because it is cheap XXXXX economical compared to other TV subscriptions.
BTW, Tablo looks interesting, but I don’t have any OTA TV reception. Really. Not here.
I’ve had zero problems with used books or DVDs from Big River. Sometimes the shipping is weird. Like the seller is in Oregon or Denver but it never shows up with USPS tracking until Dallas or Houston.
Who knew? A side job for long haul truckers.
Well, if you look at the URL that @Paul referenced
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product?tag=ttgnet-20/B0037X40PS?tag=ttgnet-20…or any Amazon URL, there is usually the Amazon ASIN (product) number somewhere in there. You’ll find the ASIN number in the product page ‘Product Details’ somewhere. Sometimes a search just for the ASIN number will get you a more ‘clean’ access to the product page.
Often you’ll see Zon (“Amazon”) URLs with a bunch of stuff after the ‘?’ part of the URL – that’s the ‘query’ part of the URL. The Zon query parameters often contain a bunch of info about the person that gave you the URL, including a timestamp, and other info. If you try using that complex URL (with the query stuff), you’ll often get slightly different info. Pricing might be affected, possibly. (Mysterious are the ways of the Zon.)
It’s often best to search for the ASIN number if you want to ‘sanitize’ your access to the product page. You can also try an ‘incognito’ browser, but search with the ASIN number, not a URL.
A ‘clean’ Amazon URL (which is what we published authors try to do with our links to our books in our advertising), is something like this.
https://www(dot)amazon(dot)com/dp/ASIN_NUMBERSo, a ‘clean’ URL for Book One of my ‘RV Vigilante” books might be
https://www(dot)amazon(dot)com/dp/B0CKD5712F(URL sanitized so that the Zon affiliate code is not added – done automatically here).
As for DirecTV – I believe you can self-install the ‘box’ with the DVR in it. If you have a wired connection to your router, then you can use their ‘streaming’ version, without the need for a roof antenna. (Although I think that it might also work on your wireless network.)
Streaming via your ISP, of course, has data usage considerations.
DirecTV also has an app so you can watch on Android or iPhone devices.
My wife is the Prime member, and has been since Amazon established “Prime”. The mean time between Amazon boxes is about 3 days. She LIVES on Amazon, and spends a LOT there. We recently ordered a refrigerator from Amazon; a Kenmore (made in China) 30 cubic feet with an ice maker. When it was delivered, it was the wrong model, a 28 cubic foot withOUT an ice maker. She called them to complain and got an apology, and they said they’d send the RIGHT model – and we could keep this one! When the correct model arrived a week later, it was broken. We called Sears service, and they came out and fixed it, and now appears to be working prperly. But Amazon gave her a $400 credit for the inconvenience!
Bout Firefly; I ordered
Firefly – The Complete Series
Sold by: glenthebookseller
Order Summary
Item(s) Subtotal: $3.49
Shipping & Handling: $3.98
Total before tax: $7.47
Estimated tax to be collected: $0.62
Grand Total: $8.09
Apparently it’ll take a week.
Thanks for the Zon whispering, Rick. I will keep that in my notes.
As for DirecTV, I kept my comment short. The slightly longer version is that I called them a little over a year ago to get a replacement DVR with an analog output. That was when we still had an analog TV. They had always just shipped one to me, but that was before AT&T took over. They were vague as to whether they could supply one, and tried a sales pitch to upgrade to digital service. When I refused, they insisted that it had to come via a third party installer who would come to my house and connect it. I politely (I am always polite: it usually makes things go better for me) asked if I could just let the installer hand it to me at my door. They tried to sell me on the convenience of having the installer check everything out for me. When I refused, they gave me a phone number and suggested I ask the installer. He said no, and tried the same sales pitch. I will add that he was over a hundred miles away from me: there are no closer installers. Such is the privilege of living at the edge of nowhere. I tried all my best negotiating skills to no avail, so finally said thanks. I let that DVR stay dead. We still had the other one that worked, and they had been connected to the same TV. I decided to terminate DTV as soon as I could get a new TV and better Internet.
As for ISP, I have two “unlimited” accounts. One is a WISP, and works fine. The other is a T-Mobile fixed base wireless (5G cellular) box, but it is too slow for reliable streaming. Both can connect with Ethernet or Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi seems to work quite well, because the access point is just a few feet from the TV.
So far, we only have YouTube TV, and it works fine, especially the “cloud” DVR. That can “record” a seemingly unlimited number of programs simultaneously, and play them at will to at least two TVs and some number of other devices. The others include anything that can browse the web, such as our Android phones and Windows computers, although the phones require an app. With only two people, there are no effective limits. I like a lot about it, especially with no local storage device to wear out. Physical DVRs used to last about three years before the hard disk wore out. They also used a fair amount of power.
I am determined to stay free of DTV and get free of AT&T, and stay with streaming. I especially like the freedom from physical media.
Ken, that is quite a story! I may try something similar. I ordered a dishwasher at the height of COVID directly from an East Coast appliance dealer. They were fine, but their stock was estimated to take four months. It did, but they were the best source. It arrived on time, and was the second largest item I have ordered remotely. Unfortunately, it developed a problem just under a year after I received it, and I had to deal with the manufacturer. That went well, and a guy came 120 miles (I remind that I am at the edge of nowhere) to diagnose the problem. He had to order a new circuit board, and of course come back a week or so later. Works fine now.
BTW, it is a Bosch, and my wife likes it, except for the very poor instruction manual. She has found many errors, and had to make her own notes. She called their support a few times, and they were only able to read the manual to her over the phone. They couldn’t believe their fine manual could have any errors. I took a look, and this is the most complex appliance I have seen. It needs, but does not have, a very good manual. Our two previous dishwashers were so well designed that even I could just look at the controls and operate them. Our first was a Kitchen Aid by Hobart, and the second was a Maytag. Both lasted many years. I wonder whether this newfangled one will last very long. The repairman said the failure he fixed was pretty common. It was also intermittent, which caused a lot of head scratching.
The “streaming” version supplants AT&T Uverse.
The “DVR” does not truly store things locally with the over-the-top service like it will with the pure satellite connection.
Ordering a fridge from Big River? I never even thought that was a thing.
For me it would be UPS or FedEx hopefully delivering at least to MY side of the fence. Like the lawnmower…. just dumped on the other side of the fence.
I’m getting too old to play this bull shirt. It’s a thousand feet from front door to cattle guard. If I buy a fridge, how exactly am I to get this to the house? For real.
For our refrigerator, they took it off the truck and dragged on a hand truck about 100 feet up the paved concrete driveway. Easy-peasy. Their delivery people will put in the “room of choice”, and I wanted it in the garage. They didn’t offer unboxing and setup service, which was why I didn’t discover it was the wrong model before they drove away. But it worked fine.
The second refrigerator has worked well since they repaired the ice maker. All things considered, it was a heck of a good deal!
Oh. My DirecTv DVR box got real noisy and squeally before I called. It’s their box, right? But when it pukes I somehow have etended my so called contract by two years? What contract?
Yeah. Nope. Never again. Sorry about the lack of the letter X. Haven’t swapped keyboards yet.
The dang DVR thing was a constant hard drive whine. We had a couple of things set to record. Never watched any of it. I’m pretty sure getting that DirecTv DVR receiver out of my house dropped the electric $10 a month. And the noise, jeebus…. I complain about my fridge…. damn thing is running right now, but it’s not all that loud.
I’m not exactly grumpy. Just on the edge. It’s rained an inch and almost a half today. No run-off. No puddles. The trees need water, so rain is good.
Buddy is snoring logs behind me. It’s 8:30 and getting dark. Time for Potty Walk. !!!!
He makes me smile a lot.
We went through Home Depot for a built-in microwave replacement, and none of the people walking into our house to deliver, measure, and install the appliance was a Home Depot employee.
Ebay has lots of copies at around $7 including shipping.
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I like local scratch and dent outlets for appliances. Crazy good deals if you can wait, and keep checking back.
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DirecTV. My last client had three DVRs in the rack, and could route them anywhere in the house. He liked to start a movie or show in the theatre, pause it, then finish watching in the bedroom. They lasted far longer than 3 years, but he didn’t do much recording. IDK if they recorded stuff anyway. TiVo did. After we upgraded him to fiber, he dumped the DTV as soon as he was sure the streaming would meet his needs. He uses the apple tvs to stream, mostly, but his kids will use the Roku players in the tvs to watch their own accounts when they visit with the grandkids.
If you have an issue with hardware that DTV won’t fix, there is plenty on ebay. You can supply your own in any case and not pay the equipment rental fee. IIRC they charge monthly for REMOTES.
Outside of cities, DTV is often the only choice (or dish) so they still provide a needed service, but it does get expensive quickly. So does maintaining a half dozen subscriptions though.
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Spent the afternoon in the back yard, mostly in shade, trimming trees and bushes and making temporary repairs to the fence. It’s the neighbor’s fence, but he wanted to replace the whole thing and split the cost. I want to just repair and reuse as much as possible. He thinks it’s my fence, so I did some repairs. Maybe that will be enough for now. I don’t mind paying half, we paid half last time it was replaced, but I think there is still a lot of life left in the fence, it’s just the posts failed at ground level. It wasn’t even the wind that broke it, but the utility tree trimmers walking along the top of it to access the trees and bushes under the wires.
I also fixed two string trimmer motors so I could run the trimmer and the pole saw. Didn’t get to the chainsaw. I need a spark plug and a primer bulb replacement kit to fix the other two trimmers.
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Lost over 4 pounds during the day, and I’m still a quart low on fluid despite pounding down a couple of quarts already.
n
The “gotcha” with the built-in microwave is the trim kit. Each model has a unique kit.
Some of the cr*p GE microwaves were on sale for steep discounts, but the trim kit was still full price.
Yeah, I scored the miele microwave/ oven set at habitat and the trim kit on ebay cost the same as the microwave.
n
When my then-girlfriend and I moved in together, our first major purchase was a Kenmore (made in the USA) refrigerator. That thing worked well for 23 years, although the ice makers never lasted longer than 4 or 5. After that, all the future refrigerators were from the Sears “scratch and dent” outlet, and each lasted several years. This time, my wife (of 44 years now) started by looking at the scratch and dent location here, but the choices were quite slim. The military exchange system sells appliances via Home Depot, but the prices were pretty high. So she looked at Amazon, and here we are.
“Leviathan Falls (The Expanse, 9)” by James S. A. Corey
https://www.amazon.com/Leviathan-Falls-Expanse-James-Corey/dp/0316332941?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number nine of an nine book science fiction series. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback weighing 1.3 lbs published by Orbit in 2023. Ah, Science Fiction by the pound, cool ! This book is the end of the series as far as I know. BTW, James S. A. Corey is two guys writing under a single nom de plume.
James Holden has escaped from the fallen empire of Laconia. The ancient central station with the 1,300 gates, shortcuts around the Milky Way, is a free for all now. But, somebody else has awakened and wants to destroy everything. And the leader of Laconia, Winston Duarte, has turned up at the central station.
I really enjoyed the series. It was almost hard science fiction if you skip the protomolecule and the central station at the edge of the Solar System.
You can watch books one through six converted to a six season tv series on Amazon Prime. The series was started on the Syfy channel and moved to Amazon for the fourth season.
My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (25,657 reviews)
Lynn
Ordering a fridge from Big River? I never even thought that was a thing.
For me it would be UPS or FedEx hopefully delivering at least to MY side of the fence. Like the lawnmower…. just dumped on the other side of the fence.
I’m getting too old to play this bull shirt. It’s a thousand feet from front door to cattle guard. If I buy a fridge, how exactly am I to get this to the house? For real.
I just ordered another Barcalounger from Big River in June. It was delivered to my house with a single guy using a single axle 18 wheeler tractor trailer FedEx Logistics with a hydraulic lift on the rear. He brought it to my front door on a big furniture dolly. I brought it inside myself with my dolly.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084NX71RT?tag=ttgnet-20/
I ordered a new side by side fridge from Home Depot with delivery and install a couple of months ago. Two guys brought it out to me on a trailer pulled by a dually. They carried it in my house using a two man appliance carry strapped to their shoulders. They then moved the old fridge to the garage for me.
On Wednesday I will pick up the Frigidaire fridge I won this weekend in an estate auction. Just under $30 total, so it’s pretty cheap. Basic white, freezer on top model. Less freezer than I had with the last fridge, but more fridge will be nice.
Looked pretty clean in the photos. Some light rust or marks on the side, some discoloration in the white plastic bits. Hope it lasts for a few years.
n
I was thinking I would get to bed early tonight, but I just looked, and that ship sailed hours ago…
n
Yep. Of course, so will the Trump campaign. One of the main pillars has been campaigning specifically against Biden. That pillar will have to be replaced.
That’s the obvious choice, but: apparently the DNC has some rule that says the candidate with the second largest number of votes should assume the mantle. She wasn’t a candidate, so they would have to twist the rules into a pretzel.
There’s also the very interesting question about all the campaign donations made to the Biden/Kamala ticket. It’s not clear whether that money can be used for a different ticket. I expect there will be lawsuits, to add to the general chaos.