Cool and clear in the morning, warming later, but not getting hot hot. Just warm hot. Probably not even more than 90F… which describes yesterday too. And probably tomorrow as well.
The cool morning helped me do a couple of small things outside. I did a repair in the garage, poked around the yard. Looked for rat carcasses (and didn’t find any). Did my pickup, got the kid… did some small things around the house. But mostly I was looking at hurricane stuff, talking with mom and my sibling, and trying to figure out what will be happening this weekend.
I’m betting on a lot of wind, water, and devastation. I’m hoping the people I know and love avoid at least one of those three. It seems to unlikely that they’ll miss them all.
Today I’ve got one pickup and one dropoff. The pickup is a 55 gallon rotomolded water tank. The dropoff is a “safe” I opened and fixed for one of my auctioneers. I like opening the cheap “safes” and making them work again. It usually doesn’t take much to open them. Don’t use them to secure anything important. I consider being able to get into stuff, like “safes” or lockboxes, or vehicles, or doors, to be an important skill. Bypassing locks, brute forcing them, or “picking” them, are all fun and fascinating things to learn about and do.
Skills, I’ve got a few, and they are quite varied… stack some skills, and some stuff.
nick
Good morning, and good luck to all in the path of the nasty weather.
Some of you old crusty geeks might have known Admiral Grace Hopper. I unfortunately never had the honour. The NSA has just released two videos (around 40 minutes each) of a talk the then Captain Hopper gave there in 1982.
Absolutely worth watching, even for those with no particular interest in old computing stuff. Her public speaking style is mesmerising. It reminds me of Richard Feynman, whom she likely would have known. She makes complicated themes accessible and interesting, talks about leadership, and does it all with panache, passion and humour, when aged 76.
Part 1 and Part 2.
If you’re hunkered down and need to pass the time, here’s a timesink for you: the Ken Hawley Collection Trust channel. Ken was a collector of, and expert on the manufacture of, the tools and instruments made in the onetime home of the British toolmakers’ and cutlers’ industry, Sheffield, in Yorkshire.
Borrow from next year’s budget (FY26) to give more money to illegal aliens.
I despise the special laws and the exemptions for government employees and other special people.
If there is one set of laws for you and another for the government, you are not being governed, you are being ruled.
(I wrote that in a comment on Cold Fury some years ago. Ol’ Remus put it in as a “Wisdom in One Bite” (I think it was called) in his next weekly column. Pleased me, it did.)
The cabin where Gates took Winblad is available to rent. Or was.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9548429/Inside-Bill-Gates-1-440-sq-ft-North-Carolina-hideaway-former-girlfriend-Ann-Winblad.html
The article forgets Pam Edstrom, another regular hookup depending on the stories you want to believe, but definitely the brains behind The Legend of BilG, Boy Genius. Gates PR troubles seemed to begin when Edstrom died in 2017 and was no longer around to clear up the messes.
There were many others and it hasn’t stopped. Officially, Gates stepped down from the board of Microsoft in 2020 to avoid another long time affair with a subordinate coming to light, but he’s widely believed to be back in charge with the company trying to dominate AI.
The annual ACM-W conference is named after Grace Hopper.
The ACM student chapter on campus in WA State was W. Men need not appy.
Ironically, none of the ladies involved in the club when I was there work in the industry. One helps run the Grace Hopper conference. Another drives a truck. A third, the Suma Cum Laude CS graduate and commencement speaker that year runs a podcast talking about her days in school as a black-out-drunk alcoholic.
I’m sure Admiral Hopper would be proud if she were still alive.
Cool last night, and cool this am. Working on getting the girls moving. And me.
Waiting for the news update cycle to update.
n
Also, “Hopper”, is the Nvidia code name for the H100, the “flux capacitor” of AI which drives the monkey trick with its ability to do the requisite probability matrix multiplications quickly.
Right now, everyone is holding their breath for “Blackwell”, the next generation, which is late shipping from Nvidia.
Will the monkey trick run out of gas before Blackwell ships?
Is Batman a transvestite?
The amazing thing is that their bows survived that performance. 2-Cellos are great. I also like Piano Guys – despite the name, they also play cellos (and piano).
Unions once served a great and essential purpose. Sadly, money corrupts, and the major unions got entirely out of control 30 or 40 years ago.
Yup. out of control. Time to take the bitter medicine required to automate the ports.
Here’s wishing all affected the best of luck in getting through the storm.
Admiral Hopper talks about Tactical Air Command and their personnel records. Basically archiving all but the most relevant information, which is the most recent information on an individual. That information is needed quickly, the rest can be gotten later. I remember that from my days at Langley. We in the IT unit were tasked with accomplishing that goal. In reality, I don’t think we did as computing power increased and storage increased. It got to the point that there was no longer any need to archive the records.
The original plan was to offload the older, less relevant information to tape and keep just what was needed on the disc drives. As those drives became larger, ways were found to encode and compress the information, it was found that with a few exceptions all the information on a service member could be kept on the disc drives for immediate retrieval.
Our task morphed into methods to extract that information into meaningful reports for the personnel people. We developed languages that allowed the personnel managers to use phrases and words they understood to produce their own reports and queries. The end result was highly specialized compilers that created code that ran under control of the software we created to manage the data.
The software was so good that the same base code was able to handle not only the USAF personnel, but also the civilian personnel, and later used by the Army, Navy and Marines to manage their personnel data. The compilers and base code that was created was not modified to support the other agencies. All that was changed was the statements used by the personnel people, that were compiled and then run by the code we created.
This was all accomplished in the 1970’s and I spent a large part of my USAF career working on the code. I started with the stuff in 1973 and quit when I left the USAF in 1979 (December).
I made it as far as the scene where a woman that looked like Feinstein announced the deaths of Milk and Moscone.
That was about 20 minutes in so I bailed out of what was looking like a documentary.
61F this am, which is why it felt chilly.
Coffee in the cup, eggs and sausage in ma belly…
n
Indeed it is. Burns much longer than a violin or a viola, too! 🙂
Jenny, lucky you to have found one you like! Well wear your new instrument, and may playing it bring you and others great joy.
My grandmother was a professional cellist. Saint-Saëns’ “the Swan” from the carnival of the animals gives me goosebumps, as does Kol Nidrei, by Max Bruch.
I heard a recording the other day of cellist Yo-Yo Ma playing “Gabriel’s Oboe” from the Mission, by Ennio Morricone, which was very beautiful too, although this is still my absolute favourite performance of that work, with the sublime oboist Yeon-Hee Kwak, and the Maestro himself conducting. Transcendental.
Weird. For some reason I’ve watched quite a few of their videos lately. Then you mention them.
I’m the same way. I’ve always looked at picking etc., as solving a puzzle. I like watching a new picking device or bypass tool video.
+googolplex It will only get worse if the Kamel Humper is elected. It will start with commie edicts via EO, just to keep SCOTUS busy. Every Secretary level commie under the KH will start writing their own law to implement communism.
It is kind of sad I’ll vote for tRump just to stop the Kamel Humper. There is not much tRump can do in four years. Maybe some new SCOTUS Justices. Keep the tRump tax cuts. Reverse ridiculous EOs by plugs.
Our school district is so incompetent.
The school calendars publicly released all have errors regarding which days are early dismissal days, and for what grade levels. That means that today is ONLY early dismissal for high schools, not what was published.
So they have issued urgent notices, by text, by email- several from different levels of management, and by robot phone call. All included a link to the “official” calendar, which is a pdf and has an approval date from 2022 on it, which is wrong.
NONE of the messaging has the TIME of the dismissal listed.
n
correlation is not causation
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13936995/heart-attack-stroke-crisis-young-people-covid-infection.html
n
Do you really think your district is special? That nonsense runs rampant in most school districts. The district in which I sub is just as incompetent.
Wicked tongues might whisper that anyone who goes into education as a profession these days is not unlikely to be special. As the old saying goes, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”
I think that’s been the case for a long time. Sure there are exceptions, and I think I was lucky to have had more good teachers from K – 8 than bad. High school saw the quality drop, and college even more so.
Oh, it’s not the teachers, it is the administration. The central office. The clowns that make decisions. Sending information to subs via email using CC and exposing everyone’s email address after I have explicitly complained about this practice for the last five years.
Changing school policy or procedures without notifying any of the subs. Then the subs get called on the carpet for not following procedure. The district’s response is “it was in the email”. Well, you freaking idiots, subs don’t get the policy emails. Or the schedule change that was sent via email, excluding the subs, so when the sub shows up they find out school was early that day. “It was in the email”. Idiots.
Payroll that is three days late because the central office screwed up the pay for the subs. Has happened twice. No notice given other than I noticing that the deposit was not in the bank. “It was in the email”. Idiots.
Or getting paid a teacher’s pay because we have the same last name. Entailing having to write a check from my account, for the full amount, then waiting for a check from the teacher that did not get paid enough. Which took three weeks to get that check. Idiots.
I work from home so my boss doesn’t know I’ve been juggling two other jobs on company time for the past three years. Here’s how I get away with it…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13938547/I-work-home-boss-doesnt-know-Ive-juggling-two-jobs-company-time-past-three-years-Heres-away-it.html
– she doesn’t feel any remorse either.
n
The pub job isn’t the ethics problem. The online candle store requiring attention during business hours is the problem.
The day job knows about the waitress gig — Teams is a panopticon — but they probably don’t care because it doesn’t interfere with the work getting done. Plus being female, pretty (bar waitress) and from a wealthy family helps.
Is it that they know, or that they could know if they checked? Does the software flag activity proactively?
n
How about if I keep going until I need glasses?!
re Milton, plenty of these around the Tampa/St Pete counties…
https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/733212/view/hurricane-storm-surge-warning-marker-usa
That 4×4 won’t be there after a CAT 3, much less a CAT 5. They should have used a 6×6, that might withstand a CAT 5.
“‘Science Guy’ Bill Nye Uses Hurricane Milton to Push Climate Cultism, Slam Trump”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/10/science-guy-bill-nye-uses-hurricane-milton-to-push-climate-cultism-slam-trump/
I though he was dead. Did somebody resurrect him for Halloween ?
(I wrote that in a comment on Cold Fury some years ago. Ol’ Remus put it in as a “Wisdom in One Bite” (I think it was called) in his next weekly column. Pleased me, it did.)
Special, that was.
There were many others and it hasn’t stopped. Officially, Gates stepped down from the board of Microsoft in 2020 to avoid another long time affair with a subordinate coming to light, but he’s widely believed to be back in charge with the company trying to dominate AI.
Bill Gates is the whip. I am so glad that I did not go to work for Microsoft back in 1987. I would have fit right into the culture and died of my heart attack at age 49.
If you want to read about the Microsoft culture, read “Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft Hardcover” by G. Pascal Zachary:
https://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Microsoft/dp/0029356717?tag=ttgnet-20/
The section about the programmers crawling through the ceiling space to get into the locked down build room with code fixes on 3.5 inch floppies is classic. Any programmer who broke the build was usually symbolically whipped by David Cutler in their public build meeting the next day.
One of my proud shining moments as a programmer includes the programmer lead screaming at me for fixing the software build the previous night. “Why did you do that ?” screamed Ellie. “Because it was broke and I could not debug it”, I replied. Our build server was not locked down and I canceled the build, fixed the code, and started the build from scratch. Ellie was not my boss, I did not care if I pissed her off.
Dropping to 130 mph: Milton cone:
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/storm_graphics/AT14/refresh/AL142024_5day_cone_no_line_and_wind+png/212936_5day_cone_no_line_and_wind.png
61F this am, which is why it felt chilly.
It was 59 F when I walked out of the office last night at 1 am. Shocked me !
Dilbert Reborn: Dogbert Takes Dilbert’s Ballot To The Post Office
https://www.reddit.com/r/dilbert/comments/1fzcibw/dilbert_reborn_october_6_2024_posted_for_free_on/
YES ! Dogbert rules !
I believe the sign is in the parking lot of the Rusty Pelican on the Courtney Campbell Causeway, a wedding venue and beach bar near Tampa Airport.
It is a joke. The bar owners know what will happen to the sign in just a minimal hurricane.
The infamous Tanga Lounge used to be located nearby for grooms entertaining second thoughts. If they weren’t into nude dancers, the original Hooters was just off the other end of the causeway in Clearwater.
Florida used to be fun. Then Disney and Jimmy Buffett came along.
Arlo and Janis: Dead Playlist Artists
https://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/2024/10/09
Go back a couple of days to see the tribute to Kris Kristofferson.
“Toyota’s portable hydrogen cartridges look like giant AA batteries – and could spell the end of lengthy EV charging”
https://www.techradar.com/vehicle-tech/hybrid-electric-vehicles/toyotas-portable-hydrogen-cartridges-look-like-giant-aa-batteries-and-could-spell-the-end-of-lengthy-ev-charging
That is a 10 mile cartridge (SWAG). Better have a few more. Don’t store them in the sun as the hydrogen expands with temperature.
Just remember, hydrogen wants to be free.
“How the ‘Waffle House Index’ Shows the Impact of Hurricane Milton”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/waffle-house-index-shows-impact-125820742.html
“The “Waffle House Index” is an unofficial Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) metric that can indicate a need for serious disaster response.”
“Under normal circumstances, Waffle Houses are open 24/7. If they are closed, that likely means a severe storm is hammering an area.”
“Dozens of Waffle House locations in Florida, mostly in the Tampa area, were shut down ahead of Hurricane Milton, according to the company.”
I went to a Waffle House in DeSoto, Texas a week ago. It was awesome and we beat the Sunday breakfast crowd by being there at 9 am. At 10 am, people were waiting.
BTW, that Waffle House inside was closed from 12am to 630am. But takeaway was active then.
How about if I keep going until I need glasses?!
I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 6 or 7. My mom was blind as a bat until her cataract surgeries, -8 on both eyes.
The wISP went to the neighbor’s today. She has a new radio. She has the tablet she won at the wISP’s Christmas party almost two years ago. She thinks it’s nice. All of her stuff connects. Including her Kindle. All of her wi-fi problems and passwords are fixed. She hasn’t tried the TV yet.
I didn’t ask if she was given the balance he had on her account. It’s like $70. She doesn’t care about that.
Part of the deal with loaning the wISP the money for his fancy new machine was a new radio, the model up from the current radio, then an upgrade to a 500×500 capable radio when they get a Gig radio on the tower, and 500×500 speeds here when that happens with no monthly bill for life. I get the loaned money back by mid-December. No interest but so what. He offered all of that. It’s his deal. I just said add my neighbor The Poor Old Widow Woman (which she’s thinks is hilarious) to the deal. “Oh, you drive a hard bargain!” I think he was joking but he didn’t hesitate. I’m just thinking include her or find someone else with the cash to spare for a couple of months.
She’s happy. Good.
I’m suppose to get a new radio tomorrow. We’ll see, schedules slip. I’m not in a rush, go fix the customer who has a dead connection first.
I could have put the money in a t-bill. I will. But for now, it’s working.
I just said add my neighbor The Poor Old Widow Woman (which she’s thinks is hilarious) to the deal. “Oh, you drive a hard bargain!” I think he was joking but he didn’t hesitate. I’m just thinking include her or find someone else with the cash to spare for a couple of months.
The proper Southern pronunciation of “The Poor Old Widow Woman” is “The Poor Old Widder Woman”.
Yeah, that is how you say it!
Might even say “Dat po ol’ widduh woman”. Tho that might be a Mobile thing.
“2024 Electoral College: No Toss-Up States”
https://www.realclearpolling.com/maps/president/2024/no-toss-up/electoral-college
Trump at 296 electoral votes, Harris at 242 electoral votes.
Harris will still have the popular vote.
I am beginning to wonder if we will see violence at polling stations as illegals or presumed illegals try to vote.
The money, the loan, has made two people very happy. That counts for a lot. To me.
Yeah, that is how you say it!
Might even say “Dat po ol’ widduh woman”. Tho that might be a Mobile thing.
Some people in New Orleans down on the bayou might say that.
“Battle for the Senate 2024”
https://www.realclearpolling.com/maps/senate/2024/toss-up
Rick Scott (R) in Florida has been moved into the toss up column.
“What to Expect at Tesla’s Oct. 10 ‘Cybercab’ Robotaxi Reveal”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/tesla-oct-10-cybercab-robotaxi-event-what-to-expect-how-to-watch
“Can Tesla catch up to its robotaxi rivals and convince people to hop into an autonomous Tesla running on FSD? We’ll find out more on Thursday.”
I hope it has better voice recognition than my 2019 F-150 (it sucks !).
Douglas Coupland’s “Microserfs” from that same era is a fictionalized but well researched look at the life of developers working for Microsft in Seattle/Redmond pre-Windows 95, back before The Legend of BillG Boy Genius was punctured by scandal and divorce.
Coupland’s “J Pod” is a spiritual sequel covering Internet developers in the early 00s, but the book isn’t nearly as funny as the CBC TV series featuring Alan Thicke in a cool late career supporting role as the main character’s father.
Opposite Thicke as the mother is Sherry Miller, a national TV news anchor in Canada best known recently for “Queer as Folk”, but back in the 80s, Miller was the go-to actress for appearing on “SCTV” as a Playboy Bunny whenever the writers needed one in a sketch.
Musk sprinting up the steps of Gotham City Hall, just like Adam West’s “Batman”.
Clay Travis was singing the praises of the “hero” Elon Musk on the “Clay & Buck” show when I went out at lunchtime today to run an errand.
Please.
That’s the kind of thing I expect from Cutie Pie, not “Clay & Buck”, but I will admit I’m not a regular listener.
The folks on the street behind Aunt Jessie’s and Granmama’s house on Conception Street said it that way.
But I, fresh from California, talked funny.
I have an ear? I seemed to pick it up without trying. And then move to Mission, Texas and yikes, it’s not even English.
All I knew was “taco” and “enchilada” and “tortilla”. I was quickly taught how to say in Spanish that “that you are the son of a raped whore”. High School. Fun times.
The proper Southern pronunciation of “The Poor Old Widow Woman” is “The Poor Old Widder Woman”.
There is a great Fantasy book about a poor widder womyn by Faith Hunter. “Blood of the Earth (A Soulwood Novel)”
https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Earth-Soulwood-Novel-Hunter/dp/0451473302?tag=ttgnet-20/
“When Nell Ingram met skinwalker Jane Yellowrock, she was almost alone in the world, exiled by both choice and fear from the cult she was raised in, defending herself with the magic she drew from her deep connection to the forest that surrounds her.”
“Now, Jane has referred Nell to PsyLED, a Homeland Security agency policing paranormals, and agent Rick LaFleur has shown up at Nell’s doorstep. His appearance forces her out of her isolated life into an investigation that leads to the vampire Blood Master of Nashville.”
“Nell has a team—and a mission. But to find the Master’s kidnapped vassal, Nell and the PsyLED team will be forced to go deep into the heart of the very cult Nell fears, infiltrating the cult and a humans-only terrorist group before time runs out…”
Nell ain’t old, she was married at age 15 as the second wife to a 70 year old man. His first wife was dying and she was forced the marry the old man to take care of his wife. Five years later, both the first wife and the old man have passed away, leaving Nell a widow at age 20. And then the church folks start coming around, saying that Nell should get married again. But Nell has a shotgun and a deer rifle for those horrible church people.
Nell is not human, she is half human and half wood sprite. She can raise any kind of plants or trees. And the Earth is in tune with her.
When Grace Hopper was retired from the Navy, she got hired by Digital Equipment Corporation.
In St. Louis, we (Digital) opened a new marketing center called an Application Center for Technology (ACT), and had a grand opening event.
Admiral Hopper was supposed to appear and speak, along with Gene Cernan,the last man to walk on the moon (still!)
I had a role in all this, and was looking forward to hosting Adm. Hopper. Alas, she got ill, and in fact never made it to the St. Louis office.
I did have fun looking at Gene Cernan’s artifacts, like his space suit and some moon rocks. I shook his hand, so that’s the second-most famous person I claim that way.
First was Moe Howard. I suppose you could argue famous vs. accomplished, but…
Clay Travis was singing the praises of the “hero” Elon Musk on the “Clay & Buck” show when I went out at lunchtime today to run an errand.
Michael Berry was saying “friends don’t let friends vote democrat” on his 5pm to 7pm radio show yesterday. I found it hilarious. My wife not so much.
https://michaelberryshow.com/
“bp abandons goal to cut oil output, resets strategy”
http://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/news/2024/10-1/bp-abandons-goal-to-cut-oil-output-resets-strategy/
“bp has abandoned a target to cut oil and gas output by 2030 as CEO Murray Auchincloss scales back the firm’s energy transition strategy to regain investor confidence, three sources with knowledge of the matter said.”
“When unveiled in 2020, bp’s strategy was the sector’s most ambitious with a pledge to cut output by 40% while rapidly growing renewables by 2030. bp scaled back the target in February last year to a 25% reduction, which would leave it producing 2 MMbpd at the end of the decade, as investors focused on near-term returns rather than the energy transition.”
BP just acknowledged that they cannot get to net zero and maintain the same level of society.
Ah, the WDW situation has resolved itself. SWA canceled the flight. No replacement flight was available.
Guess we’ll go to the BOL this weekend instead.
It’s a load off my mind.
n
I only sporadically hear Berry because he airs from 8 – 10 PM on the big San Antonio “I Heart” station which has its own semi-national drive time show.
Is Berry still airing Shirley Q Liquor bits since Sheila Jackson Lee passed?
I heard “Shirley” on a few months ago, but that was before Lee assumed room temperature.
The Magic Condom -er- Kingdom will still be there next week.
Utility truck staging was down in Doral this time. Trump opened up the hotel for the crews.
Forget Waffle House, if the 24 hour McDonalds near Animal Kingdom is closed, things are bad.
Moe was accomplished in his own way.
The Stooges went from poverty to a permanent piece of entertainment history.
I’ll occasionally see an Abbot & Costello movie, but the Stooges are on MeTV every Saturday.
The Magic Kingdom will still be there but we won’t. The earliest rebooking for DVC members is like 11 months from now…
n
Landfall as a cat3, at Siesta Key, 120mph max sustained wind. Bye bye Siesta Key.
n
@Denis
Thanks for the links, especially the ones of Amazing Grace.
Once again, It’s Ryan Hall, Y’all has great coverage including spotters on the ground.
Broke the seawall at Punta Gorda, +3ft.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-V_YnmER0Y
n
Moe Howard’s brother (or son?) Dale lives in our town. Not sure if he is still alive. I knew him slightly because he ran an eclectic scrap yard. Good guy. At the time, I didn’t know he was related to Moe Howard.
Two of his sons worked on my garage project a few years ago. Very skilled, hard workers, can’t say too much good about them. I asked how Dale was doing, and they said he was still kicking. Dale pi**ed off our city council, thus earning the admiration of many of us.
Adam Savage and the Bowley 543 padlock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1T2BxyjFH4&t=914s
I thought it was a conference.
The last place I would want to be in a hurricane on the property is one of the remote buildings at Coronado Springs on a convention discount.
DVC is in the tower eyesore connected to the main building.
Listening to the big ham repeater network in Tampa thru Broadcastify. Trees down, funnel clouds sighted.
https://www.broadcastify.com/listen/ctid/344
n
Dead Playlist Artists:
Stevie Ray Vaughn
Warren Zevon
Jeff Healey
The Allman Brothers
David Bowie
Karen Carpenter
A foot of rain in Palm Harbor is bad for the Spanish Oaks neighborhood, located in an old clean fill site.
A flash flood emergency was declared for Tampa and surrounds, as 12 “ of rain have fallen, 5”/hr rate, flash flooding IS occurring.
———–
I’m embarrassed by how poorly my fellow hams take direction. Net control has repeatedly asked people to stop reporting power outages, as more than 1M are out, and they keep calling in to report their own locations have lost power.
n
“The bill is now coming due.”
Jonathan Turley on the Deadspin case:
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/10/09/delaware/
https://townhall.com/columnists/rainerzitelmann/2024/10/09/do-rocks-on-mars-have-rights-n2645854
As a writer that is doubtless using a rock “shaped by human hands”–a computer–to produce this shiite, to say nothing of the rocks such as windows, autos, buses, planes, appliances, etc, this person is a microcephalic idiot.
New units of measurement. Guess metric isn’t that great after all…
I wonder how many Andre the Giants my trees are?
n
Well…. As a ham, I should object. But then I’ve listened to a few nets.
A lot of hams really like to talk. Some like to be the center of attention. A lot of what is said is “all about MEEE!” This is encouraged during normal times, because normal operations are often about your family, rour rig, your awards, or showing off how much you know. Disasters bring out the worst in some people.
Remember when you listen to hams, that they are provably on the right side of the Bell curve, and think about that. I say provably, because even though it’s a simple test, all of the hams have taken at least one test on law, operating, and electronics, which eliminates many of the left side of thte curve people.
Of course, when discussing intelligence, it serves one well to remember that half of the people are below-average.
Smoots may be a better measurment. Oddly enough, I’m exactly one smoot tall.
“No one here gets out alive.”
– important to remember that the CAT # is only about windspeed, not the size or severity of the storm.
I wonder what the failure analysis will have to say about the stadium roof. I wonder if the three ring binder with the disaster response plan starts out “first, relocate all of your staging area, treat your wounded, and THEN you can start your response. ” Most drills should start with sending half the participants home saying “you were trapped at home when the bridge failed” , “you decided to stay and protect your family”, “you died in floodwaters because you knew you HAD to get to the EOC” and then reassigning roles to the remaining team members to see if they are capable of stepping up… but they don’t. Because then the people wouldn’t get the benefits of the exercise.
I hope there will be some lessons learned from this storm.
n
“[Smoot] served as chairman of the American National Standards Institute from 2001 to 2002,[8] and then as president of the International Organization for Standardization from 2003 to 2004.”
That is hilarious – destiny. Thank you for the morning rabbit hole and a chuckle.
My pleasure! I thought those were too good not to share. My viewing tastes seem to be eclectic enough that the YouTube algorithm occasionally turns up an unexpected gem. I will admit I did think “Huh? Oops!” when NSA popped up in the recommendations, but I am surely on enough of their lists – I always get the special screening mark on my boarding pass at US airports. Hallo, TLA people!
Hoping you are all still not washed out or blown away. Which reminds me, today is haircut day!
The only true units of measurement including a very useful converter
https://www.theregister.com/Design/page/reg-standards-converter.html
Ex. 1 furlong = 1436.9881 linguine