Cool-ish, and definitely wet. We had periods of not much mist, yesterday but there was heavy rain as well. Basically we had all the weather yesterday. I’m hoping today is a bit nicer. 60-70F, and not raining would be good.
Had my non-prepping hobby Christmas potluck dinner yesterday. It went well, a good time was had by all. Now I don’t have that deadline hanging over my head. Now I can concentrate on getting ready for Christmas. And going to the BOL. And visiting mom… and doing all the year end stuff…
So today will be focused on getting a place ready for the tree. That will have a series of challenges. Some of those are actually prepper challenges as they relate to stacking stuff. I’ve got ebay and auction stuff piled in the room, and solar bits and pieces. And stacks of books. All will need to be sorted, and sorted out.
There is always something more to do.
SO I better get to it. In a bit….
nick
(Stack something, but maybe not in your formal living room.)
New Hearing Aids
67 F and very foggy this morning. The varmints are not enthused about the back yard.
I’ve wondered why my dad did not hear the 17 year old girl driving the 2017 Tahoe that hit him. I keep on forgetting to ask if he had his hearing aids in. Plus that Buccees parking lot is very busy and noisy with 6 rows of double pumps.
I have gotten on some spammers (multiple) email lists. I get 100+ emails a day that are junk. Sometimes the same email is repeated a dozen times. There is no way to opt out and some of the emails opt out links are probably nothing more than to confirm the email is valid. Jerks.
Buc-ee’s needs to bring back the pump wranglers.
I’m sure it led to some tense moments, but they kept things organized.
Even Costco has a couple of people walking the pumps at all times.
I left my last job on really good terms. I delayed my retirement several weeks by only working partial weeks rather than just quitting and taking the accrued vacation money. Seems odd.
I had spent years developing the business application and I just could not envision turning all that effort over to someone else and them possibly messing it up. Those extra few weeks really helped my replacement. The company had been good to me and I felt it was OK to return some of that.
My job prior to my last job I was terminated, which turned out to be a good thing. I had been fighting the vendor, the users, suppliers, and budget issues with the CEO. The sales person for the company, Summit Information Systems (now a part of Fiserv) was a stacked charmer. Any problems the company caused were blamed on me. That was partly true as I would jump in the middle of their incompetence and really piss them off. I knew computers, IT, software, and that knowledge was something the software vendor was not prepared to encounter.
Two weeks after I was terminated the CEO was terminated by the board. A lot of the problems with the CEO and the software vendor got back to the board. I wonder (wink, wink) how that happened.
My replacement lasted six months before she was terminated for some really serious screwups by the software vendor. The staff that I had all took different jobs in the CU because of the problems they did not want to be associated with.
One time a member of my staff made a mistake that shut the system down in the middle of the day for about an hour. After we got the system back up I got called into the CEO’s office and he demanded to know what happened. I told him what happened and that it was an error on the part of my staff. He demanded to know the name so he could chew them out. I told him no. My staff is my problem. The CEO got almost ballistic demanding to know the name and I continued to refuse. The CEO even threatened me with non-paid time off. I still refused to reveal the name. He almost physically threw me out of his office as witnessed by his secretary.
The CEO was a fool. There was no smoking allowed in the credit union main office or any of the branches. Except his office where he smoked a dozen cigarettes a day. Rules for thee and not for me kind of thing.
When I got fired I was devastated and took it hard. In retrospect the CEO really did me a favor. To this day I would still like to tell him thanks and to F-off.
Reminds me of a previous job. Largish agency. There was no smoking allowed anywhere. The CEO would freely smoke in his office , which also had a private bathroom. Retired 1 star, and barely got that star from what I hear. Many times I would be summoned to his office to fix something and would walk in on him playing online poker.
Yes, there was pron on the drive…how did you know?
We have pretty draconian anti-smoking rules where I work, but I don’t think the CEO is a hypocrite about it.
While his name is on the other children’s hospital in town, I don’t think the smoking ban is about our health nearly as much as limiting the influence of smoking cabals in the company.
Military. A lot of the tools used to scan for kiddie pr0n in suspect systems originated at OSI (think Air Force equivalent of NCIS) about 20 years ago.
Garden variety pr0n is a given at military installations.
As is online gambling.
Minesweeper, on the other hand, is important CS research into one of the fundamental questions, P vs. NP.
18 years ago, the copier company that I worked for had expanded into document imaging, and I was one of the 3 people responsible for installing and training the imaging and retrieval software. I got a call to install the latest version of the retrieval software on the Department Head’s PC. He was a friendly guy, but knew almost nothing about computers. That version of Windoze displayed a list of the frequently used programs in the Start Menu.
The only thing in the frequently used programs was Solitaire. That was it. He hadn’t used the retrieval software, hadn’t opened Word or Excel; just Solitaire.
The same copier company who fumbled the future after people employed by their research arm invented Ethernet, the laser printer, and the OO-based GUI interface?
72F and drippy wet, but at least the sun is shining occasionally.
Time to start my day. I’ve got coffee in my cup, honey baked ham and eggs in my belly and a list of stuff to do…
n
The company that app le stole key concepts from?
n
First production laser printer:
https://www.printerland.co.uk/blog/the-history-of-the-laser-printer/#:~:text=1976,printing%20%E2%80%93%20offering%20speeds%20of%20215ppm.
Yeah, IBM again.
Oh, by the way, Canon had the first production desktop laser printer. I had one at work. Worked great.
Lower Decks for you, sir. Sniff.
My first laser printer was the Apple behemoth. It weighed about as much as a VW Bug. Great printer, though. I sold it after some years. It still worked fine.
Commie says wut:
Bernie Sanders urges Joe Biden to issue preemptive pardons for those Donald Trump might target in second term
The preemptive pardons have got to go. A terrible precedent. Again, why doesn’t tRump pardon the nation for any current or future crimes? Make it for all times.
We won’t touch on how badlly IBM fumbled the future.
@nick
I think I mentioned a couple of years ago that I tried Busch NA and was pleasantly surprised. Definitely an option to a domestic lager.
Bravus Oatmeal Stout (Santa Ana, California) has gotten some good reviews but I’ve never had the opportunity to try it.
The wife and I watched Red One last night on Prime. Enjoyable enough for what it is.
Tonight we might finally get around to watching Deadpool & Wolverine.
Yowzers! They had touches of brilliance, but lost it. Books should be written.
@nick
Jobs offered Xerox 100,000 shares of the Apple IPO at $10 a share for a look at the technology being developed at PARC. The Xerox personal computer that he saw was on the market and gone long before the Mac was rolled out. The difference was in the execution, and that was due to Jobs and his design team.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/16/creation-myth
The bank I worked at had two Xerox laser printers, the 9700 and the 8700. Cut sheet, duplex, fast. Paper to the bank was delivered in semi-trucks about once a week. Some of it was blank sheets, some of it was pre-printed statements.
The imaging train was half a dozen sheets of paper. A jam, and restart, involved tossing several sheets of paper each time. Although it did not happen often. There was no interface to the mainframe as the mainframe channels were not fast enough to keep up with the 9700. 8-track tapes were created and all printing was done from those tapes.
The imaging roller, or rather a long loop of whatever was used for imaging, cost $25K to replace. And had to be destroyed as hazardous waste. I don’t know what the monthly maintenance cost was but it had to be costly.
IBM wasn’t the only major computer company that bungled the future by failing to realize the desktop PC was going to change computing forever in a very significant way.
Um?
-=- there is something seriously wrong with our model of physics. We’ve been chasing down the same rabbit hole for 80 years, and while it works for some predictions, so did classical newtonian physics. To think we finally got it right, when history shows us that we’ve only ever had partial and incomplete understanding -at best- while believing each time that we had it right, is arrogance on a cosmic scale.
n
Jobs and the “pirates” of Bandley 3 overlooked the OO aspect of the GUI and MVC. This was not corrected until Apple bought NeXT.
DEC, but Windows is essentially a new flavor of VMS.
Good Luck: Sen Schmitt Sends Letter to Austin Demanding an End to Border Wall Materials Sale
https://hotair.com/headlines/2024/12/15/good-luck-sen-schmiit-sends-letter-to-austin-demanding-an-end-to-border-wall-materials-sale-n3797917
Pardon, smardon.
Court martial the sob, find him guilty. Maybe can’t incarcerate him if he has a pardon, but the trial will find out who helped that didn’t get a pardon, and more importantly, lay the foundation for the civil penalty: terminate his pension. Keeping him in court paying for lawyers with multiple appeals would be the icing on the cake.
No; just an “ordinary” copier and printer dealer.
So what is the value of solving that problem?
Just because some pointy-haired idiot can devise a problem that is unsolvable in real space does not mean that computing a solution in quantum space solution has value.
Can it be used to model weather?
Can it be used to make bitcoin?
Can it be used to make Google less evil?
I have never tried an N/A beer. It seems pointless.
As for beer… I swilled my usual amount on Veteran’s Day. I had three or four left for the next day. I drank them Tuesday. That’s it. I stopped drinking beer. Unexpectedly, I haven’t missed it at all.
I haven’t quit, I’m sure going to have a Tecate or two with the carne guisada at Taco Cabana.
I’m down six or seven pounds so far. Mostly from around my middle. Losing a few more would be good.
Did they specify the problem?
Factoring 1024 bit numbers into prime components would be a ‘ruh roh’ moment.
Went to the local “bin store” this morning. Return pallets from Amazon, Walmart, Target are bought at auction, then poured out onto
tablesfiberglass u-shaped bins.Friday is all new at $12 for anything – and apparently a zoo, Saturdays everything is $10, Sundays $8, and so on, anything left unsold on Thursday goes to the dump.
Mildly interesting, I picked up a grow light (for the cat’s grass) and a new in-the-box Food Saver.
I think it’s a charity operation, a nice black lady that explained how it all worked to us seemed somewhat distressed by the resellers that apparently camp out to be first through the door on Friday mornings.
Not my thing, and I am attempting to downsize, and it sort of makes my skin crawl, but I can see the allure.
@drwilliams:
In order, maybe, no, I wish.
In regard to that last, remember the old song, “Money is the root of all evil.” Until you can make the big G stop making money by snooping on everyone, they won’t change. This will require draconian legislation, and even more draconian enforcement.
Good luck with that, given the US Powers-that-Be have been unable, possibly because their palms have been appropriately greased, to pass a national privacy law. And where the US doesn’t go, no-one else has a chance of venturing.
G.
Score! Have you casually priced Food Savers at Wal-Mart? The cheap one was around $88 with several models leading to around $215.
@paul, I didn’t think I was quitting forever, and I’m honestly still not sure if I will, but I just kept building on every milestone, and thought “why break my streak?”
The n/a beer gives me something to drink with dinner, or in a restaurant, or when we’re at a friend’s house for a get together, or when I’m done mowing the lawn… there is nothing like a hot shower with a cold beer. It fills the social aspects of drinking with others.
People will say “I drink because I like the taste”. N/A can force that issue, because the first four on my list do taste fine, while avoiding the intoxication.
I liked the taste too, but it was the intoxication that was the goal.
n
It seem like “my Christmas present” has always been “for the house”. New microwave, new coffee maker, a sofa, a TV stand, a computer desk, tires on a vehicle.
This year, for me, I bought a Garmin Instinct 2 watch. It’s pretty neat. One sale of course.
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/775421
They say you can pair it with your phone. Some of the app features are “why?”. Control the music the phone is playing? With the phone in my pocket? That’s silly.
Google Play says the app is incompatible with my phone. No reason given. Maybe Android 8 is too old. No big deal, there is a PC program that does most of the phone app. I have to charge the phone, the USB on the PC is handy, so it works for me.
The answer is 5. And I did it in less than 30 seconds. If the problem is that difficult to solve, prove me wrong.
I was drinking Miller High Life. Over the past few months I was drinking it from habit. I wasn’t getting much of a buzz so why bother?
<cough> I’ve saved almost enough beer money to pay for the Garmin I bought.
Interesting: The Seed Oil Wars Are Heating Up
https://hotair.com/headlines/2024/12/15/interesting-the-seed-oil-wars-are-heating-up-n3797918
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/3259080/seed-oils-took-over-diet/#google_vignette
I expanded the original quote in the WE to include the bit about the corrupt origins of the AHA. Read the whole thing to learn why it took 40 years for bad news about trans fats to get traction.
It would be interesting to graph the rise in the U.S. use of dietary seed oils on the same time-line as obesity, various cancers, and autism, to name two.
And just to speculate, one has to wonder if the cow-farts-are-causing-global-warming reports are in any way a campaign by seed oil interests against the availability of butter.
“We estimate something like a billion septillion separate universes were accessed” said one Google insider engineer, who asked to be anonymous.
“In several of them – two, maybe three – Google was not evil”, he said, adding “though the possibilty does exist that they were simply better at hiding it.”
Throw in The Church of LDS ”meat makes Men masturbate” processed grain push and I think we have 90% of what ails us today.
Absolutely right. Got to keep your pipes clean!
Lovely German Christmas Markets Overrun by Foreign Invaders
https://redstate.com/wardclark/2024/12/15/shocker-lovely-german-christmas-markets-overrun-by-foreign-invaders-n2183252
It is a lovely afternoon here in the high desert, sunny, around 60F, little wind.
Since I complain enough, I thought I should show some appreciation.
“Dirty Bomb Or Nuclear Warhead In USA? Drone Mystery Could Be Covert Operation Searching For Device”
https://www.infowars.com/posts/dirty-bomb-or-nuclear-warhead-in-usa-drone-mystery-could-be-covert-operation-searching-for-device-east-coast-radiation-levels-spike/
“According multiple Infowars sources as well as whistleblowers posting online, the mysterious fleets of drones being sighted around the United States in recent weeks may be searching for a nuclear weapon that has been smuggled into the country.”
This may not be crazy.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
you can pair it with your phone.
– I did that with my garmin watch to monitor and graph my sleep habits. Much easier to see on the phone.
At some point I decided I didn’t care, so I went back to my rotation of other watches.
I just picked up the Samsung Galaxy 4 watch, but I need a charger before I can try it out. For $11 (used) I thought it might be a good way to explore if I wanted a ‘smart’ watch.
n
When I moved the rug, there were Christmas tree needles under it from last year…
I did fix a $500 cigar humidor that was languishing in the room. It’ll go to the auction now.
Maybe after the W and D2 are done making a mess in the kitchen, I’ll put the new TCON boards in the TVs and get them out of the library/toy room too.
So many cookies… but not my favorite yet, little mini pecan pies.
n
I have gotten on some spammers (multiple) email lists. I get 100+ emails a day that are junk. Sometimes the same email is repeated a dozen times. There is no way to opt out and some of the emails opt out links are probably nothing more than to confirm the email is valid. Jerks.
The email lists are selling email addresses to each other for pennies.
This is why that I moved all of our email, including my mail domain record, on top of gmail. Gmail incorporates the old Postini honey pots and blocks an incredible amount of spam email at the outer ring of the SMTP servers.
MOAB
Israel drops ‘earthquake bomb’: Colossal explosion ‘so big it registered on the Richter scale’ hits Syrian coast as air strikes target weapons depots after fall of Assad
“it’s gettin’ hot in here…”
n
The “Slippery Slope”:
MAID in the Great White North: Canadian per Capita Euthanasia Deaths Now Beat U.S. Gun Deaths
Calling Futurama… Why not put those suicide pods on every corner, Little Castro. As soon as the cover closes, the Soylent Green truck is alerted. There are a lot of nutrients in a dead body.
So many cookies… but not my favorite yet, little mini pecan pies.
I love those little pecan pies. They are about 300 calories each IIRC.
Um, how many calories do you think there might be in a couple dozen chinese ‘stick piles’, a couple of rice crispy wreaths, some peanut butter with hershey’s kisses, and a few peanut butter and rice crispy in chocolate balls? ‘Cuz I’m living large today…
n
The youtube algorithm is sometimes awesome.
“Jo”
Mesmerizing. And SO FAR from what I’d hear anywhere else…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RnJdVb6h8Q
n
The “stick pile” cookies are apparently known as “birds nest cookies” or “haystack” cookies.
https://momcrieff.com/chocolate-birds-nests-two-ingredients/
I like them with nuts too, either pecan or walnut.
n
“Trump Says He’ll Kill Daylight Saving Time, But Maybe He Really Wants It To Be Permanent”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-says-he-will-eliminate-clock-changes-which-option-does-he-endorse
Please, please, please just stop the insanity of changing our clocks twice a year !
I just watched my favorite Christmas movie on Amazon Prime.
Die Hard !
Um, how many calories do you think there might be in a couple dozen chinese ‘stick piles’, a couple of rice crispy wreaths, some peanut butter with hershey’s kisses, and a few peanut butter and rice crispy in chocolate balls? ‘Cuz I’m living large today…
That is more fingers and toes than I got !
We had a Christmas brunch for our church group today. Ran after church to 4 pm. I ate a lot of meat and and lot of cake. Fruit and watermelon too. Three large pieces of Bundt cake with pecans in it while we guys watched the Texans.
Now Amazon Prime wants me to watch “The Terminator” after “Die Hard”. I am fairly sure that this is NOT a Christmas movie.