Cool and wet. Rained overnight, might rain today. Rained in the afternoon yesterday too, depending on where you were… Some people got light sprinkles, some people got a downpour that didn’t last long. I got both when I was driving around.
Did some auction stuff, and some small stuff around the house, then had to pick up D1 from school and do some other stuff. Not much actual work got done.
I’m just not feeling it lately. Don’t know why, but motivation is not there. I can grind away, but I’ve got to get started to do it. Getting started is the problem.
Which brings me to today, which by some strange effect is Thursday, meaning the week is mostly gone. Ay carumba. Not enough work got done this week for it to already be Thursday.
At least I don’t feel particularly productive. I don’t think today will be much better if it’s drizzling all day. Plenty to do indoors, but I’d rather do some outdoor stuff too. Oh well, we’ll see. Because I can’t change the weather- yet.
Stack all the things. Seriously, stack them. And it’s time to be practicing with them too. Make a meal from your stacks. Use another backup cooking method. Wear something you don’t normally wear. You might not want to wear your normal tactical pants, cover shirt, and boots when you go do that thing. Do you have some stuff that still fits? Do you have some clothes you could just ditch if they got something unappealing on them? Do you have something to wear to the swapmeet or bodega that won’t make you a target?
Practice paying attention to your environment as you go through your day. Popo was running surveillance on someone yesterday on the scanner. He lost them. They are not yet panopticon. At least not until afterwards. If you don’t have a polite plan to kill everyone you meet, at least have a plan to leave in a hurry and know where the doors are… things continue to get weirder, and more dangerous.
Stack up your options. That is what it is really all about.
nick
Mary Poppins?
Pournelle’s Cultural Weapons of Mass Destruction. Cut a deal with Taylor Swift to load a few million iPod Touch players with copies of her movie and new album then sneak the gear into Iran.
Propane is next. Watch “The Mosquito Coast” to see what happens when that goes wrong.
Researching my Homeowner’s policy while hashing out the limits of a potential claim with the adjuster this week, I noticed lots of clauses buried in the text relating to recent Texas weather events, including one about not abandoning the house without proper precautions in freeze events.
Someone watched the 8 Bit Guy’s videos on YouTube from Feb. 2021. Geesh, he was stupid.
Here is link to an article about AI in medicine that I thought was interesting:
https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/ai-in-medicine-update
I had to cancel through a couple of pop-ups to read it, but I didn’t have to actually give my email or subscribe to anything.
My two take-aways are 1) The quality of the answer depends on the quality of the question, and 2) critical thinking on the part of the user remains a fundamental requirement.
Geesh, he was stupid.
– yep, but not alone…
n
75F, and damp. Heavy condensation on the windows. Rained overnight, but it looks like it might be clearing for today.
That would be nice.
n
@Nick, @Lynn (or anyone else within driving distance of Austin) – I’ve decided to give up on the HP LaserJet 4000N since I can’t get new toner cartridges anymore, and the re-manufactured cartridges leave a lot to be desired in terms of quality and smudging.
Free to a good home if you have access to a stash of new HP 27X cartridges. The printer has full PostScript and a JetDirect card with 10 Mbps (!) Ethernet. I can speak from firsthand experience that the UGREEN USB/parallel cable from Amazon will allow Windows to detect the printer, and HP makes a universal driver available for Windows 10.
Printing is beautiful provided you have original HP toner.
Thanks Greg, but the Dell printer I have should last my lifetime.
——————
Someone point to the “refugee camp” in the pictures or text below…
n
I don’t see AI taking the place of the decision making in clinical settings for liability reasons, but I can see ChatBot replacing a lot of the first level “quality control” people working at the insurance companies who nitpick the decision making after the fact or the “consultants” frequently hired to investigate high dollar claims.
I know a few dim bulb RNs who do that gig because, granted, floor nursing sucks, but they also didn’t like, you know, actually working – imagine – and wanted to become Made Women in the Work From Home Mommy Mafia over the last 20 years.
The C-suites are definitely coming for the Mafia with AI. If nothing else ChatBot will actually do the text parsing instead of playing chauffeur for the soccer team or daytrading.
Nice article full of half truths, editorializing, lies, and manipulative language.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12673667/Deadly-secrets-AR-15-Americas-favorite-rifle-mass-shootings-Lewiston-Maine.html
Almost a textbook example of yellow journalism applied to a thing instead of a person.
Includes the gaslighting/lie that the vegas shooter used a bump stock.
n
– nothing quite like the “we can’t prove it’s true, but even if it is, it’s not important” attitude.
n
Nothing like good old fashioned racism…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12673891/Sushi-Counter-New-Yorks-West-Village.html
n
Certainly not in America, where The Outback Steakhouse, appropriating Australian culture, is still one of the biggest restaurant chains in the country.
Leave. Go live in a mud hut in Africa. Without the White Man’s curses of electricity and running water and sewage disposal and automobiles and all of the rest. How about stop appropriating /my/ culture?
Paul beat me to it.
One of my favorite confrontations with an appropriations pinhead was when a Latinx* was screeching about cultural appropriation. Regarding Taco Bell or one of the other chain restaurants, IIRC. I told her that if cultural appropriation is bad, then she needed to take off her glasses, because corrective lenses were invented by Whites. She needed to take off her sneakers because the overall design as well as the plastic in them were White inventions. She needed to take off her blue jeans because they were invented by a White man. She needed to take off her bra because the modern brassiere was invented by Whites. She needed to take off her panties because fitted underwear was also invented by Whites.
To be honest, I didn’t get to the last couple points because the screeching went up in volume and the conversation kind of broke down.
* That’s the preferred term now. Preferred by those who want to annoy retarded hispanics.
Of course, they only say the following *after* the photos, where many people won’t see it:
Um, maybe don’t let terrorists dig tunnels and store ammo under your house?
I do understand that lots of people in Palestine have zero choice, and no way out. However, they need to realize just who is using them as pawns in this stupid game. I saw a great cartoon (which I can’t find at the moment):
Most of the screechers I’ve seen from south of the border have obvious primary ancestry in the Spanish colonizers.
And we won’t even begin to touch what is considered to be “Italian” cuisine in this country.
Lest you think it is just Ugly Americans, the Chinese relations went to Italy and were disappointed with the “pepperoni pizza” they ordered being much less appealing than what they get from Papa John’s at home … and a lot more expensive since meat is a luxury item.
An essay from a Jewish woman who discovers a video showing a person she once considered a friend is ripping down posters of missing Israeli children kidnapped by Hamas murderers:
https://www.thefp.com/p/my-old-friend-is-ripping-down-posters
Taking a look at the supposed educational achievements of the miscreant poster ripper, it’s pretty obvious that she is a product of the PLCT side of campuses.
With 1700 sociology professors outing themselves this week, I hope notes are being taken. With enough votes the flow of funds to such sewers could be throttled at the national level, but that is too much to hope for. What can be done is a concerted effort to close such departments at public universities in blue states and show donors at the rest that they do not want to be associated with such scum. Shrink the job pool for these enemies of civilization and it will not only show the financial consequences, it will show that there is not enough leftwing grant money to fund them new jobs.
No compromises. F*ck them over in every way.
I’ve gone a couple of times and Outback Steakhouse was a let down. All “Australian” and stuff and no emu and no ‘Roo.
Just steaks. Good steaks, for sure.
“Ford and UAW negotiators reach ‘tentative agreement’ to end strike”
https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/25/ford-and-uaw-negotiators-reach-tentative-agreement-to-end-strike/
“The tentative agreement includes a general wage increase of 25% over the life of the contract, with Ford UAW workers seeing an immediate 11% wage hike immediately upon ratification. For the cost of living adjustment, top wage rates will increase to about 33% and the starting wage rate will increase to about 68%.”
“Temp workers will see raises of over 150% over the life of their contracts. Some workers at the Sterling Axle and Rawsonville plants will see a raise of 85% immediately upon ratification.”
No words on the battery plants.
And
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ford-uaw-reach-tentative-deal-235436345.html
I’ve gone a couple of times and Outback Steakhouse was a let down. All “Australian” and stuff and no emu and no ‘Roo.
Just steaks. Good steaks, for sure.
Blooming onions and brown bread too.
Pournelle’s Cultural Weapons of Mass Destruction. Cut a deal with Taylor Swift to load a few million iPod Touch players with copies of her movie and new album then sneak the gear into Iran.
We tried that back in the 1970s. A million homicidal maniacs took over in 1979 and shot every one who did not bow to the new fake religion rulers. They went to the universities and shot every one over the age of 25.
@Nick, @Lynn (or anyone else within driving distance of Austin) – I’ve decided to give up on the HP LaserJet 4000N since I can’t get new toner cartridges anymore, and the re-manufactured cartridges leave a lot to be desired in terms of quality and smudging.
I have a Laserjet 4100 DTN with a duplexer and dual feed trays that I have printed over a million pages on. It jams every two or five pages, very random. I have not had the guts to throw it away.
I have a HP Color Laserjet CP2025 DN sitting right next to it that we have printed a half million pages on. Still works great.
The Xerox 720 that was the only copier in high school would do this. Clean all of the rubber rollers with alcohol and wipe down the rest of the paper path. Fan the paper and (do they still have Up arrows on reams of paper) perhaps turn the paper over.
War is hell. Don’t start a war unless you can finish it.
Um, maybe don’t let terrorists dig tunnels and store ammo under your house?
Or shoot homemade rockets out of your apartment windows ?
Depending on whose claim on the deep fried onion you want to believe, that may have well originated in the bars in Australia.
The brown bread is a pretty standard yeast recipe with food coloring for a gimmick.
The original four Outback restaurants originated in Tampa, when the local Steak and Ale managers got fed up with Pilllsbury’s (?) mismanagement of that chain and struck out on their own. All of the Tampa Steak and Ale restaurants closed about a decade before the chain shuttered because of the talent drain.
OSI is the last Fortune 500 company headquartered in Tampa. Any buyout rumors are front page news as a result.
“Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s Biggest Regret Is Ditching Windows Phone”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadellas-biggest-regret-is-ditching-windows-phone
“Microsoft officially killed Windows Phones in 2017 due to poor performance. Now Nadella admits exiting mobile phones is one of his biggest mistakes.”
I always thought that killing the Windows Phone was premature. It was a poor performer but Microsoft had the money to fund it.
New HP is junk. They lost the rights to Canon’s paper handling mechanism about 10 years ago, and the laser printers have been going downhill ever since.
One of the new printers I tried as a replacement for the 4000N was a HP M501dn. Piece-o-cr*p and expensive. Print quality was good, but the machine had a loud fan at idle and an annoying tendency to not wake from sleep.
We settled on a Brother mid-range HL-L6210. We’ll see how long that holds up. Any cheaper and the closed source drivers send proprietary binary data to the printer instead of PCL and Postscript, which could be a problem down the road.
I have a personal printer for my desktop which is an HP 1020 “Winprinter”, driven by CUPS from a Linux server via some hack driver software. The resulting print quality is beautiful, but it doesn’t play well with Mac OS, ironic since Apple currently owns the CUPS project.
Performance of the third party Windows Phone software was actually quite good since the later versions’ apps were compiled binaries instead of Java/Kotlin on Android or the semi-interpreted Swift binaries on iOS.
I strongly suspect Apple writes their own apps in C++ below the GUI level and Swift has always been about Hot Skillz.
The key advantage of iOS once Jobs allowed compiled binaries was the Posix API available in in any C family language. Apple was also an early supporter of C++11. Microsoft was always playing catchup.
Performance of the third party Windows Phone software was actually quite good since the later versions’ apps were compiled binaries instead of Java/Kotlin on Android or the semi-interpreted Swift binaries on iOS.
Sorry, I meant the sales performance of the Windows Phone.
Anchorage Scrambles to Get Growing Homeless Population Indoors Before Winter
(Emphasis added.)
Some? Why not all? Homeless problem solved!
Oh.
Uh-huh.
Still cheaper to ship ’em to the lower forty-eight.
Even cheaper to drive a 4×4 over their encampments, spraying water on them in passing. In the middle of Winter. You can solve the problem in under an hour, I’ll bet, for the cost of a couple gallons of gas, a couple hundred gallons of water, and a 4-hour rental of an agricultural sprayer or similar pump.
“”Vaccine” killed 3.5X more Americans than COVID virus”
https://kirschsubstack.com/p/vaccine-killed-35x-more-americans
“The irresponsible attacks by an LA Times journalist Michael Hiltzik on MSU Professor Mark Skidmore’s paper motivated me to run my own survey of my readers to see what the actual harm numbers really are.
Over 10,000 readers responded.
The survey clearly showed that the COVID vaccines have killed 3.5 times as many people as COVID. This is a disaster.”
Oh my.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
I’ve had 7 Covid vaccinations and am still alive. How lucky am I?
You could be right, tho Swift isn’t such a bad language. Swift-UI OTOH seems horrible to me, a scary and poorly implemented black box.
There is a guy that tracks Obj-C, Swift and Swift-UI in iOS itself. Unfortunately he counts a file with a single line of Swift, for example, as a Swift.
Apple and dogfood:
https://blog.timac.org/2023/1019-state-of-swift-and-swiftui-ios17/
Sir, you need another 7.
I’ve always believed that Swift is about keeping the M in MVC in a language which Apple controls.
Unless things have changed, mixing in Posix API calls or C++ classes is difficult with Swift.
The Marines had zero Covid deaths pre-“vaccine” rollout. IIRC, the Navy had eight.
The Marines asked for an exemption from the jab mandate on the basis that they had solved the problem like Marines do, but they were denied.
God forbid someone provide a Control proving that exercise and a carefully controlled diet might be more effective than the “vaccine” in mitigating the effects of the disease.
Did your 7 shots keep you from getting infected with Covid?
Did they keep you from passing your infection to others?
Did they introduce nano-lipid particles into your body? Did those partiles accumulate in your body rather then being flushed out?
Did they introudice mRNA and spike proteins into parts of your body beyond what was intended?
Is it possible you’ve suffered from heart problems and damage that are below the threshold of being detected?
Are you aware that they changed the formula of vacine production in ways that exceed the meet the process that was achieved. Technically, it’s what is calledl “adulteration”. Which includes DNA (unapproved) in addition to the mRNA.
Is it possible you’ve damaged your T-cell response, and increased your risk of “turbo-cancer”?
I’d say you’re plaing Russian roulette, honestly. Maybe with 30-to-1 odds instead of 5-to-1, but still playing a deadly game.
Well, we ended up with sporadic rain all day. Just when it would be dry enough to do some work, it would squall.
Hit the HEB while waiting for D1 to finish school, and they had USDA Prime sirloin on sale. $6/pound, yes please. Limit two. Then the “center cut” sirloin for $7/pound. Yes, I’ll have limit on that also, and finally, 5 pound pack of ground chuck marked for quick sale, 25% off. That got it down to $3/pound…
Oh, and picanha roast (sirloin cap roast) was $6/pound, also prime… I made one for dinner and vac packed the other stuff.
It’s been a while since I walked into the “sell all the prime for half off” deal.
I did mexican style black beans, sauteed cabbage with onion, and the shelf stable take and bake sourdough loaf as sides. It was a feast. With the exception that the roast was fresh and not frozen all of that could have or did come out of medium to long term storage.
n
Amateurs. My wife has a patient at the VA who was getting one per week for a while.
Amateurs. My wife has a patient at the VA who was getting one per week for a while.
And is still alive ?
The last I heard. I will ask if she’s seen him lately.
Made a little progress around here. Got the ’66 Galaxie to the scarp yard and collected 8 cents a pound or $190 dollars. Burned the huge pile of cardboard boxes. Installed hangers for three large extension cords. This is not a trivial thing: first cord is is for 220 volts, 85 feet of 3 strand, #6 gauge wire with a breakout box that includes a circuit breaker to also get 120 volts and lamps to show if all it well. The second is just a 220 volt, 50 amp, 40 foot cable with connectors on both ends. The third is a 100 foot cord of # 12 wire supporting 20 amps at 120 volts. Obviously none of them are light. Also hung a 18″x48″ piece of pegboard to mount ordinary extension cords. Listed some race car parts for sale. And made a post at classmates.com about my upcoming trip to Reno and California.
The Celebration of life is on the 8th which is Gregg’s birthday. Gregg’s long term girl friend is picking up all of is burial expenses. The female cousin is a coroner/mortician and is trying to figure out why… We think Gregg had a serious medical problem that he kept hidden. His mother’s side of the family hates me so I expect those cousins to shun me. That’s ok with me; the feeling is mutual. My side will be well represented: father, brother, daughter, four of six nieces, (his only nephew or our side maybe there), two first cousins and the daughter’s grandmother, aunt, and a couple more first cousins. The will is missing at this point.
I’m driving because my rescue dog would otherwise spend 10 days in a kennel. It will also let me take a side trip to my home town and visit my parent’s and daughter’s grave sites and visit my brother’s family, etc. I haven’t been back there since 1999. Never expected to go back.
@Bob Sprowl
Sounds like you’re getting some organization and peace of mind. Continuing best wishes.
@bob, safe travels…
n
Windows phone survives in the execrable “tiles” GUI they inflicted on users with win10. That and the spyware are the reasons I have stayed behind.
n
@Nick, my first cell phone ran Windows CE, and it worked well. I also chose it because it had a physical keyboard. Next phone was Android, and I never looked back.
My Win 10 doesn’t have the tiles, but I forgot how I turned them off. Oh, maybe I didn’t turn the tiles off, but I have always put links on the Taskbar for everything I use, so I don’t use the start menu. Also did that on Linux. Guess I am just different. Don’t put anything on the desktop, either.
I do miss the Win 3.11 way of configuring window appearances with text files. It took a while to adapt the new appearances to what I want. Some things need third party help.
As for spyware, all recent OSes report to the mothership, even Linux. So do apps. Just try to run them without an Internet connection. I still know folks who run isolated LANs, and they tell me it is getting harder every day. This is the price we pay for connected computing. No, I don’t agree with that, but I don’t have a solution. There is no privacy. The days to fight for it are long gone.
Regarding devices and privacy, there are some options, but none of us would like the annoyances. I also would not trust them. The only real privacy is to just…
Well, last day of work today! into the University tomorrow to hand back my laptop and security pass and I’m then officially retired!
All feels very strange, I’ve never not worked, still, I guess I’ll get used to it 🙂
Short term plan is to learn how to use my retirement present to myself (a drone), then get out into the countryside and use it to get ariel shots of some of the iron age hillforts in my area. Possibly some of a couple of the old Saxon churches in Sussex which are unusual in having round towers.
For whatever reason, most of our neighbors use WhatsApp for phone calls. They don’t call often – usually it’s texts – so a call is usually something important. Also, I’m away from home at the moment. With that for background…
Had a bit of a panic this morning: I woke up to WhatsApp telling me I had a bunch of missed calls. The last time I had a pile of missed calls, someone was in the hospital.
Can I strangle the developers? When I actually looked at the list, all of the missed calls were old, from weeks ago. Why WhatsApp decided to notify me about them again, I have no idea.
>> Had a bit of a panic this morning: I woke up to WhatsApp telling me I had a bunch of missed calls. The last time I had a pile of missed calls, someone was in the hospital.
Can I strangle the developers? When I actually looked at the list, all of the missed calls were old, from weeks ago. Why WhatsApp decided to notify me about them again, I have no idea.
That is the idea…now move along…
>> Certainly not in America, where The Outback Steakhouse, appropriating Australian culture, is still one of the biggest restaurant chains in the country.
Does Outback really represent Aussie (food) culture? Haven’t been ‘down under so don’t have a comparative basis. Most Americans (should) know that American Chinese food bears little resemblance to what you get in China.
>> And we won’t even begin to touch what is considered to be “Italian” cuisine in this country.
To see real Italian cuisine, check out Stanley Tucci’s CNN series (two seasons.)
>> I’ve gone a couple of times and Outback Steakhouse was a let down. All “Australian” and stuff and no emu and no ‘Roo.
Just steaks. Good steaks, for sure.
No disrespect but there’s a lot better steak out there to be had. I prefer porterhouse, rare, so my preference is always Peter Luger, Brooklyn, NYFC.