Sun. Sept. 1, 2024 – time waits for no man…

By on September 1st, 2024 in culture, decline and fall, lakehouse, march to war

It has been cooler. Mid 80s during the day in the shade, with a nice breeze. Humidity is still high, and when the sun is shining down, it will bake your brain. I was fine on the mower, and in the shade, but in the afternoon, I managed to get overheated and had to take a break.

I spent a couple of hours mowing. The grass wasn’t crazy long, but there were spots with decent growth. We’ve had enough rain up here that the grass is green and long.

After that, I did some smaller projects and mostly unloaded the truck.

Dinner from the freezers was tilapia on the grill, frozen biscuits, and fresh veg. Despite pounding electrolyte drinks all day, I was still behind when I went to bed. Gotta watch myself.

Still, got most of the slash piles burned, and had s’mores with D2 in the evening over the coals.

Today will be more of the project list. Maybe I’ll even get in the water later, once the sun is behind some clouds.

Stack some good memories. We’ll need them.

nick

24 Comments and discussion on "Sun. Sept. 1, 2024 – time waits for no man…"

  1. Denis says:

    Anyone got a favorite recipe for persimmons?

    Sounds like you might have the variety of kaki that stays astringent a long time. Are your fruit pointy at the side opposite the connection to the tree? The ones that are flat there, rather than pointy, are usually comestible both when slightly unripe and when fully ripe, whereas the pointy ones are best when very ripe.

    You can basically use kaki the same as apple when they are firm, or as cooked apple when they are ripe.

    More info (and recipes) here, for example:

    https://www.marthastewart.com/275469/persimmon-recipes

  2. drwilliams says:

    NEW: Hamas Murders 6 Hostages, Including American

    Hamas had murdered them no longer than 48 hours before their bodies were discovered:

    The bodies of hostages Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov, and Ori Danino were found in the Gaza Strip, the IDF said on Sunday morning.

    The IDF retrieved the bodies of the hostages from a tunnel under the city of Rafah in Gaza.

    They were likely slaughtered by Hamas shortly before the IDF got to them in Rafah.

    https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2024/09/01/new-hamas-murders-6-hostages-including-american-n3793932

    I’m sure that Democrats all over the U.S. will ignore this and make excuses for the support of murdering, raping scum by the Biden administration.

  3. drwilliams says:

    Turns out Trump founded MacDonald’s.

    And video proof that Kamala worked there in the 1980’s…

    https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2024/08/31/watch-trump-works-at-mcdonalds-too-n2178782

  4. Gavin says:

    Apparently Starliner is having further issues. Now it’s impersonating a sonar set.

    I’m not a rocket scientist but that kinda sounds like a high-pitched water hammer effect. Anyone else have a guess?

  5. lpdbw says:

    N.B. wasn’t clear if you see the Android model as good or bad.

    I’m somewhat ambivalent.  I worked for Digital Equipment Corporation for 9 years.  We caught consistent flak for our stance that customers were required to use our software and our peripherals on our computers.

    We also got high praise that our stuff worked.  Consistently.  I remember people saying things like “I reboot my VAX once a month on a schedule, just to apply patches and avoid surprises”.

    When Apple came along, they got praised for exactly the same thing we got criticized for.  Only their software, only their peripherals, and It Just Works!!!1!!

    My bigger beef is with Linux fanbois.  I used Ubuntu as my main platform  at home from about 2009 through 2013, mostly just exploring stuff in my free time.  I had Windows laptops for work during that time.  The consistent attitude from that community is that if you have to ask questions, you’re stupid.  Oh, and this week, we’re introducing yet another entirely new desktop windowing model.  X is dead, let’s go with KDE.   Next week, we move the “cancel window X” from left to right.  Or maybe from right to left.  Or maybe hide it and require a keypress to make it show…

    Linux has always had the potential to replace Windows for most use cases.  It’s free, open source, and can become anything you want.

    It’s the Linux community that has carefully prevented that from happening for over 15 years now.

    15
  6. MrAtoz says:

    I’m sure that Democrats all over the U.S. will ignore this and make excuses for the support of murdering, raping scum by the Biden administration.

    tRump, tho.

    9
    1
  7. Nick Flandrey says:

    79F and light, intermittent drizzle.    I’m not working outdoors.

    Broke one of my rules last night-   Never start a John Ringo novel after midnight –  and stayed up way too late.

    I’ll be paying for that for a week as I try to get back on schedule.   

    Wife is doing painting and deep cleaning.  I’ll do something off the list.   

    Coffee first.

    n

  8. Ray Thompson says:

    My bigger beef is with Linux fanbois

    That was my consistent experience when I tried Linux on a spare machine. My first question was about getting a network adapter to work. The response was to RTFM. I then made the mistake of asking where is that manual and how to do I access the manual. The response was overwhelming that I was too stupid to be running Linux.

    I persisted and found the manual. It did absolutely no good except for arcane commands that made little sense. These commands were certainly not going to be used by the average computer user.

    I then had a problem with the GUI interface. RTFM did not help. So again I asked for help. The response was again I was too stupid to be running Linux. To solve my problem I needed to recompile the kernel using different libraries in half a dozen different locations with another half a dozen dependencies. Uh, no thanks.

    It’s the Linux community that has carefully prevented that from happening for over 15 years now.

    Yep, they shot themselves in the foot with their egos and own sense of self-importance that they lorded over others.

    I can download and run a Linux ARM distribution on my M2 Air by using Parallels (which I use for Windows ARM). So I did it. And you know what? I found nothing useful that I could not easily do on my Windows machines or the M2 Air. Using supported software with a support community that sometimes fell over themselves trying to help with the issue. They took pride in providing a solution rather than taking pride in attempting to show how smart they are.

    Yes, I know Android is a flavor of Linux, Unix or whatever it wants to call itself today. Yes, I know MacOS is a flavor of Linux, Unix, whatever. I can get to a command line on Mac and issue arcane command lines just like Linux. But I don’t have to do that because the GUI wrapped around the base OS allows me to intelligently manage the machine.

    Case in point about the techno-dorks.

    When I worked for Tau Beta Pi my job was the entire IT department, including web application development. The major public facing application had buttons on the side for various functions. At one of the conferences there was a committee on the website. About of that committee came a recommendation to change the order of the buttons. OK, I made the change.

    The next year at the yearly conference the same standing committee made some more recommendations. Those recommendations were to move the order of the buttons. You guessed. Back to where the buttons (by my choosing) were before.

    Those dorks simply wanted to get their names (and chapter) in the minutes and act like they might have actually done some committee work. I steadfastly told them I would not use their recommendation so take it off the table. It’s not happening on my watch. I am not moving buttons every year for the yearly convention.

  9. Denis says:

    Linux has always had the potential to replace Windows for most use cases.  It’s free, open source, and can become anything you want.

    It’s the Linux community that has carefully prevented that from happening for over 15 years now.

    I switched to Linux around, but somewhat after, the time that RBT declared his “independence day”, encouraged by his results as recorded on this blog. I have been mostly happy, as my requirements are modest.

    I did switch from Ubuntu to Mint at one point, and that does most of what I need, except running my ancient version of PaintShop Pro. Printing is sometimes flakey too.

    On the rare occasions that I needed help with my Linux, I found the power-user community absolutely useless, other than at telling me to RTFM. The FAQs I could trawl were more helpful, but my default fix was just to reinstall the OS from scratch. That seems to be the Linux equivalent of “turn it off and back on again”.

    Back to work tomorrow after my summer holidays. Time for a penultimate cold beverage of the summer while listening to Mozart’s Requiem live on BR Klassik radio.  Recommended.

  10. lynn says:

    I then had a problem with the GUI interface. RTFM did not help. So again I asked for help. The response was again I was too stupid to be running Linux. To solve my problem I needed to recompile ⁰ kernel using different libraries in half a dozen different locations with another half a dozen dependencies. Uh, no thanks.

    My web server supplier, Pair Networks, uses FreeBSD in their thousands of web servers.  They compile a custom version, turning OFF everything before starting anything.

  11. Alan says:

    >>Apparently Starliner is having further issues. Now it’s impersonating a sonar set.

    Low battery in their smoke detector. 

  12. lpdbw says:

    Full disclosure:

    My first sysadmin experience with Unix was SunOS Compartmented Mode Workstation  for a DOD project.  

    At the same time, I was required to use Debian Linux to host my development environment and database server.  All this was work-from-home in 1996, over dial-up, so I had to have 2 servers in my house.  While developing software to run on classified systems.  (The software wasn’t classified, it was the data about logistics and troop movements).

    I had an expert I could talk to anytime I needed help, and unlike most of the Linux crowd, he had an incentive to make me successful.  He could also speak VMS.  So every time I had a problem, I could express it to him in VMS terms, and he’d tell me how to write some arcane shell command to do what I needed.  Usually a one-line command in VMS shell (DCL) turned into a half-dozen lines of bash.  Occasionally I’d have to build a  new kernel to get what I needed.

    At one point, he told me that I managed to find all the dusty little corners of Unix.  I was not imipressed; those corners should have been swept and illuminated years before.

    A few years later, I was reassigned to a pure Microsoft dev environment, with licenses for all of their tools.  I was writing a lot of Javascript with XML and XSLT and XHTML.  I hated it.

  13. Ray Thompson says:

    I was writing a lot of Javascript with XML and XSLT and XHTML.

    Well, there’s your problem.

  14. lpdbw says:

    Well, it wasn’t so much the Javascript as it was the XSLT and dealing with 2 different DOM’s.  There was the standards-based one used by most of the browsers, and the IE one used by our main customers.  Microsoft asserting that they didn’t follow the standards because their approach was better and the standards held them back, and besides, the others should just adopt the Microsoft way.

    So all our Javascript had to have code to detect which DOM we were looking at and deal with them appropriately.

    It’s funny how much of my education and career had to deal with non-procedural code.  Prolog in school, SQL forever, and XSLT.  Technically, I think you could include the compiler development tools like LEX and YACC.

  15. paul says:

    I just finished watching a movie and I think it made me dumber.  Best In Show.  Made in 2000.  It just never really took flight for me.  I assume it’s making fun of the Westminster Dog Show. 

    There were some very handsome dogs in the movie.  That was nice. 

  16. drwilliams says:

    I pulled up an eBay listing and used the “Sell Similar” link so I could use the old listing as a template. In the course of doing so I wanted to tweak the text display for my description, so I switch the view to HTML.

    I’ve noted in doing the same thing in the past that the HTML view has code above the part containing my description. I don’t need any more time-wastes so I’ve ignored it in the past. This time I scrolled up and found thousands of lines that apparently have nothing to do with the description entered in the auction–I selected and deleted them with no change to my text.

    WTF? 

  17. Greg Norton says:

    I had an expert I could talk to anytime I needed help, and unlike most of the Linux crowd, he had an incentive to make me successful.  He could also speak VMS.  So every time I had a problem, I could express it to him in VMS terms, and he’d tell me how to write some arcane shell command to do what I needed.  Usually a one-line command in VMS shell (DCL) turned into a half-dozen lines of bash.  Occasionally I’d have to build a  new kernel to get what I needed.

    Sun had money to burn in the 90s. Their sales engineering kept them alive far longer than the company deserved.

    Unfortunately, their proprietary hardware was mostly garbage, something we couldn’t talk about at GTE under NDA and I’m sure the other major customers were under the same restriction.

    Most of their software was decent except for the development tools, but the company leveraged the requirement for an STL license for commercial use to keep customers dependent on their total garbage Sparc C/C++ compiler. Plus a few hookers and steaks for the managers.

  18. Greg Norton says:

    >>Apparently Starliner is having further issues. Now it’s impersonating a sonar set.

    Low battery in their smoke detector. 

    It sounds as if something is off in the IF section of the audio transceiver.

    Old AMPS cell phones using Philips cr*p chipset in the early 90s made a similar noise if the transmit and receive sections of the IF were poorly shielded in between.

  19. paul says:

    I made a trip to the grocery store today.  Beer, for sure. 

    I’m pretty sure I have some Gorton’s breaded fish fillets vac sealed and in the freezer.  Somewhere. I’ve had a couple of grocery store bags tear and there’s no telling what in down there with the emu roast vac sealed and dated 1996.  (I’m going to use it for a pot roast someday, any year now.)  So I bought more Gortons, small bag..  Plus a couple of boxes of butterflied shrimp, one Coconut, one Panko. 

    Then cruise past the jerky and get a couple of bags on my way to the frozen french fries.  I found the oil section and snagged a spray can of olive oil.  Just olive oil.   I have other spray oils for some reason, I never bought it, I’ve never used it, but it’s all canola or soy and both with soy lecithin.  I think he bought it to keep stuff from sticking on the gas grill.  Shrug, I don’t have a problem with stuff sticking to the grill. 

    French fries found, I found the State Fair corn dogs.  I’m sure they are bad for me but they are easy to nuke just to eat something.  A can of vienna sausage is probably better but, variety! 

    French fries and shrimp cook the same by the air fryer directions.  The shrimp says “6 per serving”.  I suppose having 13 in the box gives the cook a sample.  $6 a box.  I figure with a handful of french fries that I’ll be good with 4 shrimp.

    By “handful” of fries, I’m talking what the medium size was at What-a-Burger a couple of years ago.  Maybe a bit more. 

    Hey, I bought an air fryer.  I should buy air fryer type of things to cook.  The spray olive oil is for stuff that needs a spray, like a chicken breast, so it will brown.  In theory.  

    Time for bedtime potty walk with the dogs. 

    My freezer doesn’t have a handle.  It has a pocket in the lid as a handle.  So the “hang a rope from the wall to hold it up” ideas won’t work.  Great ideas.  

  20. Greg Norton says:

    I just finished watching a movie and I think it made me dumber.  Best In Show.  Made in 2000.  It just never really took flight for me.  I assume it’s making fun of the Westminster Dog Show. 

    Hollywood has been waiting 40 years for that creative group centered around Christopher Guest to produce the next “This is Spinal Tap”.

    “Best in Show” is considered to be the closest they’ve managed so far.

    The flick did put new life into Michael McKean’s career. Maybe Catherine O’Hara’s too.

    Jennifer Coolidge and Eugene Levy were cashing “American Pie” residual checks by that point.

  21. Nick Flandrey says:

    Ended up not doing much more than reading and spending time chatting with my fishing buddy.

    It rained off and on most of the day, just light drizzle, and only enough to wet everything that had just dried out. 

    It’s cool and damp out now, so I might head down to the dock.   I’ll bring a light jacket or put one of the electric radiant heaters out on the deck.  Summer is winding down.

    ———–

    WRT the persimmons, these are smaller and softer than the ones in the recipes seem to be, and have more seed in them.  I can’t imagine slicing them like an apple, for example.   They are sweet when soft, but pretty tart before then.

    ————

    Finished the Ringo collab.   It was very much like the Maple Syrup Wars* trilogy in that it’s mostly world building and bootstrapping an economy with space and a new planet to colonize.  No real plot, but kinda fun nonetheless.   It kept me reading instead of sleeping….

    *my nickname, for the Troy Rising series.

    n

  22. Greg Norton says:

    Colin Zachary (Allred) started running his TV ads tonight during local CBS news.

    Wine Moms are the target with the ads emphasizing how his teacher mother raised her mixed race child herself.

    The mother’s race isn’t stated in the voiceover, but, as they say, a picture speaks 1000 words.

    When Rafael Edward was on with Hannity last week, he claimed that Allred was being evasive about setting a debate, but I don’t see how that flies in Texas.

    Cruz is vulnerable.

  23. lpdbw says:

    I liked Best In Show, but I’m a dog person and I once owned a bloodhound. And to hear a Peer of the Realm doing that accent is pretty entertaining.

    In order:

    1. Spinal Tap
    2. Waiting for Guffman
    3. Best In Show
    4. A Mighty Wind

    Of course, I’ve done community theater, so Guffman speaks to me.

    A Mighty Wind is the one I would never have missed.

    Can’t include Princess Bride.  It was the best movie he was in, but it wan’t really HIS movie.

  24. brad says:

    I’ve been looking around at air-fryers.  Might not be a gimmick after all

    I also thought they were gimmicks, and the cheapest ones probably are. However, my wife finally bought one, and they do have their strengths. Some of the recipes make no sense, but others work really well. Once nice convenience on the better models: You can put things in two different chambers, that take different times to cook. The air fryer can time them so that they are ready at the same time.

    FWIW, I think all air fryers smell intensely of “hot plastic” the first few times you use them. This does go away.

    SpaceX launched two Falcon 9s this morning, one from Carnaveral and one from Vandenberg.  Both launched 21 version 2 satellites.

    Did you see the FCC joke? I say “joke”, but it is really happening.

    After spending untold billions to provide rural internet, with zero customers actually getting service, they tentatively awarded a contract to SpaceX. Cost under one billion. The FCC has now cancelled the contract, because SpaceX cannot prove that it can delivery connectivity to remote locations.

    That can only be politics, because Musk has come out in support of Trump.

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