09:55 – Barbara and I are about halfway through the sixth and final season of Dawson’s Creek on Netflix streaming. If it were me, I’d have stopped watching after season four. I commented to Barbara at the start of season five that the series “felt” different, and that I didn’t like the changes. As we continued to watch season five, it became obvious that the writing had tanked, with stupid plotting, poor characterization, and inane dialog. With season six, it’s gotten even worse. Maybe the showrunner or head writer left after season four, or maybe they just ran out of ideas. If you’ve never seen Dawson’s Creek, I’d recommend watching it, but only the first four seasons. Then just pretend that they never made seasons five and six, which they shouldn’t have.
Another of our bottle-top dispensers died Sunday. Fortunately, I have an unused spare sitting on the shelf, because I sure don’t want to be without at least one working unit. These things are kind of like the pumps used to dispense toppings on sundaes, except they’re extremely accurate (~0.05 mL) and repeatable (~0.01 mL). To operate them, you simply pull up on the pump handle, place an empty bottle at the dispensing tip, and press down the pump handle.
They’re not cheap–$200 give or take, depending on the capacity–plus another $50 to $100 for the reservoir bottle, again depending on capacity. Here’s an image of one, not the model we use, but a similar one.
I dithered before I bought the first one because I wasn’t sure a BTD would really save much time, if any. But it does, trimming maybe 10 seconds from the fill time per bottle. That may not sound like much, but it adds up quickly if you’re filling hundreds of bottles in a session and tens of thousands per year.
The one that failed Sunday was the fourth failure. I’ll notify the vendor, who in the past has replaced each failed unit, but by now is probably getting tired of doing that. If so, it’s no big deal. I’ll order another unit today to become my hot spare. I think I got something close to 10,000 bottles filled with the failed unit, which means if I treat the BTD’s as consumables it costs me an extra $0.02 to fill a bottle. Or, another way of looking at it, that BTD saved me 100,000 seconds (about 28 hours) at a cost of about $7 per hour.
10:28 – As it turns out, I don’t need to order a spare. I just opened the box that I thought contained one spare unit. In fact, it contained two: one that the vendor had replaced under warranty and a second that I’d ordered and paid for.
Typo?
Fixed. The perils of cut-and-paste.
Are they made in the US or China/India/…?
I am getting more and more annoyed at the MSM response to Ferguson. The constant news and social media coverage is just fanning the flame. It would have subsided several days ago but for the media attention.
In reality, despite what the left-leaning MSM would have you believe, it is affecting very few people. Seriously, outside of Ferguson, Missouri, how many people’s lives have been interrupted in even the slightest way by any of this? How much permanent social change to these sorts of things ever really bring about? There’s a LONG history of these.
I guess I’ve reached a point where I am more or less of the attitude that it’s time for everyone to just STFU already.
As Stephen Stills said almost 50 years ago,
“There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.”
The dead man was apparently a thug who richly deserved to be shot. The cop apparently shot the guy six times, including twice in the head, which seems a bit gratuitous. The authorities, from local to federal, botched handling the situation, allowing rioters to loot and pillage. My sympathies here lie with the store owners who were forced to take up arms and defend their own property.
India.
As Stephen Stills said almost 50 years ago,
“There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.”
I heard that song on the radio Sunday morning getting ready for church. I thought how appropriate.
I am becoming more and more disturbed about people’s attitude that they get hit or even beat other people with no repercussions. Especially beat up on cops. This young man, and he was a grown man, was high on drugs and probably thought that the cop was getting ready to arrest him for the robbery. So, he apparently thought that he could beat up the cop and get away.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/18/us/missouri-teen-shooting/index.html
This problem will continue to get worse and worse unless people’s attitudes change. I see no evidence that there is even a movement to stop this shameful behavior and in fact, I see many people, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson specifically, trying to make things worse.
When the US government falls financially in the next 10 to 20 years, these people may not survive. They are dependent upon the government for their food and shelter.
“BREAKING REPORT: Officer Darren Wilson Suffered “Orbital Blowout Fracture to Eye Socket” During Mike Brown Attack”
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/08/breaking-report-po-darren-wilson-suffered-orbital-blowout-fracture-to-eye-socket-during-encounter-with-mike-brown/
As I said, you beat on a cop, you will get to pay a price. The cop could probably see nothing but a huge blur. No wonder he sprayed and prayed.
Mortuaries are cheaper than emergency rooms and prisons….you tax dollars not at work.
As I said, you beat on a cop, you will get to pay a price.
I highly suspect that Mike Brown was not the sweet little angel that his parents, relatives and those cretins Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson make him out to be. Mike Brown was a thug as evidenced by the robbery video. Mike Brown was destined for a large part of his life being in prison.
Mortuaries are cheaper than emergency rooms and prisons
You have obviously never had to deal with either of those lately.
This picture tells a shooting story
I’ve already paid my mortician, Neptune Society, very reasonable. I’m not having my daughter pay a preacher, who never met me, tell folks how wonderful I was.
I’m not having my daughter pay a preacher, who never met me, tell folks how wonderful I was.
In my case I would need to find a politician. I would need someone that is skilled at not telling the truth but can make you feel good about it.
tell folks how wonderful I was
She could always get Rev Al Sharpless to diss you. Throw in Jackson to talk about your White Privilege. 😉 Just kidding Mr. CowboySlim.
I’m saving up for a solid gold casket with platinum hardware, marble mausoleum, the works. Maybe a pyramid like Nick Cage.
Mr. OFDs future. 🙂
How much permanent social change to these sorts of things ever really bring about?
One never really knows. But these are just flashpoints for what has been a mounting dissatisfaction with the course of life all over the world. I expect to see more of them as time glides on, not fewer. And after a career in the media, I can tell you that the MSM will never, ever drop the ball on using these events as occasions to stir things up, because their ratings soar in times like these. Your interest may be low, but that is certainly not the representative view.
http://www.thewrap.com/ferguson-coverage-hands-msnbc-huge-late-night-demo-ratings-boost/
Oddly, there is mounting evidence (Carnegie Mellon is engaged in studies) that uncertainty drives risks higher; then higher risks drive social and technological progress. The problem then becomes to find happiness amid uncertainty. And that just does not appear to be happening.
Oh, I think people are interested, but that doesn’t mean its affecting their lives. Outside of Ferguson, Missouri, it’s mostly a bunch of armchair activists watching live coverage and tweeting their outrage about it. That is, before they turn the TV off and head out the door to meet friends for dinner and drinks.
Was hoping for some thoughts on my Cable, TV, and Internet providers…
Current setup:
Cox for everything (TV, Internet, Telephone) We pay about $275/month (we have EVERY channel including the premiums – My wife is a TV junkie).
Thinking of switching to:
DirectTV for TV
Cox for Internet
Vonage for Telephone
Any thoughts on any of that? Also, I’ve heard you can request the “northern package” from DirectTV and you’ll get a 36″ dish instead of a 24″ dish. Anyone know if that’s true? Vonage is $10/month with contract, but goes up to $25 after 3 months, but rumor has it you can call to disconnect and they’ll offer you $10/month for life. Cox is by far the most reliable and fast Internet provider in our area.
Locally, TWC and Verizon advertise new customer packages for all 3 services at less that $100, less than half the usual, for the first year. Tell your current provider that you are thinking of switching.
You need live shots from Ferguson nightly.
“Mr. OFDs future.”
Very doubtful. I will, of course, have to work until I drop dead, but that will only take a few more years. And anyway my plan is to go out in a blaze of glory.
The Ferguson story is so fraught with conflicting info now I dunno how anyone can make any sense of it; the summaries here pretty much cover the situation: criminal thug kid (like Trayvon); dumbass and panicky cop (like Zimmerman); and media/internet feeding frenzy in both cases; season well with Reverend Jackson and Reverend Sharpless and associates and rinse and repeat. And we all know that if a black cop had riddled a white kid like a Swiss cheese we’d have heard pretty nearly zero about it; we also know that even had the media whipped up such a story, white people wouldn’t have rioted and burned down their own ‘hoods, stores and businesses.
Gorgeous day on the bay today; chopped down a bunch more weeds and ratty vegetation and assembled a compost bin. Mrs. OFD slaved on 2013 taxes, for which we had an extension. She also is dealing with the Province of Noveau Brunswick on her mom’s cottage and land about to crumble into the north Atlantic. I’d rather chop weeds and build compost bins.
Phone screen/interview any minute now for an IT job about eight miles up the road at a manufacturer. F2F interview for another IT job at another manufacturer tomorrow but it’s 40 miles to the southeast. We shall see…
After that we plan to head out to one of the islands at a remote lean-to site for a coupla days.
Reading about photo journalist just beheaded by ISIS. Second American journalist in the queue. Obummer: not a word. Journalist is as good as dead. Got to watch the first one go. Barbarians.
Usual procedure? You know, slowly, with dull and rusty kitchen knife? While jeering mob stands around chanting and tweeting and taking pics with their cells? Including little kids?
I’d say we oughta just incinerate the region but then again, WTF are two Murkan reporters doing swanning around over there in that shit-hole? You sign up for the gig, take the consequences, homies.
WTF are two Murkan reporters doing swanning around over there in that shit-hole?
Yup. A good message to all journalists. Maybe Geraldo will go over packing his heat. Naw, too chicken unless embedded with US battalion.
It’s a place ya generally wanna stay da hell away from, IMHO. Unless in a B52 or flying a Hellfire drone from deep in the Nevada desert, under Lost Wages, maybe…
I note that almost all the “journalists” who covered/cover the Iraq mess stayed well inside the Green Zone, scarfing up them steaks and ice cream brought in via the endless truck convoys dodging IED’s. Super REMFs.
They are looking for a better job. When I was in Boston, one of our reporters in the Mideast got himself captured by I forget who. Consternation everywhere in our organization, because he had broken local law there and that was a big no-no in our organization (secular news organization owned by a church).
Long story short, some Scandinavian outfit intervened and got him released. Within weeks of returning to work, he was at the NYTimes.
“Hundred-Year Period Of Increased Solar Activity Coming To An End”
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/65400
“At the moment, the space climate is undergoing an extremely interesting phase. Now a 100-year period of heightened solar activity is coming to an end. The reason behind the fluctuation in solar activity is not yet known. One hypothesis is that these long solar cycles are caused by the gravity forces of the planets in the solar system. However, the current knowledge does not support this hypothesis.—Juha Merimaa, Helsinki Times, 18 August 2014”
Yup, you yankees are going to freeze for a while now. BTW, when you see the glacier heading your way, walk away. Although, Pournelle has mentioned that he likes the theory that glaciers are formed when the snow melt does not happen in the spring or summer.
Lynn, are you suggesting that previously observed global warming* and the recently observed non-warming might be caused by the sun and not by SUVs and cow farts**? Burn, heretic!!!!!! The science is settled!!!!!
* Even discounting the massive cherry picking, manipulation, and outright fraud, I don’t disbelieve that there was actual warming from a couple centuries ago up to a decade or two ago. I don’t assert that there was warming, but I won’t call someone a liar for asserting there was.
** It’s the belches that’ll do you in. You can tell that the flap-jawed imbeciles yammering about cow farts are useless city slickers who never spent time on a dairy farm (and probably never hammered a nail outside mandatory junior high shop class, in which they got a C).
Start a fire for a man and keep him warm for a day. Set a man on fire and …
I totally believe in climate change. Happens about four times a year. More so way north of the Land of Sugar as we only get summer and .not. summer.
And yes, there is climate change over long periods of time. We know that the earth has been way warmer, maybe as much as an average of 8 F warmer. We also know that the earth has been way cooler, maybe as much as an average of 20 F cooler.
Pray hard that the cooler stuff is not coming. Very much cooler is bad, very very bad.
“Long story short, some Scandinavian outfit intervened and got him released. Within weeks of returning to work, he was at the NYTimes.”
That figures. What we used to call back in the old days, a ‘bag job.’
“Yup, you yankees are going to freeze for a while now.”
Coming from someone who thinks 65 degrees is bitter cold, this doesn’t make me very nervous.
“Pray hard that the cooler stuff is not coming. Very much cooler is bad, very very bad.”
I’ve seen other speculation that when methane or something like it, I forget what exactly, spews up from volcanic ocean floor vents or something, or maybe when the polar ice caps finally melt, most areas of the world will experience super-tropical temperatures and in some regions uninhabitable levels of heat in excess of 130+. Safe areas might be near the Hudson Bay and deep caves.
Whatever. We’ll deal with it when and if it comes. Or not.
re the methane burps from the ocean, my entirely amateur and unstudied evaluation is that it’s just more of the warmingists’ desperate flailing about to convince that we’re all gonna die. Oh, excuse me. I meant, We’re all gonna die!!!!!!1!! The stubborn refusal of the atmosphere to cooperate with the doom-n-gloom models has brought the less honest “scientists” to a frenzied panic and they’ve been throwing around ever-more fabulous explanations of why things look OK to the layman but we’re really all doomed. Methane sinks under the ocean floor, which are liable to “erupt” at any moment with no notice. El Nino variability, trapping excess warmth in the Pacific Ocean, but as soon as El Nino resumes, all that warmth will be released into the atmosphere in the blink of an eye. Something about solar cycles, something other than the sunspot cycle, which posits that the sun went into a down phase about 20 years ago, which is why we haven’t seen any warming, but just as soon as the sun goes back to normal, temperatures will shoot up in the blink of an eye.
I have no idea about the data or the science behind any of those, or other theories I’ve seen, and I wouldn’t believe what I read even if I dug into it. Ever since seeing with my own eyes the source code for the University of East Anglia’s agenda-driving climate model, complete with “fudge factor so we get the right answer” comments, I’ve been dubious about the honesty of the warmingists. No, that’s not quite true. I’d been dubious about the “science” from the time I learned that the “scientists” refused to release their computer models or their raw data. (Note that the UAE model’s code was leaked, not released. IIRC, Michael Mann’s data behind the hockey stick was also leaked.) After the public got to look at what the “scientists” were using, it became obvious why they were keeping it secret: it would not withstand scrutiny.
I have no clue, either, and nothing in the way of scientific expertise to properly evaluate all these various claims but I know the smell of manure from half a century of experience and it is like unto what we can smell these days from the farms that surround us.
What I really enjoy, though, is the smarmy and arrogant tone of those who look down their noses at us and say that it is “settled” and anyone not on board with it is clearly an ignorant peasant rascal being gulled by fascist troglodytes and oil company bigwigs.
At 61, I don’t much give a shit whether the temps hit 200 or minus 200 or a comet hits the planet like a bullet hitting an apple or the Yellowstone volcano blows up and renders the atmosphere unlivable while setting fire to most of North Murka.
Each day above the grass now is a lucky strike for ol’ OFD after a lifetime of near-misses and close calls.
Any astronomy types used the freeware Stellarium? We’re using it in a course I’m doing, so I’ll stick with it, but I was wondering if there are other freeware products that are good. (I’m doing an introductory astronomy course.)
I have Stellarium on this Windows 8 box but haven’t had time to play with it yet. Also have it on the Kindle. As the weather gets colder here and the skies clearer, we hope to spend more time with the binocs outdoors under our nearly dark skies in this area.
Pray hard that the cooler stuff is not coming. Very much cooler is bad, very very bad.
I’ll second that. It’s still anecdotal at this point, but last summer was a bit cool, and this summer we ran the heat some in July and only by wearing sweaters indoors have we avoided running it in August. Fair bit of snow left in the mountains from last winter – might still melt before the coming winter.
The time will come when the public, the media and the politicians finally accept that the AGW panic was idiotic, driven by politics and money. Unfortunately, that will come only with a change of generations, and a new crop of politicians and greedy idiots will start beating on the AGC drum (Anthropogenic Global Cooling).
I may have the name wrong, but within 5 years – 10 at the outside – it will be our fault that the planet is cooling and going into another ice age. A problem that can only be solved by spending vast amounts of other people’s money, restricting civilization, and giving politicians more power.
I haven’t looked at freeware planetarium software in quite a while, but I remember Stellarium as okay and Cartes du Ciel as excellent.
The time will come when the public, the media and the politicians finally accept that the AGW panic was idiotic, driven by politics and money.
How quickly they forgot Y2K. The consultants saying the world was going to end. Gas pumps won’t work, cars won’t start, banks will fail, electrical grid offline, etc. These same consultants made a lot of money over the hype. Even I was not immune from making money because I was contracted to modify a lot of code. However, I was never on board with the hype.
People would say my car won’t start because it has a computer. I would counter that with a question asking people the last time they changed the date in their car computer. The response was usually silence. Some would come back with traffic lights would fail because the lights have different cycles depending on the day. My response was they lights will not fail, they may just be off cycle. Simple solution is to move the date back 7 years and the cycle would be normal.
Same applies to global warming. There is a LOT of money to be made, grabbed from the pockets of others without permission. The people that are the recipients of this cash flow are the ones that are most desperate to keep the hysteria alive. Got to keep the product in the people’s minds.
Sort of like those racists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Keep racism alive to stay employed.
Same applies to global warming. There is a LOT of money to be made, grabbed from the pockets of others without permission. The people that are the recipients of this cash flow are the ones that are most desperate to keep the hysteria alive. Got to keep the product in the people’s minds.
My point exactly. Somehow the feddies have transitioned into the nanny state. We must reverse this in order to survive. OFD believes that there will be famines and civil wars. I hope not but do not know how to fix it without such extreme events.
“The 35.4 Percent: 109,631,000 on Welfare”
http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/354-percent-109631000-welfare
You also have the 4% that are government employees. (8% of the jobs).
http://www.answers.com/Q/What_percentage_of_Americans_are_government_employed
You have got to be kidding. Government jobs at all levels including contract employees are more than 25% of total jobs. When you add in the jobs in aerospace and so on that exist only because the government buys their output, the total of government jobs must be at or near 50% of the total jobs.
With about 50% on welfare, that means about 25% of the population–say 75 million private sector employees–is supporting the other 75%. Geez.
Welfare anyone?
http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/354-percent-109631000-welfare
There are plenty more that could be on welfare, but decide to try and work and make ends meet.
Exactly; we know lotsa people who would qualify for either welfare and/or other forms of State largess/bennies but who choose to work instead, sometimes at tough and dangerous jobs to make a living for themselves and support their families. We don’t begrudge helping someone who’s down on their luck through no fault of their own, like millions out there now, and giving them a boost up. Money saved from DOD’s excellent overseas adventures, corporate mollycoddling and endless tax write-0ffs, and the cesspool of burgeoning neo-Marxist slop that is our public mis-education and “higher ed” system, ditto about 3/4 of the State prison industry. Give that support instead to our own people who are being, and/or have been screwed.
Dude, good luck on getting the close by job. If you get the far off job, better get another 4×4: “Almanac predicts colder winter, hotter summer “:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OLD_FARMERS_ALMANAC?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-08-20-15-08-00