08:50 – I currently have three kits awaiting pickup. If those kits had shipped Saturday, the postage would have been $39.70. If I used USPS Click-N-Ship to generate postage labels for them today, the postage would be $56.25. If I’d used stamps.com to generate postage labels to ship them Saturday, the postage would again have been $39.70. If I use stamps.com to generate postage labels today, the postage will total about $41, which reflects the actual postage cost increase that occurred yesterday. The huge increase in using Click-N-Ship is because it no longer offers Commercial Base pricing, instead using Retail pricing, and because it no longer supports Regional Rate boxes. I need to get the stamps.com software installed on Barbara’s system today and get those postage labels run.
It was cold again overnight. It was 13F (-10.5C) when I took Colin out to get the paper this morning, with another dusting of snow and gusty winds. Fortunately, the heat pump is keeping it warm in here, although I’m sure we’re using resistive heating. Kind of like one of those standalone quartz heaters, but on a larger scale.
I also have a lot of admin stuff to get done over the next few days, including state and federal income tax stuff, state sales tax return, Obamacare stuff, and so on. Government-mandated stuff is taking up much too much of my time.
The new Windows 10 notebook system should ship soon. I’m going to make it my primary PC and carry it around the house with me rather than tether it to my desk. I actually considered buying something that would work with a docking station, but this notebook has a 17″ screen, which is large enough for most of what I do. And I can always plug it into my 23″ 1080P monitor if I need to.
After I get the Windows 10 installation backed up to redundant DVD sets, I’ll probably install Linux Mint in dual boot mode so that I can work in Linux except when I’m generating postage labels.
And So Goes the progressive progression for their goals:
Tolerance>acceptance>voluntary adoption>mandatory adoption
Your body doesn’t belong to you, nor does your medical information.
And another one from opposite land.
While debating whether to fund new classrooms, someone tried to use fear to influence the board, saying the current mobile classrooms left the kids vulnerable to snipers. Jorge says “He said: ‘The issue of safety for students going from the portables to the main building was emphasized based on today’s situation – that we may have snipers anywhere shooting people.
‘Well, that is true, it could happen, but based on my Marine Corps training, if I wanted to really do harm, I would not do it when they went from the portables to the main building.” He then describes a potential attack scenario.
In typical ‘head in the sand, fingers in ears shouting la la la la’ fashion, the board blames him and bans him from school grounds.
Clearly they’re happy using theoretical dead kids to influence public spending, but have no interest in hearing from anyone with actual training, or in having their nakedness pointed out.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3404102/I-field-day-School-board-official-condemned-describing-carry-mass-shooting-budget-meeting.html
I guess they better put up a few more signs, and say some more magic words, because their ACTIONS aren’t gonna keep the kids safe.
nick
Given the progressive path, this should strike fear in peoples’ hearts:
Quebec announces first state-sanctioned death by euthanasia in Canada a month after new law comes into force
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3404858/Quebec-announces-state-sanctioned-death-euthanasia-Canada-month-new-law-comes-force.html
remember, the last step in their path is MANDATORY
nick
remember, the last step in their path is MANDATORY
OButtWadCare part II.
“Trump: Christianity ‘under siege'”
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/266234-trump-christianity-under-siege
I like my politicians as fiscal conservatives and social moderates nowadays. The feddies need to get their fiscal house in order. And they need to get out of people’s bedrooms.
BTW, there were more Christian martyrs across the world in 2015 than any other known time.
Trump 2016!
I’d be inclined to clone the hard drive to a Samsung SSD after you make the backup copies of Windows. Then I’d replace the hard drive with the SSD. I speculate it will be both a performance and reliability upgrade. If you concerned about SSD
reliability, you may want to go with one of the Samsung Pro SSDs.
“New Intel, AMD processors to require Windows 10”
http://www.osnews.com/story/29048/New_Intel_AMD_processors_to_require_Windows_10
Reminds me of the dark side. Or the one ring.
No Windows 10 gonna be installed here. This is it, Windows 8.1, the last gasp of Winblows for this household, other than the Win7 laptop wife uses for work.
The weather liars might have mentioned possible snow flurries last night; this morning we had six inches of heavy wet stuff, but I got to assemble and use my new SnowJoe corded electric snowblower; works fine, but any wind at all and ya gotta mess around with the chute direction and the cord, etc., etc., but still, lots better than shoveling.
Ice fisherpeeps out on the bay now every day with their tents and sleds. You wouldn’t catch OFD out there, no sir! Not for at least another week of temps in the teens and at least six inches of ice. One time is all it takes of falling through into that icewater with heavy winter clothes and no one else around (age 14, on Walden Pond, in Concord, MA, about a hundred yards from ass-hat Thoreau’s old phony cabin site).
See – Windows 10 seems to be the most stable release yet. Yes, there are privacy concerns, but I have nothing to hide.
Seriously – every machine I manage is either stuck on XP and is being retired as fast as I can, or it’s getting bumped to Windows 10. Users don’t get a vote. I’ll be back to just ONE platform to manage by early May.
@JimL
We are managing 3 desktop OS currently. Several server OSs
It’s not much fun.
Goal is to be down to two desktop OS by end of June. No plan from management on getting to one desktop OS on purpose.
I’m moving my direct customers as quick as I can. Hampered by antique hardware. Comprehending and implementing lifecycle replacement is rocket surgery.
“Privacy issues” is a bit of an understatement from what I’ve read.
I DO have things to hide. My online banking for one. Any “feature” can be and will be exploited by criminals.
The old “I don’t have anything to hide” so search and watch all you want WILL end up badly for you when someone does.
Want to pay more for your mortgage? Be offered higher rates on you next car loan? Be declined for life insurance due to ‘lifestyle’ issues? Passed up for promotion at work? Laid off first for your political beliefs? Or maybe amazon just hits you for an extra 7% on every purchase, since you are such a loyal customer and NEVER go anywhere else.
I can think of hundreds of ways to fukc you in subtle and not subtle ways if I know everything you do on your pc and online.
Browsing history is almost always mentioned in any story about criminals or terrorists caught in the last year or so.
I don’t commit any crimes that I’m aware of, but I have no doubt that if someone wanted to destroy me socially, economically, reputationally, or criminally, collecting the kind of dossier that MS collects in win10 would be the way to start.
It’s foolish to just shrug and allow it.
nick
OTOH, we all have different things we worry about. …
@Jenny,
My sympathies.
My servers are on 2008, 2008R2, 2012, and 2012R2. When I walked in, the youngest was 5 years old. Oldest was 9. Now my oldest is 5, but it has a fresh set of memory and drives, and lives a pampered life. The upside is no end users get to screw them up, so I don’t generally have problems. Just let them run, reboot monthly, and go.
I told managers that my goal was to have the servers to a state that they could be neglected for 2-4 years (in the event of a bad downturn, as they had gone through prior to my arrival) and survive. I think I’m there. In the meantime, it’s a new server every year. I pay attention to capacity for visualization and projected needs of our ERP systems. I won’t be caught short.
Managing servers in an enterprise, whether Windoze or Linux, is fah preferable to the nonstop handholding and babysitting for scores or hundreds of lusers on their desktops and devices, or worst of all, having to do both. And everyplace that I’ve worked and had to do those roles, management has sucked. Totally. I guess I just got on board the wrong places or sumthin…
RIP, Glenn Frey; a much bigger talent than ever Ziggy Stardust was:
http://www.tmz.com/2016/01/18/glenn-frey-the-eagles-dead/
@Nick
Incidentally, one of the things I was just writing about that you might want to keep an eye out for at estate sales is oxygen concentrators. New ones start around $500, and I suspect you could pick up working used ones up pretty cheap. They require electric power, but they can produce a constant flow of almost 90+% pure oxygen. They basically throw away the nitrogen and keep the oxygen.
In an emergency, oxygen may be the difference between life and death. Bottled oxygen is expensive, dangerous to handle, and runs out pretty quickly. You could generate oxygen by electrolysis, but that takes a lot of electric power and is clumsy. An oxygen concentrator is the way to go.
I’m happy with my Windows 10 upgrade on my 4-year-old HP laptop. No problems at all. Set up a few security settings, but I am not the paranoid type to worry about those things. The next laptop will also be Windows 10. Am comfortable with the OS; no desire to go to any version of Linux.
And have a portable (battery-powered) and AC-powered oxygen concentrator (wife uses it when we go to high-altitude places; required for her pulmonary hypertension problem; not required here at sea level). Hadn’t thought about their use as an emergency oxygen source.
Geez, Glenn Frey was only 67!?
If you concerned about SSD reliability, you may want to go with one of the Samsung Pro SSDs.
I’ve got about a dozen Intel SSDs running here from 180 GB to 480 GB. No problems.
Seriously – every machine I manage is either stuck on XP and is being retired as fast as I can, or it’s getting bumped to Windows 10. Users don’t get a vote. I’ll be back to just ONE platform to manage by early May.
I’ve got 12 Windows 7 x64 PCs here. Plus a Windows XP x86 PC for testing. Plus a Windows 8 laptop. We will move to Windows 10 in 2020 or so.
“…but I am not the paranoid type to worry about those things.”
I tend to think Mr. nick’s concerns were pretty reasonable, actually, and I also tend to share them; why make it easy for the bastids? And then there’s Microslop’s history of dealing with its customers over the decades.
Henceforth, I’ll only work in a Windows shop again if it’s either remote or within ten miles of here. Preferably never again.
“Geez, Glenn Frey was only 67!?”
Yeah, that sucks; they were gonna go on tour again, too; I was never a huge Eagles fan but appreciated a lot more of their songs than Bowie’s, who admittedly had a handful back in the day. Apparently he’d had digestive system problems for a very long time; goes to show all the tens of millions in the world can’t save ya if you’re too far gone. I see Alan Rickman is also deceased, at only 69. Damn, they’re dropping like flies, as have a bunch of my high skool classmates and former fellow cops.
“Lyme disease–carrying ticks are now in half of all U.S. counties”
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/lyme-disease-carrying-ticks-are-now-half-all-us-counties
“Lyme disease cases have tripled in the United States over the last 2 decades, making it the most commonly reported vector-borne disease in the Northern Hemisphere. The disease now affects around 300,000 Americans each year. If diagnosed early—a rash commonly appears around the site of the tick bite—Lyme can be effectively treated with antibiotics, but longer term infections can produce more serious symptoms, including joint stiffness, brain inflammation, and nerve pain.”
Yup, my daughter has all three of those, “joint stiffness, brain inflammation, and nerve pain”, plus many others. We are just in a holding pattern with her.
I would advocate shooting all the deer but 90% of the lyme ticks are on mice.
It was cold again overnight. It was 13F (-10.5C) when I took Colin out to get the paper this morning, with another dusting of snow and gusty winds. Fortunately, the heat pump is keeping it warm in here, although I’m sure we’re using resistive heating. Kind of like one of those standalone quartz heaters, but on a larger scale.
Depends on the size of your system and the amount of insulation in your house. Your house looks to be very nicely built so I doubt that it has an undersized system. And, most heat pump systems have at least a COP of 3.0 at 47 F and 2.0 at 17 F. The heat pump will run all the time until it gets beyond the demand, except for the defrosting cycle. Your thermostat may have an indicator when it is running the “emergency heat” if you want to watch it for a while (I doubt it, you are busy!).
We are at twelve degrees and dropping now, with strong winds again; we shut off the oil burner and are doing OK with the wood stove in the living room. One of us or both of us will undoubtedly wake up in the wee hours having to pee and we’ll throw another log on and in the AM the coals will still be live.
Single digits every night this week with wind chill well below zero; and we have six inches of snow on the ground with more “flurries” expected; this is the northern VT we know and love, while we weep copious tears for Mordor, which might get a “major” storm this weekend and drop a few inches on them.
We’re at 9F, heading for 3F.
Rather than dual-boot, you might want to set up virtual machines using either VirtualBox or the free VMWare Player. Either is pretty straightforward to do.
Mr. Thompson:
Can you use stamps.com via a Windows VM on your Mint machine? That might save the need for a separate computer. Oracle VirtualBox and VMWare Player both will run Windows VMs under Linux. I don’t know what Windows versions stamps.com supports …
7F and dropping. Strong winds blowing, chill facta very invigorating when stepping out for more firewood.
I have a virtual machine of CentOS 7 running via VMware Workstation 10. Works great, and will create a machine from just an .iso saved to the host rather than require a bootable DVD or USB stick.
I’ve had dual- and triple-boot machines in the past but did not care for them in the end, and prefer either a separate machine for an o.s. or a decent vm. I did have to use VirtualBox to run the Whonix Gateway and Workstation, though, as they’re imported as appliances and not .iso files.
50F here in Vegas.
Now at 6F with “RealFeel” of minus four. It’s lower than that with the wind, but the weather liars aren’t standing in our back yard with our microclimate and the Polar Express howling off the lake ice right at us.
I weep crocodile tears for poor MrAtoz freezing out there in Lost Wages…
Currently 68 with 32%RH, wind at 1 mph.
I keep looking for O2 concentrators, but I only see the cpap machines. Not the same thing right? CPAP is just air under a couple pounds extra pressure?
I was looking because there are some neat projects online that use them as part of a mini torch system.
I’d be interested in a gear list if someone put one together for a basic short term medical facility. I’m guessing some diagnostic, some convalescent care. I’ve got a centrifuge and sample tubes, hot plates, sample oven, pressure sterilizer, microscopes, and lab glass ware. That’s all leftovers from pallets of salvage where I sold the item I bought the lot for. I’m thinking O2 concentrator, pulse ox machine, maybe ekg? heart monitor? ventilator is probably out due to the consumables, but they’re not hard to get the machine. Bag hangers? Cases of saline? Catheters are fairly common. IV sets, less so. AED certainly. What would a Dr want in the room in the barn with good light and a rubber topped bed? What would you want if you were treating a deep puncture wound, arm or leg burn, compound fracture, or pregnancy?
Just for entertainment purposes of course.
interesting thought exercise anyway….
nick
OFD writes: “everyplace that I’ve worked and had to do those roles, management has sucked”
I’ve had better luck with small companies. Big companies, upper managers are so disconnected from reality on the ground that they are useless, or worse, counterproductive.
I had a consulting gig a few years ago for a big company. Not the sort of thing I normally take on, but I did it for a friend who was working there and getting no help from the company IT department. Just as a minor example: the IT department claimed that it was impossible to connect two screens to the same PC. The software was in an even worse state, including some customized software that was no longer supported and desperately needed replaced. Where was upper management in all this? Too busy playing power politics…
Sadly, I didn’t actually get much out of the project. Out of an abundance of caution, I had the whole thing run through my employer, where I kept one of the lawyers up-to-date on the status. The CIO was an arrogant ass, and not terribly pleased that I existed. He liked to show off his power by threatening to sue his smaller suppliers – he had more lawyers than they did, so wouldn’t they like to take whatever he felt like paying, and eat the rest? If I had taken the contract privately, I imagine he would done the same to me, even though my contract ran through a different department.
@OFD
RE:server vs desktop support
I’ve done both and consider myself fortunate to genuinely enjoy both. I like nearly all of my users and only occasionally hit one that makes me nuts. Right now I appreciate the (for me) less stressful desktop support.
I’ve also done database work, cut my teeth on MS SQL 4.2. I preferred Oracle, I find it a more interesting tool. Once my daughter is a bit older and I can cope with serious work stress again I’d like to return to being an Oracle administrator. The economy will be the final arbiter on that I expect.
I’ve also done a bit of networking. The physical aspects of pulling cable were great but I’m pretty short and can’t work efficiently overhead. I liked working with the Cisco equipment.
I do miss the excitement of being in a shop where I did it all, but not the related stress.
Most frustrating part of IT has pretty consistently been when the IT parts are managed politically (emotionally) instead of with cold logic. The rest of it is easy. Even the sometimes hair pulling lusers.
well, I always read The register and I always feel that everything in IT is tested in England, so, look at that and you could see the path, and, the path is not good for everyone who works on IT.
users feel we are (or better I was) replaceable drones, and this includes CIOs positions up to the last help desk, I was one of the former and the pattern is always the same.
First you are the solving people, then, why so much paperwork?, the dont understand, and dont want to, that paperwork is the last line of defense of IT, whichever the position.
So, I am happy, I moved to another line of work, and now I am a user.
IT is going to be railways, or, worst, toll booths, so, my best advice is quit from it, FWIW, our host understood early this.
Outside it’s 30C, inside I have set the a/c to 22C. Just going to turn it off – I’m freezing my butt off.
My sis, bro and I just saw The Big Short at the local cinema. Recomended.
Worse than railroads, just the wiring in the wall, like power wire.
You neglect it until it catches on fire. You only upgrade when it is required by some incidental work like adding on a room. You continue to connect newer and more power hungry devices to the same old system, expecting it to just work without any effort from you.
When it goes wrong, if you house doesn’t burn, you call the specialist who rips holes in your walls, and maybe doesn’t even solve the problem.
It will become a pure utility. There are specialists throughout the electrical distribution system, but there are many trade school educated worker drones. End users don’t care about phase angles, RMS voltage, GFCI or arc flash protection. They don’t care about RFI, voltage fluctuations, lightning strikes in Nebraska or sun spots.They just want as much as they need, at a price they can afford to pay.
Those of us old enough to have configured routers, or set up networking, or installed an OS live in a different world than most younger users who have always had this available. It’s just an appliance. Some are shiny and new, some have tons of features, some very few. But plug in a toaster, and it should make toast. You don’t have to consider the plug, or the voltage. They don’t know what’s inside or how it works, even vaguely. Some CARE about the features, most don’t.
We got involved because we were attracted to an aspect of it for its own sake, they just want to DO THINGS with it. We liked the thing they like what the thing can do. I can see this shift even within myself. I bought my last 3 pcs. I’d built all but the laptops before that, since the RadioShack Model I days. I bought my smartphone, and although I installed some developer tools and some sophisticated config tools, I don’t use them. The only machines I’ve worked on lately have been in the line of rebuilding a classic car or working on a jeep for the weekends.
Radio, telegraphy, even space exploration all have become part of the infrastructure of the world.
We’re getting old, that’s all.
nick
CPAP is just air under a couple pounds extra pressure?
Something like that. The more sophisticated machines such as I use can sense the apnea and will pulse with burst of higher pressure. Mine will also sense how well I am breathing and adjust the pressure between a low limit and a high limit. Also have humidifier with heated hose.
An insulated/heated hose and humidifier were recomended to me, but I just got the APAP without accessories. For the first year or three water would collect in my mask – condensation from my breath – but that doesn’t seem to happen any more. A heated tube may have been desireable in Canberra during winter but it is superflous here in Adelaide.
Mine also senses when I breath in/out. Tried it for a while on CPAP (constant pressure) mode but didn’t like that one bit.
Once you use APAP it’s very addictive, you don’t want to be without it.
The pulmonologist told me people either swear by them or swear at them. My experience has been the latter. Someone sneaks in and takes that damn mask off in the middle of the night.
My mask always stays on. Always.
A friend who got a CPAP in about 1990 hated them, as it was extremely noisy. He gave up using it.
Then his partner got one and it changed her life. I think after a fair bit of nagging he tried again. I find them reasonably quiet. It helps me, but not as much as I was told it would.
Geez, Glenn Frey was only 67!?
As I understand it, he had post-surgical complications from a bowel resection for ulcerative colitis. That can kill you at any age.
As for O2 concentrators, I would expect most to be rentals, not purchases. My mom had two (portable and not) that she used before her TAVR procedure. Medicare prefers to rent them for you, not purchase them.
maybe Nick, we all are getting old, but, the analogy is true, just wiring only. And maybe EE or CS is only following the path of ME or Civil, justo choose a couple of blocks from a catalogue.
Well, some day I am going to retire and play with my Tek 453 tinkering a bit, If I could afford to do so
I have been using CPAP for more than 20-years. Honestly I would not be alive today without it. Before CPAP my Wife had to wake me several times a night when I stopped breathing, rather snooring, she got so the silence awakened her. Finally got me to a real “Sleep Specialist” Pulmonologist and took the night-day-night 36 hour test. The first night of the test I caused a panic because I stopped breathing and they had a hard time “restarting” me. Today many of the new docs on the block only do a one night wham bam, which IMHO, is not really doing a proper assessment.
I use the nasal pillows with my CPAP so none of that closed in mask feeling. With my type of Sleep Apnea the APAPs, BiPAPs, and other PAPs don’t work for me.
I do not turn the heat on with the CPAP humidifier and am just fine plus no flood outs.