07:25 – It was 48.1F (9C) when I took Colin out at about 0615 this morning, damp and foggy again. Colin and I had an early evening, doing last time out and heading back to bed around 2015. I was pretty beat, and needed more than my usual seven hours or so of sleep.
After she finished volunteering at the Friends of the Library bookstore at 1700 yesterday, Barbara drove down to Winston to meet Frances and Al for dinner. She considered driving back yesterday, but I encouraged her to stay down there overnight, so she’ll be heading back up to Sparta later this morning.
Yesterday, the crew from Shaw Brothers ripped out the existing gypsum board ceiling and insulation and tore up the carpet and pad, which was glued to the concrete floor. The whole place is soaked. They left a big fan running downstairs. It’ll probably take several days or longer to dry the place out. Jay Shaw stopped by around lunchtime to drop off his quote for the whole job, including replacing the ceiling with a drop ceiling and installing new fake-wood flooring. It was just over $8,000. It’ll be interesting to see how much of that the insurance covers.
Speaking of the drop ceiling, one of the guys on the crew had helped build this house back in 2006/2007. He told us that they’d tried to convince the original owner to install a drop ceiling then, but he didn’t want to pay the additional cost. I wish he had, because this project would have been a lot less expensive if there’d been a drop ceiling already in place.
I finally decided to give up on LibreOffice. It’s gotten less and less stable over the years, which is ironic considering that the reason I started using OpenOffice back in my pre-Linux days was that MS Office was very unstable on large documents. LO has gotten worse with each release, and I’ve started seeing some really weird bugs. Even completely uninstalling it, nuking it from orbit, and reinstalling it doesn’t solve some of the problems.
A couple of months ago, for example, it started randomly pasting text into arbitrary places in a large document. I’d highlight a sentence or paragraph, cut it, copy it elsewhere, and later on I’d find that there were two or three (or more) instances of that text pasted randomly elsewhere in the document. Then, two or three weeks ago, an open instance of LO would no longer show up on my task bar. That made it almost unusable for me, because I often work with half a dozen or more open documents.
So yesterday I looked to see what else was available. Several of those I’d already looked at and decided not to use for one reason or another. I settled on Calligra Suite, which is the KDE office suite. So far, it looks good. It doesn’t have all of the features of LibreOffice, but so far I haven’t noticed anything missing that I can’t live without.
I’ve got a question for any PDF experts out there…
Someone has sent me a PDF which I have to sign and return. I’d rather not print it, sign it, scan it and return. Is there a way to sign it in an open document?
Yes.
That is to say, yes and no.
Or perhaps just plain no.
Really, it depends.
I hope this helps. Or doesn’t.
It’ll be interesting to see how much of that the insurance covers
Insurance should cover all of it except your deductible. What insurance will not cover is the cost to repair the plumbing issue that caused the problem. Insurance only covers the damage from the event, not what caused the event.
We had a plumbing leak in our kitchen that warped the sub floor. Insurance paid to have the sub floor and the floor replaced. They did not cover the cost to have the leak repaired as that is considered maintenance.
I also suspect you will get little or no hassle from your insurance company as that is not a significant amount when dealing with a water leak. A friend had a washer hose break while they were gone for a weekend. They got called while they were away because water was running out of their front door. Single level house and the water got several inches deep throughout the entire house. All the carpeting, sheet rock, furniture, kitchen cabinets had to be replaced. Fortunately no wiring was involved. Cost was over $50K as he also had to pay to live somewhere else while the repairs were done which insurance also had to pay.
Based on other peoples experience I have got just about the maximum insurance coverage I can get on my house. Full replacement value with a 25% cost overrun, 100% replacement on all contents (no depreciation), lodging for up to six months, etc.
And there one thing I do advocate that everyone do with house insurance. Every year go around and take photographs of every room and every thing within the room. You cannot have too many pictures. Copy all the images to a DVD (or CD but DVDs are more durable), put the date on the DVD, sign the DVD, take the DVD to your agent’s office, have them sign and date the DVD, and keep the DVD in the agents files. Also get a receipt from the agent indicating the contents of the DVD and that they received the DVD.
Having such visual evidence in the case of a loss is invaluable. First it that it will jog your memory in creating an inventory of the loss and being able to itemize the items. Secondly you are able to provide the insurance company proof that you had the items and the claim is valid. Thirdly if the insurance company balks at paying having physical proof and the threat of going to court seems to work wonders at opening up the insurance company check book.
Oh, and you may be required to provide proof to your insurance company that the repairs were made.
I finally decided to give up on LibreOffice. It’s gotten less and less stable over the years, which is ironic considering that the reason I started using OpenOffice back in my pre-Linux days was that MS Office was very unstable on large documents.
I’ve passed this along before, but it is worth repeating. The #1 thing I’ve taken away from my CS Masters programs (sadly, plural) is an appreciation for what LaTeX can do with regard to putting together large documents, especially consolidating PDFs into a single file with a table of contents.
The learning curve is steep and can be maddening at times, but I have not found any other approach to big papers that comes close in terms of flexibility. The text-based format allows revision control with just about any RCS (I use Git and Subversion). Plus the output, even with default settings, is very impressive.
On Ubuntu, start by installing texmaker and one of the texlive-* package groups. I found ShareLatex.com was the best way to learn the formatting commands, and I still begin with their documentation whenever I have a question about how to do something.
If I am on LibreOffice, I’m running it on 64 bit Windows with a current Oracle binary JRE and the Java support active in the “Advanced” settings page. The Mac OS X and Linux versions of LO feel “off” for some reason. Maybe it has something to do with StarOffice originating on Windows.
Greg, thanks for your thoughts on LaTeX. I might try to learn it and use it soon.
Related to Nick’s article about radios[1], is this one about software defined radio (SDR) technology that I found very interesting (and a low cost way to explore the radio spectrum) and I hope someday to have time to acquire a SDR USB dongle and play with it (perhaps on my Raspberry Pi 3):
https://danielpocock.com/quickstart-sdr-ham-radio-gqrx-gnu-radio
[1]: http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/2017/04/27/guest-post-some-thoughts-on-radios-and-why-its-hard-to-get-a-straight-answer-from-a-ham/
Related to Nick’s article about radios[1], is this one about software defined radio (SDR) technology that I found very interesting (and a low cost way to explore the radio spectrum) and I hope to have time someday to acquire a SDR USB dongle and play with it (perhaps on my Raspberry Pi 3):
https://danielpocock.com/quickstart-sdr-ham-radio-gqrx-gnu-radio
[1]: http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/2017/04/27/guest-post-some-thoughts-on-radios-and-why-its-hard-to-get-a-straight-answer-from-a-ham/
We’ve got LibreOffice on here but I only use it occasionally and most of my writing of the past several years has been short notes to myself, lists, etc, and I use LeafPad for that. (Previously I used WordPad). Wife has Word and Excel and PP on here via Crossover for Linux, because she allegedly can’t get done with LO what she needs to get done. No problems so far, but maybe I’ll hear from her soon WRT what RBT was talking about.
Good tip from Mr. Ray on photos and insurance; yet another project for me here.
And now back to outside chores and other projects, while it ain’t raining.
Greatest threats:
https://straightlinelogic.com/2017/05/12/bigger-than-atlantic-city-by-robert-gore/
1.) Financial house of cards collapse
2.) Grid down, regionally and/or nationally, for whatever reason/s
3.) Nuke war, because somebody was stupid beyond belief
And I think the first threat is coming sooner or later whether we like it or not. One day to maybe five to ten years, tops. We’ll see how long the rulers can keep kicking the can down the road, but it may occur to them, if it hasn’t already, that collapse would be just find and dandy. For them.
Greg, thanks for your thoughts on LaTeX. I might try to learn it and use it soon.
I turned in my last grad class project on Tuesday. We will see what happens with my graduation on Monday night when grades are reported.
79 average in one class. Lambda Calculus. Grrr. Hopefully, the curve is enough for a ‘B’.
My *only* ‘B’. Grrr
And I think the first threat is coming sooner or later whether we like it or not. One day to maybe five to ten years, tops.
Maybe sooner. Debt payments are $500 billion, and that is a lot of short term debt.
Related to Nick’s article about radios[1], is this one about software defined radio (SDR) technology that I found very interesting (and a low cost way to explore the radio spectrum) and I hope someday to have time to acquire a SDR USB dongle and play with it (perhaps on my Raspberry Pi 3):
https://danielpocock.com/quickstart-sdr-ham-radio-gqrx-gnu-radio
[1]: http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/2017/04/27/guest-post-some-thoughts-on-radios-and-why-its-hard-to-get-a-straight-answer-from-a-ham/
My comments seems to disappear. No feedback..
Update: this got through..
I was trying to post this :
Related to Nick’s article about radios[1], is this one about software defined radio (SDR) technology that I found very interesting (and a low cost way to explore the radio spectrum) and I hope someday to have time to acquire a SDR USB dongle and play with it (perhaps on my Raspberry Pi 3):
https://danielpocock.com/quickstart-sdr-ham-radio-gqrx-gnu-radio
[1]: http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/2017/04/27/guest-post-some-thoughts-on-radios-and-why-its-hard-to-get-a-straight-answer-from-a-ham/
If someone held a gun to my head and ordered me to give a more precise prediction I’d say three years. Before tRump’s first? term is over. It’s just too huge. The rulers won’t be affected at first and the MSM won’t report how bad it is. While most Murkan derps don’t care and think the party goes on forever.
Maybe it won’t be too much worse than the 2008 mess; or it could surpass the Great Depression in a country at least twice as populous with a LOT more guns to point at peoples’ heads.
Yesterday there was a ransonware/malware attack that went global. The MSM is not reporting it and there is minimal coverage in the tech world. What I have found, and I find very disturbing, is the interconnections that allowed this to go global. The origination was NSA (National Security Agency) servers, then went to servers in the UKs NHS (England’s National Health Service) then came back to servers at hospitals and medical centers in the USofA and then continued to spread throughout the world-wide health/medical complex. It infected servers and systems that had not had a March 17 Microsoft Security Patch installed. Since MS no longer supports XP and earlier, those systems were wide open. Today MS took the unusual step of issuing a patch for all old legacy systems.
Many many questions. But what I say WTF is what the heck is it with the NSA being connected with the health/medical complex systems world wide. This should not be. Yes, it does point up extreme widespread incompetence by IT management. Bottom line for me is we are all being surveilled from multiple interconnected angles and I doubt even our use of VPNs is really effective.
The fact that Windows is so widespread by definition proves that most IT people are incompetent. Or, more precisely, that their no-nothing bosses continue to insist on using Windows instead of migrating to Linux desktops.
I mentioned the ransomware attack yesterday. It’s been at the top of the news in Australia for about 24 hours. The US seems oblivious and we should really be asking WTF the NSA is doing with this stuff.
I saw the ransomware attack nooz in about a dozen different sources, but none of them MSM. And as RBT says, the PHB mangler attitude is “We’re sticking with Windows no matter what, including all the icebergs in the waters around us.”
And as just pointed out, WTF is the NSA doing hooked up to UK NHS servers, in turn, hooked back up to our health care chit? Naturally the only truly secure system is not connected to the innernet and is in a securely locked room on a need-to-access basis, but you’d think by now that IT security’s top honchos would have been using a little fucking common sense by now. Meanwhile we’re told that Russian and Chicom hackers can eat our lunch anytime and are ten years ahead of us on cybersecurity issues. Bullshit fake nooz? Who knows. But we could find out soon, since they’re allegedly convinced we mean to nuke them first.
We seem to be ruled by equal parts stupidity/incompetence, and genuine evil with malice aforethought these days.
I didn’t realize that NSA was hooked up to those servers. From the reports I’ve seen, the security hole was one that NSA had discovered (if not insisted that Microsoft add into Windows) and that knowledge of it leaked on the Internet.
The Winston-Salem paper this morning had a big story about it, so the MSM isn’t completely ignoring it.
The ABC News website in Oz is MSM. Left leaning but not as bad as the US MSM.
What true software stability looks like:
http://tug.org/TUGboat/tb35-1/tb109knut.pdf
“I intend to check on purported bugs again in the years 2002, 2007, 2013, 2020, etc. The intervals between such maintenance periods are increasing, because the systems have been converging to an error-free state.”
“”Someone has sent me a PDF which I have to sign and return. I’d rather not print it, sign it, scan it and return. Is there a way to sign it in an open document?””
I used Xournal to fill out some PDF documents that didn’t have innate editing.
Xournal has text input that is a lot like the old Paint program text functions.
It worked very well for providing a very readable document (printed out since
that’s what was required) that got me quick and good response from a known
picky bureaucracy. (It broke my heart that I didn’t get to give lawyers $6000.)
I think you could scan in a signature and insert that graphic with Xournal.
For sure, you could simply sign your name with the mouse!
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xournal
Ha young cyber security researcher just stopped the spread, for now. He saw the malware code had an embedded URL it would make a call to. He checked and found the URL didn’t exist. So he registered it. It seems that URL was a “kill switch” and if the code found it, the program stopped the infection, encryption process. So this bit of serendipity has bought us 24 to 48 hours to apply patching before the cybercriminals change the code. Patch patch patch
RBT- I did a quick look at the bug list for Writer and don’t see that particular error reported. There are other paste type errors, but usually font formatting or OLE type of stuff between programs.
J. Pournelle always used to say to check cables and connections for the intermittent type of errors. I once almost went crazy myself trying to figure out a bug that turned out, in the end, to be a failing power supply.
Slashdot has an interesting article this morning about a Google funded effort that has found over 1000 bugs on OS programs, including LO, by ‘fuzzing’.
The media I checked yesterday did covered the ransomware attack: The Guardian, LeFigaro, Washington Post. Also the excellent security journalist Brian Krebs: https://krebsonsecurity.com/
pretty sure that cutepdf and foxit reader will both let you insert a signature. I do it occasionally and those are the pdf programs I use.
I used to have a signature scanned image I would paste into stuff like that.
n
Just got a “service interuption” notice from FEDEX that ”
FedEx experienced interference with some of our systems which caused disruptions ” guessing they got hit with wannacry too.
n
Might be of interest regarding “the virus”:
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/virus-destroy-data-help/
@eugen, I’m running SDR# on windows with a cheap RTL based dongle I got on ebay.
You can ‘poke’ at the SDR# software easily enough to get results without a lot of reading and config. The key in windows is to replace the standard dongle driver with the one hacked for SDR use.
After that, it’s pretty straightforward.
The waterfall display makes it easy to find signals and then you can use some software decoding to check out some digital signals too.
As with any radio, a good antenna makes all the difference.
n
ADDED- there is a linux distro from a ham operator that includes all the linux tools that a ham radio guy might want including tools for sdr.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/kb1oiq-andysham/
Booting from a live cd, I was able to get good full motion waterfall display on my old Panasonic Toughbook (built for winXP)
Are Gannett newspapers “MSM” ?
The FedEx problems were reported mid-day yesterday…
http://www.commercialappeal.com/story/money/industries/logistics/2017/05/12/fedex-targeted-cyber-attack-possibly-part-global-ransomware-hack/320156001/
as usual, zerohedge has a good rollup on the virus, and fedex was indeed affected
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-13/24-hours-later-unprecedented-fallout-first-global-coordinated-ransomware-attack
n
I’m guessing a lot of probing has been going on and will continue; some with state actors, some non-state. I keep hearing about the crying need for IT security people but the methods used to recruit more people into the field date from the 1980s. PHB manglers better wake the fuck up and start sending their best sys admins, developers and engineers to the better training that’s out there and I mean like RIGHT NOW. Yesterday, in fact. But they won’t. Their attitude is to take a chance on a break-in, much like it was back in my LE days. That’s what insurance is for, amirite? Better to take a chance than spend any money on training people or installing hw firewalls or even taking a good hard look at their security infrastructure, if any.
So now we have a situation where, at best, we’re maybe half a step ahead of the bad guys in some areas, and they’re ten years ahead of us in others. I’ll take another wild guess and figure that DOD and Homeland Insecurity are behind the curve; we’re still making people take their fucking shoes off and running guys like Mr. Ray through the nudie scanner while TSA perverts grope his junk. Meanwhile ColAtoz waltzes right through with his gear bag loaded with goodies, probably a drone in there somewhere, too. And hadjis swagger by smirking at us. Checking those fuckers out would be “profiling” and rayciss.
And to top it all off, apparently a bunch of agencies and organizations and hospitals are still running Winblows XP or worse. Truly amazing.
Well, we’re gonna get slammed good and hard eventually. Should be interesting.
”’as usual, zerohedge has a good rollup on the virus”’
As usual, zerohedge cites MSM sources that a regular guy
shoulda checked two days ago.
Correction: I do see that Zerohedge has some pretty good updates, date-stamp today.
With my panic about my Windows installations (on a pile of drives pending dismantling, in a box somewhere, all salvage junk that I agreed to haul off), I have not kept up with this Windows-specific issue, actually, so I sound pretty foolish commenting on it.
Some information that may be helpful to some:
https://www.askwoody.com/2017/how-to-make-sure-you-wont-get-hit-by-wannacrywannacrypt/
I’m running on my laptop(s) only Debian/GNU Linux since 2005.
Debian has a lot of hamradio related packages and provides a blend for the hobby – an out-of-box variant for ham amateurs: https://www.debian.org/blends/hamradio/ which also comes with a live image.
Since a lot of Linux distributions are based on Debian, all should have those hamradio packages.
I never tried any of those packages except for the morse program to learn the Morse code. I don’t have any hamradio equipment but I plan to change that in the next years.
I’ve seen info/stories about the ransomware attack all over the place since Thursday (I think); certainly since Friday.
I’m safe. I keep Windows updated, have Sophos Home Protection (free) on all systems, backup data to desktop upstairs and then to encrypted cloud storage. And I practice ‘safe computing’: the gmail folks keep the spam out of my mailbox, and I don’t click on attachments.
So, no worries here. It would be a concern at my prior paid IT jobs (local government agencies), but both had a pretty robust automatic update environment. Especially the first job (23 years total). There was an impending big worm going around, and I warned everyone one day before it hit the network. We had to shut down every computer and manually fix everything. Except those systems that I was responsible for, which were protected by a Windows Software Update Server. The whole org got into that update program after the worm hit. Caused tons of lost productivity (even at the government-productivity levels).
Fun times.
WRT to fuel stabilization and ‘dosage’ levels; I use the Sta-bil product at the recommended dosage levels. No indication on their site of any different dosage for long-term use.
They claim 12-24 months stability, although recommend 12-month. Depends on how you store fuel – best is 95% full containers, tightly capped, in a non-hot environment.
My generator fuel is recycled every fall, at least. And any new fuel purchased for that long-term use gets the Sta-bil treatment immediately.
I didn’t notice anything odd with my laptop on campus yesterday, but I have my personal machines locked down pretty well.
The IT security people at the university are fond of software from companies with CLEARwater, FL mailing addresses. I’m not sure about the effectiveness of their systems from a security standpoint, but all of the poking and prodding does terrible things to my laptop’s battery life unless I have ZoneLabs free firewall active on any Windows machine I take to campus.
I periodically scan the laptops from another machine at our house to make sure that the firewall is still doing its job.
To address the anti-Windows crowd — I have a “No Windows None Of The Time” laptop that generally runs either Fedora 25 or Linux Mint, but solid Linux WiFi support with most laptops in our campus WPA environment is still hit or miss, mostly miss. Day to day, I never know if the Linux laptop will connect to the school’s Wifi so I either carry my Mac or one of my Windows machines whenever I go to school. I’m strangely productive in Cygwin with an 80×25 console so I tend to favor Windows over Mac for campus use.
@ Greg…
I’m of a different g-g-generation, in that I have never ever had job (much less school) ‘net access; it has all been from home, at my own expense.
I am NOT a computer pro; I just need information and all that… and I have managed to make it work fairly well, mostly on my own (Commodore 64 and forward).
Escaping the endless “you selected an option, but Mr. Gates knows better” issues after about a year of Windows 98 has left me able to deal with data and info and my life and my contacts and trying to make some money… It could all blow up in my face, at any moment, with ID theft, money theft, or whatever, but at least I can sorta understand what is going on with Linux, and figure that I have some control, unlike in the context of Mr. Gates and/or any PHB.
I am not “anti-Windows” … Trying to think of an analogy… Like I am not anti-heroin? And fortunately I can avoid it…
” but solid Linux WiFi support with most laptops in our campus WPA environment is still hit or miss, mostly miss.”
Hmm… that’s strange. Do you know the cause? Sometimes you may need to install the non-free binary firmware for the laptop’s Wifi device. And then, using a network manager like NetworkManager should make Wifi usage very easy…
I use the Sta-bil product at the recommended dosage levels
Don’t use the regular stuff that is red. Use the STA-BIL marine stabilizer (blue) as it is a much better product as it is designed to absorb moisture. You will pay more but your fuel and fuel system is better protected.
My brother and I were comparing notes from our parallel IT “careers,” and his stretched over 30 years with HP-UX and rarely having to mess with Winblows at work.
Most of my full-time work in IT was with VAX/VMS and OpenVMS systems, and then RHEL 4.5 through 6 (I have RHEL and CentOS 7.3 at home on two machines). Very little of my time was spent supporting Winblows; desktop support sucked rocks but the servers were usually OK, from NT through 2012R2.
We’ve currently got one machine here running W8, only so we can run iPhone stuff with it, plus a couple of other things I forget now, being deep into senility and decrepitude. And wife’s netbook runs W7. Plus I’ve got, for her, Word, Excel and PP on this Mint 18 box via Crossover for Linux. They work A-OK so fah.
Just can’t seem to totally expunge Winblows from this place.
I also have the latest Debian running in a Virtual Box vm so I can research it a bit, and of course I have Whonix Gateway and Workstation, running Tor, behind a VPN and firewall.
My brother and I were comparing notes from our parallel IT “careers,” and his stretched over 30 years with HP-UX and rarely having to mess with Winblows at work.
Sadly, HP PA-RISC dies with Itanium.
Miles_Teg – I signed a PDF using the standard “Preview” in OSX a while back. Seemed to work ok, the bank didn’t complain.
multiple boxen here
win8.2 dual monitor as main
win7 ultimate as second desktop and ‘radio’ pc
win7 toughbook for work
win8 fliptop for work
win7 allinone for primary home pc
winXP as driver for vinyl cutter
winXP toughbook just cuz
those are the ones that are on, or accessible. There are others at different times.
n
When I first started my state gummint job up here in 1998, there was an Itanium machine in the office running VAX/VMS, a DEC Alpha. The dumbass matriarchy made me take it off and install Windows NT. (it could have run Red Hat, too.)
Here’s a quick summary of the connections from four years ago:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/10/openvms_death_notice/
Another company/skunk works has been very busy down in MA with OpenVMS and porting it to x86, probably by the end of this year or early next year. Or, hell, 2019. I can wait.
For any techies interested:
https://www.vmssoftware.com/pdfs/State_of_Port_20170105.pdf
That o.s. was OFD’s livelihood for eight years, and I still catch myself when in CLI trying to run VMS commands. It’s still big in Europe, particularly in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, and runs to this day in a lotta banks and financial institutions. DOD ought to look into it.
DOD ought to look into it.
I worked on MILSTAR as an intern in the late 80s. The development environment was VMS.
DOD ought to look into it.
Also, from what I heard third-hand swapping war stories in FL one night, NASA ran the shuttle program with VMS after nearly losing a vehicle due to quirky shared memory handling in Unix.
During my *brief* EE career building circuit boards at Jabil Circuit, the Genrad ICT rigs ran VMS, but, just as I left the company, Unix was creeping in with the new machines.
FedEx Home delivered today. As usual, Wal-Mart chintzed on packing materials. Nothing but air.
Of the six 4 packs of Chef Boyardee Ravioli, four packs looked like a kid sat on a concrete patio and scrubbed off most of the plastic from the bottom of the packages. No dents though and the packages stayed together. Of the other two packs, they looked perfect but one had two dented cans.
The Keystone chicken had one dented of the three. The turkey had two dented of the three… with one having an extra dent on the top.
My first try with “ship to store” didn’t work very well. They lost half of the order in the store. But I think I’ll use it in the future and refuse the dented stuff on the spot.
We tried a can of Keystone beef the other night. Good stuff! Like pot roast without potatoes and carrots and onion. Needed a bit of salt for my taste but some days I’m salt hungry. I added a squirt* of black pepper and heated on low while the egg noodles cooked. That’s all, nothing else. I’ve been told to buy more. 🙂
*The shaker screen holes in Hill Country Fair black pepper are so huge they are useless. I tossed it and drilled a 1/8″ hole in the lid. Plastic bottle > squeeze > squirt.
Rats. The dryer is singing to me. I hate folding laundry.
“I worked on MILSTAR as an intern in the late 80s. The development environment was VMS.”
At that same time, your humble northern correspondent was working at DEC in Marlborough, MA, as a sys admin for 70 clustered VAX/VMS systems in seven buildings just off Route 495. We ran our asses off, and mid-summer t-storms were always a blast.
“Rats. The dryer is singing to me. I hate folding laundry.”
I go into a sort of zen mode and meditate on all the chit I have to do that day, and if I’m at the laundromat using their heavy-duty dryer which bakes the clothes in about 20 minutes on Medium, I get to watch some of the local denizens, usually whales, male and female. I feel like an anorexic stick next to these people, and I’m 235.
Neighbor kid came over and mowed the lawn; high skool sophomore at nearly six feet and 260 pounds. Works his ass off every weekend and loves it. Gave him a ride to his grandpa’s, a very shaky ‘hood in the sticks about three miles northwest of here. Dozens of vehicles of all types and conditions strewn around the landscape, couple of deserted houses falling apart. Dropped the kid and a cute American Pit Bull Terrier, color tan, trotted over to investigate and sniff my car, which smells of our dumbass mutt, of course.
I know that one of our ex-selectmen and animal control officer was up there investigating one of those deserted buildings this past year, too.
No further evidence needed that we live in the northern end/portion of Appalachia.
take another wild guess and figure that DOD and Homeland Insecurity are behind the curve
I recently dealt with both on a very complex, state actor, incident. The teams we worked with were top notch and the people they worked with back in the labs were better than anything I’ve seen. We have superb talent at .gov but they are seriously hindered by regulations and laws that control what they can do and what data they can share, even between agencies. And it quickly became clear that the government people are playing the long game, not looking to block a particular threat.
Ah yes, the long game. At what cost to the rest of us?
Sooner or later somebody is gonna get in under or over or through whatever fence. Yeah, I get it that we’re doing the same in other places around the world.
Wife just called and is stuck late in friggin’ Newark; won’t get back to Vermont until 0100-0130, and then take a cab to her mom’s and crash there overnight. Planes leaving here almost always on time; planes coming back almost always late. At least 20 minutes and sometimes two hours. With a nice rocky ride over the lake and down onto the airport’s runway.
Pax vobiscum, fratres, et semper paratus; tempus fugit.
RE: LibreOffice
I would recommend Softmaker Office from the German firm Softmaker.net. It is an excellent Office clone at a reasonable price with both Windows and Linux versions. HIGHLY recommended.
The fishing is great here in Montana. We’ve been catching lots of rainbows, browns, and white fish. My son caught the big fish so far, a 5 lb brown trout. The Missouri River is running high with lots of snowmelt and they opened another spillway on the dam today as we were launching. The trout do not like rising water so fishing declined over the day. It was wild hearing the air raid siren several times over the day as they opened more spillways.
The temp dropped back into the low 50s, F, today with winds gusting up to 20 mph coming off 33 F water. It snowed in the mountains around Helena today as they turned whiter.
@Miles: I’m late to the party, but I have used LibreOffice (Writer, iirc) to open a PDF, paste a signature into it, and save it again as a PDF.
I’ve had some odd problems with LibreOffice, but mostly trying to use its API. On Windows, which my wife uses, we have to install the 32-bit version of LibreOffice together with the 32-bit version of Java, to get things to work. Dunno why, and I can’t really be bothered to figure it out, but I assume some library somewhere hasn’t yet been migrated to 64-bit.
Of course, RBT is trying to use it for books, which is a whole different scale. My longest documents any more are about 20 pages. Plus a lot of presentations in Impress (where they *finally* seem to have squashed the bug that used to randomly eat images). In terms of usage, my only complaints are the continuing compatibility problems with MS Office documents. But that’s mostly on MS, due to their idiotic OOXML “standard”.
LaTeX – I used this back in grad-school days. It gives you *very* detailed control over your documents, and for things like mathematical formulae it is just indispensible. However, the price of all that control is that you have to do a lot of manual work, and forget WYSIWYG. Unless you’re really working with lots of mathematical stuff, it just isn’t worth the hassle. I haven’t used it since leaving grad school…
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@H. Combs: You say the government is playing the long game. Are you really sure they’re actually playing at all? If there ever was something that should be their core responsibility, it is surely defending against cyber attacks. They, and their colleagues in other countries, should be all over this. If the NSA can’t trace an attack like this, WTF are they good for?
The people behind the attack (this one, and earlier big attacks) should have already been dealt with. Let the black-hat community know that rising above a certain level of nuisance causes you to “disappear”.
I think I managed to “sign” my name in the two places that needed it. Complete PITA. Hope my accountant (who is also my second cousin) is okay with it.
The current ransomware attack is such a big deal that Wikipedia is reporting Microsoft has released a security update for Windows XP three years after support ended.