76F and humid this am, with some overcast. Prediction yesterday was for T-storms. ONE month until the start of hurricane season boys and girls!
It’s Friday again, and while I’m glad to be here to see another one, I’m beginning to feel like Time is Lucy and I’m Charlie Brown, and the weeks are the football. This time for sure!
This article puts some numbers behind our discussion of schools:
“New Test Results Reveal A “Lost Decade” For Academic Progress In Public Schools”
This is consistent with what my buddy, a school superintendent sees. His research found that kids were LESS proficient after 4 years of high school in his urban district.
This line sums up the problem… “the flat trajectory in education progress for public school youth have[sic] left education reformers baffled.”
Well, gee, since you started “reforming” education, results have been lower student performance. Hmmmm, better spend more money and invent some more cr@p ways to confuse kids and obscure the processes that worked to put HUMANS ON THE MOON.
No mention that the percentage of white middle class kids* has been declining steadily, while the percentage of ESL kids from cultures that don’t value education, as well as our own EFL kids from cultures that don’t value education has increased. Can’t blame the kids. Can’t blame the teaching. Must be the economy.
nick
*used as a proxy for “a culture that traditionally values hard work, education, and a stable home life.”
Indeed. Incompetent school administration. Parents that don’t care and see welfare as a career path. When subbing I see kids that are seniors that have less education than I had when I was in 7th grade.
There are a few bright spots, few and and far between. And everyone gets a trophy.
(See my post from yesterday).
Note from the article that NONE of the districts did better than 40% proficient! Better than half the class is not able to complete the task.
n
69º and cloudy south of the island that isn’t. Some folks say it’s raining. Some say it’s not. Depends on which way you turn your head and the minute hand on the clock.
My eldest just finished PSSAs – standardized tests. Next Parent/Teacher conference should be interesting. They spent 2+ weeks teaching to the test. NO! If they know the material, they’ll do fine on the testing. All TTTT does it skew the results to be unrealistically favorable.
It’s like telling soldiers that there’s a pee-test two weeks before the bottles arrive. Or a guy at a bar that the cops are breathalyzing everyone that walks out of the bar. It shouldn’t happen.
Gaah. I’m just in a bad mood about that kind of garbage today. School testing should be like life testing. Did it work? Have you succeeded? Working to some unreasonable or unrealistic standard is simply ridiculous.
That favor-ability being more state and federal funding to the district to pay the overly high salaries of the administrators. Such administrators having a degree in education but having never taught a class in their life. The state and federal government have made it all about the test scores and if the district does not TTTT then they will be punished. Some even terminated.
In my non-expert opinion, the majority of the students in high school are poorly educated, few life skills, whose only skill set is using snapchat. There are a few bright spots but these bright spots are about where I was when I started high school, not when I was leaving high school.
My favorite educational failure is “Head Start”. Even the feds review said it didn’t work and any kid who go a “Head Start” was just as dumb by third grade. The solution: mo’ money, mo’ money. I think the old hag running it in San Antonio years ago was making six figures. She’s probably still there making twice as much to ensure kids are just as dumb by second grade. An up/downgrade.
WRT to “skooling”:
In 46 States, High School Graduation Requirements Aren’t Enough to Qualify for Nearby Public Universities
Add:The figure with the legend is half-way down in the article
And this is despite more money being spent on schools every year. Here in WA State our school taxes doubled this year with a special levy that goes to the State to equalize school funding for every district, just to be fair. So now we are not only subsidizing our local substandard “skools”, but those throughout the State too.
I used to volunteer at the middle and high schools doing STEM stuff before it became a politically correct acronym. But no more. Too much paperwork, too much indoctrination on “sensitivities”, don’t let the kids touch you in any way. As has been mentioned on this board before, many children are looking for a father figure. But when one appears the administration feels threatened so it is bye-bye Dad. The last straw was when they started requiring that we must go and get teaching certificates if we were to have any contact with students. Mind you, this was not for everybody, just us WASP Deplorables (before the Deplorables class was created by the “dumbokrats”).
Added:
Today is No Pants Day.
https://www.checkiday.com/748235fb1bbedfd921e83ad0dce39d7f/no-pants-day
What I did to prep this week: Checked my Vodka supply.
Here are some things to do with Vodka besides imbibing.
The district in which I sub, limiting myself to just the high school, you just need to be a warm body. Subs are too hard to acquire. Of course if you do a bad job they remove you from the list. You do have to go to a three hour class that basically tells you what you can, or cannot do with the students. Unfortunately that does not cover much of what happens in the real world.
I get $60.00 for the day. If you have a degree it goes to $75.00 for the day. If you have a degree and a teaching certificate you get $90.00 a day.
Yes, many of the kids are looking for an adult figure to help them, to give them advice, to just be a friend. Of course in training they emphasis you are not to be a friend to any students. Advice I basically ignore, as most adults should. Many of these kids just need a little guidance, an adult to help them, a responsible person.
My wife has been subbing for 30 years, this is my second year. We are the top two subs for the high school. All the teachers know us and want us first for subs. After the first year the kids now know my limits and this year has been much easier.
But this is a small school system. I refuse to sub in Oak Ridge or Knox County where the subs get paid about $120.00 a day. I don’t need to deal with students in schools where drugs and gangs are rampant. I don’t need to deal with disrespectful thugs from the hoods.
I don’t do the subbing for the money, but for something to do and to give something to the school.
Head Start was always more about providing free daycare than providing free preschool education.
Back when Dr. Bob’s first chemistry lab book was published, I took sections of it to use as a guide for an after-school chemistry lab program at the local elementary school my daughter attended. I had the equipment, chemicals, and had practiced the labs I hoped to use. It looked promising, with no guff from anyone, and some good support.
Then my wife got cancer, our lives went sideways, and everything (literally) was put in storage for three years. My daughter is graduating from high school in a month. I have never unpacked my lab materials. My life changed too much.
I still want to “give-back” to the community, so I keep it all should things change again. My thought is, it is never too late. I am an optimist.
I remain amazed how many of my daughter’s friends have no culinary skills. Eating is pretty basic. This place has for many years kept me at least aware of things I can at least teach my daughter. Thankfully, I don’t worry about her too much now.
We moved to our current location to be in a good school system. I look at it as one of my responsibilities as a parent to give my son the best education I can. That includes both the schools he attends as well as my responsibilities to teach him.
Proud Dad moment yesterday relating to the conversations today. I was picking my son up from after school STEM club (they have many activities, but he focuses on the green power car and model airplanes.) As he exits the school, I see his math teacher stop him and talk to him for a minute. He gets in the car and tells me his teacher went over with him what the class was supposed to do tomorrow. He was going to be out, so he wanted my son to be able to answer any questions the sub might have.
My favorite educational failure is “Head Start”.
OK, here is something that I read a while back and accept as valid. “When both parents have college degrees, their children at 3 years old have 3 times the vocabulary than others.”
Now, how does the public school bureaucracy catch the others up from 5 years old on?
CowboySlim, grammar & high school graduate of Chicago Public School System.
Eldest child, what do you have? “I have an enormous vocabulary, Daddy!” Something we practiced from the time she was 3. She did then, and she does now. Her siblings will say the same thing.
Youngest is complaining that I’m making her memorize the addition tables in first grade. I’m angry that she doesn’t know them yet, but not angry with her. WHY doesn’t she know this yet?
Head Start fails because it is not backed up at home. Children succeed when they are expected to succeed and are drilled to succeed.
I don’t really want to get into “No Child Gets Ahead”. I feel much the same as Dr. Pournelle did when he talked about it.
And to add – Eldest knows all the roots to 225, and 2nd child is working to catch up now that he’s in on the joke. Eldest is now working on powers of 2, and can count to 2^10 on her fingers.
New first time parents are obsessed with milestones. Honestly, by mid elementary school (assuming it’s not a shitty elementary school) the kids are all caught up to each other. Whether or not you could read your first day of kindergarten you’ve already been separated into the skill level you probably would have been in either way. All that early obsessiveness was mostly a was of time that benefits parents egos more than it does kids education..
We have always talked to our kids’ as if they were adults. They knew the proper/correct name for everything, but also the various slang terms so they would not appear to be “weird” when they started “Pubic Skool”. They both went to a pre-school run by the nearby Lutheran Church, considered to be “the one”. We knew the right people in order to get them in. When the started “Pubic Skool” they were way way ahead. Even though my Son read in an unconventional manner, not understood by any “Pubic Skool” teacher until he was in the 5th Grade, he managed. He is a truly, WSU and UW diagnosed and studied out the ying-yang, high functioning Autistic with ADD and OCD.
I forgot to mention in my earlier post that another reason I quit volunteering at school was they were requiring all volunteers to speak Spanish. Our “Pubic Skools” are now 60% Spanish and the Private Schools now educate the vast majority of real citizens.
I know some folks of color, other ethnicities, and varied religious views who are of very modest means who see to it that their children’s private Christian education comes first. They truly sacrifice and work to better their children.
For the past many years the privately educated students have been wiping out the “Pubic Skool” students in all academic competitions and are making headway in fielding competitive sports teams.
So why don’t I volunteer at a Private School? Unfortunately my infirmities have benched me. Yes, it is a lame excuse and I need to work to get over it. /pep-talk-on/ I was not a quitter with Polio and I need to not be a quitter now. Constant pain and immobility can be conquered. /pep-talk-off/
My prepping this week was to get a tetanus/diphtheria/pertussis booster shot (good for ten years). The shot site hurts like a you know what this morning. Other than that, I am still alive according to my GP. PSA was 0.8 (very good !) and no diabetes (glucose of 91). My dadgum triglycerides are still too high (eating too much fat) and my cholesterol is near the high end (177 out of 200). I don’t take a cholesterol reduction drug which my GP wants me to desperately.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/tetanus/index.html
I still want to “give-back” to the community, so I keep it all should things change again. My thought is, it is never too late. I am an optimist.
My payback to the community is nine people getting paychecks twice per month. I figure that is a big boost right there. I also help out at church occasionally, I get to count the contribution once every eight weeks. I’ve been doing it for almost 30 years now, that job has gotten easier since the e-giving started. Me, I still write a check each week to church for my friends at the IRS to look at should they ever get antsy about my giving.
My general comment on schools is that schools should be about teaching the three Rs: reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic. Anything else is superfluous.
My son maintains that all public schools should be privatized. Today. He has also read the papers of Melvil Dewey about using the schools to socialize students and declares that the liberals have succeeded in that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvil_Dewey
We have “PreK4SA” now. Probably more of the same – no science to back it up, it’s all about feelings in the ads they use to convince us to vote for it.
My payback to the community is nine people getting paychecks twice per month.
+ 1,000,000,000
My son maintains that all public schools should be privatized. Today. He has also read the papers of Melvil Dewey about using the schools to socialize students and declares that the liberals have succeeded in that.
As Mr. OFD would say: “The Commies took over without firing a shot.”
My prepping this week was to get a tetanus/diphtheria/pertussis booster shot (good for ten years).
I wasn’t aware of this until recently, but most HEB pharmacies will administer a tetanus shot. My wife directed a friend there when he inquired about getting a shot from her office following an injury. “HEB is a *lot* cheaper and the shot is the same as what we will give you.”
I realized I did not report back on our trip to TX after last year’s “Great American Eclipse” getaway. Long story short, the wife dislikes the climate bigly (expected given it was August and II always want to size up locales at their worst), so for now at least, we remain in the SF Bay Area.
.mg
I wasn’t aware of this until recently, but most HEB pharmacies will administer a tetanus shot. My wife directed a friend there when he inquired about getting a shot from her office following an injury. “HEB is a *lot* cheaper and the shot is the same as what we will give you.”
I have been getting my yearly flu shots from our Walgreens. I also got my Shingles shot there last year. Both are “free” with our BCBS health insurance. My tetanus shot was free also at my GP.
I realized I did not report back on our trip to TX after last year’s “Great American Eclipse” getaway. Long story short, the wife dislikes the climate bigly (expected given it was August and II always want to size up locales at their worst), so for now at least, we remain in the SF Bay Area.
Oh man, it is just a “wet heat” (snicker !). My goal in July, August, and September is to run from air conditioned place to air conditioned place. My other goal is to have at least two air conditioners in my home and office so when one dies, everyone can retreat to the area with the working A/C.
And there are a lot less homeless in Texas if you stay away from Austin. And the city center of Houston and Dallas.
“This week in Trumponomics: Workers disappear”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/week-trumponomics-workers-disappear-173826715.html
“President Trump is proud of the 3.9% unemployment rate, the lowest since 2000. But it’s not as great as it sounds.”
“Employers added 164,000 jobs in April, which was lower than forecasts but still okay. Employers have created an average of 200,000 new jobs each month so far in 2018, which is a strong pace of job growth. But the unemployment rate, which fell from 4.1% to 3.9%, is a puzzlement. There were fewer people looking for jobs in April, which means fewer people counted as unemployed. When unemployment falls because people get jobs, that’s good. But when unemployment falls because people give up looking for jobs, it’s not so good.”
“For that reason, our weekly Trumpometer says: MEDIOCRE.”
Looks like the feddies are about to get caught playing with the numbers.
Free shots! Wow!
Free to you – someone’s paying. Either insurance premiums or taxes. Maybe even you. Prepaid.
“Citi: U.S. To Become World’s Top Oil Exporter”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Citi-US-To-Become-Worlds-Top-Oil-Exporter.html
“The U.S. exported a record 8.3 million barrels per day (bpd) last week of crude oil and petroleum products, the government also said Wednesday. Top crude oil exporter Saudi Arabia’s, for its part, exported 9.3 million bpd in January, while Russia exported 7.4 million bpd, the bank added.”
There is another 3 million barrels/day production coming on line in West Texas in the next twelve months. We in the USA are living in the land of milk and honey. And a significant minority are cursing ourselves because of it.
Hat tip to:
http://drudgereport.com/
So when numbers were dropping while Obama was president, it was a good thing. Numbers dropping with Trump are a bad thing.
I don’t think either of them are really to blame. It’s the numbers crunchers. Workforce participation tells a better story than unemployment. What percentage of the workforce is actually working?
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate
Which tells us that it’s leveled off (and might be rising, but who knows?).
What I REALLY know is that my employer is having a hard time finding laborers and machinists at the wage they’re willing to pay. (They should pay more, but I digress). it’s honest work that will feed a family. Not steak, but chicken, and steady. But getting people to apply, then stick around, is a real challenge.
That, and the recruiting calls I’ve been getting lately tell me that the employment picture isn’t too shabby.
“Spirit of Texas Bancshares, Inc. (STXB)”
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/stxb?p=stxb
My brother took his bank public today. It has gone well so far.
What I REALLY know is that my employer is having a hard time finding laborers and machinists at the wage they’re willing to pay. (They should pay more, but I digress). it’s honest work that will feed a family. Not steak, but chicken, and steady. But getting people to apply, then stick around, is a real challenge.
The landscaper that rents my warehouse is paying $15/hour to his guys. The new guys are demanding $20/hour.
I accomplished very little this week. I did a brilliant job of laying there and doing absolutely nothing while my gallbladder was removed. Some would say that the credit for that should go to the anesthesiologist, though. I certainly won’t disagree. Particularly since I slept through the whole surgery, and then woke up in the recovery room.
I am slowly but steadily recovering. I have stopped taking pain medication.
I just shucked a WD 8 TB external drive that I bought a month ago at Amazon. The USB daughter board is screwed to the drive PCB. Easy to get off. The drive is an HGST white label WD80EZAZ SATA with 256 MB cache.
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Desktop-External-Drive-WDBBGB0080HBK-NESN/dp/B01LQQHLGC/
One must remember to reformat the drive to NTFS before removing the USB daughter board because the drive is shipped ExFAT. Or else one has to reconnect the USB daughter board to reformat it since Windows 7 x64 won’t boot with an ExFAT SATA drive.
And yes, I did destroy the external case whilst removing the bare drive from it.
I’ve noted that trend amongst employers too. They’d rather be understaffed than pay more. If turnover is horrible and recruitment is bad that will brainstorm 1,000 ideas to improve it so long as none of them involve a pay increase. I get it. Giving 500 full time employees a $1 bump in pay increases your payroll expense by $1,000,000/year. So, they’d rather try and do 500 employees’ worth of work using only 400 employees and try and maintain that for years.
I realized I did not report back on our trip to TX after last year’s “Great American Eclipse” getaway. Long story short, the wife dislikes the climate bigly (expected given it was August and II always want to size up locales at their worst), so for now at least, we remain in the SF Bay Area.
The climate of most areas of the country pales with what the SF Bay Area has to offer, especially if you consider the variety of micro climates offering, within a few miles of each other, something for everyone.
To live anywhere else will require compromise. Three to four months out of the year, Texas is brutally hot. The rest of the year is livable.
And there are a lot less homeless in Texas if you stay away from Austin. And the city center of Houston and Dallas.
In Austin the homeless stick to I-35 and the area of downtown where they receive their freebies. Unfortunately, this is on the edge of the “entertainment” district, but if bacchanalia isn’t your thing, you likely won’t encounter the problem.
Like most lefty cities, Austin has a relief valve, Round Rock, where the hipsters move after the kids arrive, preferably in Brushy Creek, as close to the LDS church as they can get. If you’re contemplating a move here, you will want to look in my neighborhood.
(My house is not as close to the Mormons as the Travis refugees seem to want to live, but I still live on a safe street with a variety of income levels around.)
My current quandary is that Brian Setzer is at the Stubbs amphitheater Downtown in June. Stubbs is right across the street from the Salvation Army.
https://www.stubbsaustin.com/concert-listings/calendar/brian-setzers-rockabilly-riot-summer-tour-2018
Setzer is on my list of acts to see live.
It’s a good show. I’ve been in the room while he and orchestra were playing for a couple of corporate events.
Not something I’d disarm and head downtown at night for, but YMMV.
n
Lesssee… .preps this week… more gardening. Didn’t get the pad for the gennie poured, but do have the wood and stakes.
Spending time getting our rec association pool ready for opening, which counts as civic engagement, right? I have toyed with the idea of burying a cache there under the community veg garden… or doing ham Field Day there.
Still evidence the rats are around, even if I’m not finding any in traps or any eaten food.
Did a proposal for some work, that should bring in some $ which is always a prep.
If my friend’s gub store opens, I’ll be doing some work there too. Always good to have friends.
Slowly adding back some of the eaten food, slowly putting more storage food into nightly rotation.
Waiting for a couple of parts to get the Portacool fan running. That will def be a prep as it will let me do more work outdoors.
Bought some web gear and tactical stuff at auction. Will sell the unneeded, possibly use the rest.
I mention, completely apropos of nothing, that AR500Armor is still offering a variation on their BOGO sale–
https://www.ar500armor.com/promotions-sales.html
And I point out that body armor is one of those things that is a perennial ban candidate….. in if you need it, you REALLY need it.
And that’s it. Family and kid stuff ate my whole week.
n
http://ktla.com/2018/05/04/12-year-old-in-custody-after-stabbing-fellow-student-at-stevenson-ranch-elementary-school-lasd/
I wonder if the teacher will get fired for touching the stabber to break up fight.
Lynn wrote:
” I don’t take a cholesterol reduction drug which my GP wants me to desperately.”
Any reason? I take at least two.
Not something I’d disarm and head downtown at night for, but YMMV.
Like I said, I’ll have to think about it.
statins can cause severe and irreversible damage to muscle tissue including the heart. There is evidence they don’t actually work as prescribed, and depending on which one you take, if you aren’t eating at the right time, they have NO effect.
Blood levels of cholesterol also seem to be set at arbitrary levels… 210 and you’re good, 211 and you are supposed to take drugs.
Not me. I cramped and had other problems.
n
Love this”
“As always, our top priority is the safety of all students and adults on campus.””
yeah, except when they are stabbing each other. or when teachers are molesting the kids:
“A 46-year-old teacher at an elementary school in La Puente pleaded not guilty on Tuesday after being accused of inappropriately touching female students over several years, prosecutors said.
Hurley Elementary teacher Carlos Munguia was charged with five misdemeanor counts of child molestation involving five students, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.”
http://ktla.com/2018/05/01/elementary-school-teacher-in-la-puente-charged-with-molesting-5-students/
And shouldn’t a school’s top priority be ‘educating the kids’?
n
New glasses, progressive bifocals. Getting old sucks. Got them at Costco. Significantly cheaper than other suppliers who keep adding on fees for coatings, different material, progressive, etc. Costco, one price, all lens are coated. Frames are much cheaper. Still expensive for what you get. Frames I got were $250.00 at another supplier, Costco was $89.00. Lens at another supplier came to almost $300.00 with all the, in my opinion necessary, add-ons. Costco was $100.00 with all the necessary coatings.
Needed new glasses as the prescription and glasses were four years old, one lens had a significant scratch in the upper right. Frames needed replacing. The issue was forced when I lost the glasses on the Lightning Rod roller coaster at Dollywood. While I was in line I thought to myself I really need to secure those glasses, then promptly forget until the ride was over and my pocket was now empty.
I just shucked a WD 8 TB external drive that I bought a month ago at Amazon. The USB daughter board is screwed to the drive PCB. Easy to get off. The drive is an HGST white label WD80EZAZ SATA with 256 MB cache.
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Desktop-External-Drive-WDBBGB0080HBK-NESN/dp/B01LQQHLGC/
Well, crap. I jumped the gun on assuming that the 8 TB bare drive would go right into my office pc. I was wrong.
My office pc has a Gigabyte Z68XP-UD5 motherboard. Works great for hard drives for up to 4 TB. It ignores the 8 TB drive, won’t even show it in the BIOS. I tried swapping all the cables, etc. I updated the BIOS from the F1 version (2011) to the F6 version (2012). No joy.
I googled the motherboard and did not find anything about 8 TB problems. I googled the chipset and found a note that Dell Z68XP PCs cannot address anything higher than 4 TB. Uh oh.
I also looked at the two PCs in the office that I put the WD 8 TB into. Both have newer Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H motherboards that love talking to the WD 8 TB drives.
So, I need a new motherboard and a I7 cpu. Sigh. I put the old 4 TB backup drive back in and reformatted it. That will get me another 2 or 3 months before reformatting again (the temporary files fill the backup drives rapidly). I do have a MSI Z270 SLI Plus motherboard sitting on my desk with 16 GB of 3000 Mhz DDR4 ram. But it has an I5-7600K cpu. Not today.
I need a nap now.
Why do I always assume that these jobs will only take 15 minutes ?
” I don’t take a cholesterol reduction drug which my GP wants me to desperately.”
Any reason? I take at least two.
Simvastatin made my bones hurt.
Wisconsin high school student sues principal over ban on gun T-shirts
“Matthew says he’s been wearing the same shirts since the fall. But his parents say it was only after the Parkland school shooting in February, that the school’s principal sent home a letter telling Matt to “change the shirt” because “it was inappropriate.” When Matt refused, he was moved to a cubicle for two days.”
But the real news is that CBS is finally getting around to reporting it!
So, I need a new motherboard and a I7 cpu. Sigh. I put the old 4 TB backup drive back in and reformatted it. That will get me another 2 or 3 months before reformatting again (the temporary files fill the backup drives rapidly). I do have a MSI Z270 SLI Plus motherboard sitting on my desk with 16 GB of 3000 Mhz DDR4 ram. But it has an I5-7600K cpu. Not today.
Gotta love Intel forced obsolescence.
A SATA plug-in PCI-E card won’t resolve the issue with the older board?
If you build a new system, we’re now two generations into Intel CPUs which won’t run Windows 7 without a hacker patch. Anything Kaby Lake or newer.
A SATA plug-in PCI-E card won’t resolve the issue with the older board?
I don’t have a clue. But I was wondering that also. I was kinda looking at this:
https://www.amazon.com/IO-Crest-Controller-Non-Raid-SI-PEX40064/dp/B00AZ9T3OU/
But I think that the real problem is that I do not have a UEFI BIOS in my motherboard.
If you build a new system, we’re now two generations into Intel CPUs which won’t run Windows 7 without a hacker patch. Anything Kaby Lake or newer.
Sigh, I forgot about that.
But I think that the real problem is that I do not have a UEFI BIOS in my motherboard.
Yeah. Booting might be an issue from a disk larger than 2 TB, but you said you already boot from 4 TB.
Fortunately, Newegg still has new Skylake CPUs. Fry’s probably does too. The downside is no Thunderbolt 3 support but that isn’t nearly as important in a desktop.
14 nm is two generations old tech already. Geesh.
Update: My bad. Skylake supports Thunderbolt 3 in some chipsets.
But I think that the real problem is that I do not have a UEFI BIOS in my motherboard.
Yeah. Booting might be an issue from a disk larger than 2 TB, but you said you already boot from 4 TB.
Nope, I boot from a 480 GB Intel SSD. The WD 8 TB bare drive is just for backing up our 4+ TB LAN which is growing at 100 GB a month.
Like most lefty cities, Austin has a relief valve, Round Rock, where the hipsters move after the kids arrive, preferably in Brushy Creek, as close to the LDS church as they can get. If you’re contemplating a move here, you will want to look in my neighborhood.
Are hipsters primarily LDS ? I’ve never thought of of hipsters as religious in any quantity. Except for maybe Gaia worshipers.
The old 4 TB drive is my old LAN backup drive for my pc. I backup the LAN to dedicated internal hard drives on three PCs at the office every day. And seven external hard drives that I update one per Friday night so I have seven weeks of backups at any given moment. Paranoid, yes I am.
Turns out I was a bit premature with my earlier rat comments.
Found one in the electronic trap this afternoon. Found what they’re still eating. In this case, half a case of fruit cups. By eating from the back of the shelf toward the front, they disguise their perfidy. Well, one paid the price… free meals ain’t free boyo!
Time to go thru the shelves again. And move traps around. All my bait was unmolested.
n
Are hipsters primarily LDS ? I’ve never thought of of hipsters as religious in any quantity. Except for maybe Gaia worshipers.
No, probably not more so than any other sample group.
Hipsters move to Round Rock for safety and good schools. The schools serving the area around the LDS church are some of the best in the state, and I sometimes wonder if the doors are even locked on the houses nearby.
Hipster Mormons would be interesting, knocking on the door with the white shirt, Joseph Smith tattooed on the arm, and the Amish-type beard so many of the Millennials around here seem to like.
As an aside, during SXSW, the big billboard southbound on 35 at the edge of the UT campus featured a tattoo removal service, with pictures of “Before” and “After” on a hipster back-of-the-neck tattoo. “After” wasn’t that impressive.
I’ve read a few articles in the past couple of years about cholesterol – there seems to be growing skepticism that the levels defined are important, or that attempting to reduce cholesterol makes any real difference in health. The simple answers from 30 years ago turn out to be too simple – bodies are complex things…
@Ray: I’ve been wearing progressive bifocals since I was in my late 40s. They’re great! However, having been to two different providers, I note that the preciseness of the provider is essential. At one, they had machines that determined precisely where my eyes would be positioned relative to the glasses. At the other, the guy had the same machines, and used them, and then corrected the measurements manually (with a kid’s plastic ruler held up to my face, of all things).
Turns out the second guy, with his plastic ruler, gave me better glasses. The others are just slightly off – I get best focus in each eye (at a given distance) from a slightly different head position. Not bad enough to be a problem, but just enough off to be irritating.
Tattoo removal does poorly with certain colors, and with deep inks. ESPECIALLY poorly with homemade or prison tattoos.
Which is probably a bummer for the guy with LOSER tattooed across his forehead.
n
@Brad. True that. The last place I got glasses they had one of those machines where you looked in different places, it supposedly did multiple measurements, etc. Had to have the glasses remade twice because something was really off. Not my loss as I did not pay for the remaking of the lenses. Paid a good bit of money for the lenses though.
Costco just used one of those little boxes you look into with the green dot. Then the technician (counter jockey) had me put on the frames I chose, looked at while I looked straight ahead, made a couple marks on the filler lenses, then removed the glasses from my face and made a measurement with a plastic ruler.
When the glasses were ready I picked up the glasses and tried them on. Yeh, there was an adjustment as the prescription was different and I am certain the progression was not in the exact same location. But the lenses were markedly better than the expensive place with the fancy machine was able to accomplish on their first and second attempt.
I have had progressive for about 4 years now having come from just regular bifocals. It took some adjustment but I have grown to like them. Prior to that most of my work on the computer was done with single vision lenses that were optimized for a 3-4 foot viewing distance. Could not see closeup or far away very well but were ideal for the computer. Those glasses are still good enough almost 10 years later.
I disagree. He is still a loser and people need to know.
Oh, a benefit for society, like big teeth on a predator, but still bummer for him.
n
The whole family has been using Costco for vision exams, glasses, and frames since 1987. Our favorite technician has been there since the beginning so we are treated like family.
Technology is great but all the AI stuff has no human factor intelligence and no matter what the nerds may want you to believe the human factor counts for a lot.
Nick, I despise cats but one might be useful…
As an aside, during SXSW, the big billboard southbound on 35 at the edge of the UT campus featured a tattoo removal service, with pictures of “Before” and “After” on a hipster back-of-the-neck tattoo. “After” wasn’t that impressive.
When you have a tattoo saying “I love Amy” and your girlfriend’s name is Michelle, one needs to make changes.
When one has a back-of-the-neck tattoo saying “I am a pig”, one would be well-advised to remove it.
Not a joke. My wife told me she saw an oh-so-pretty, oh-so-chic young woman with an oh-so-fashionable Chinese characters tattoo on her neck. A tattoo which she no doubt thought said “Princess” or some such but which in fact said “I am a pig”.
There are whole websites devoted to bad kanji and hanji tattoos….
n
There is a Princess in World of Warcraft. She is a pig…