Hopefully just a placeholder. but if I take too long getting ready in the morning, it’ll have to do….
n
Poking it out one letter at a time on the virtual keyboard on the tablet….
The admin page doesn’t display properly on opera for android so I can not actually schedule the post. Weird.
Cold and clear and windy in the city. Gonna start my day.
n
39º and raining here. Not the best weather in the world, but it’s not freezing. And I’m looking at a picture from the New Year’s Day race, with lots of snow & runners with mittens. Makes me appreciate this weather, knowing it leads to a pleasant summer.
Did some yard cleanup yesterday. Took down the snow fencing and cut up one of the apple trees that came down. The little apple tree that got clipped lost a couple of limbs and the top, but is showing signs that it will bud again, so not a total loss. It gives good apples, and I want to keep it.
#1 daughter took her IQ test yesterday. Given her propensities and abilities, I have a range I’m expecting to see, but will accept whatever they tell us. I know that IQ is an indicator. Drive, perseverance, and environment are also factors in success. She’ll succeed.
Warmish (59f) and humid in the Bluff City this morning.
Below is an excellent modern example of what a Grid Down situation looks like. Knowing what the real issues are will help us better prepare.
https://news.yahoo.com/venezuela-returns-middle-ages-during-power-outages-143506671.html
I note that several left leaning sites are poking fun at the President for issuing an Executive Order to protect our infrastructure from CME / EMP. They are saying the threat of EMP is simple minded science fiction.
https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/435917-trump-signs-executive-order-on-protecting-us-from-potential-emp-attacks
UPDATE: I note the Yahoo article never addressed the CAUSE of the disaster. One way to avoid such situation is NOT VOTE FOR SOCIALISM!
Well, soooprise!
The job moved to temporary Regus co-working space this week, located in what I believe is an old bookstore beside a food court in a private residence hall at the UT campus. The environment blows. I thought I was just getting old, but, obviously, co-working spaces aren’t great for anyone except tight-fisted MBA weenies attempting to cover cheapness with hipster schtick.
“You working from home would violate the provenance of the synergy of the creative paradigm”
(A line of cr*p I actually had a recruiter lay on me in Seattle. Translation: no breaks for you, over-40 white male.)
https://www.axios.com/wework-doubled-revenue-loss-2018-eec75ff5-6466-4f20-9436-2f9a983db21b.html
Greg: I have a friend who made a killing in shared office space arrangements in Hong Kong and Singapore. He recently retired back home to New Zealand. I met him when we both lived as ExPats in Hong Kong. His co-lo brochures were nice.
Greg: I have a friend who made a killing in shared office space arrangements in Hong Kong and Singapore. He recently retired back home to New Zealand. I met him when we both lived as ExPats in Hong Kong. His co-lo brochures were nice.
The co-working spaces I’ve seen around Austin aren’t that great, starting with the Regus (one of the big names) facility we currently occupy.
Even if the spaces were nice, that kind of arrangement isn’t conducive to *real* technical work. I got more coding work done last week sitting in a hotel room with my kids.
Greg: Even if the spaces were nice, that kind of arrangement isn’t conducive to *real* technical work. I got more coding work done last week sitting in a hotel room with my kids.
Completely understand and agree. The sharing spaces I am familiar with were designed more as sales type offices or for mobile execs. Each unit shared an admin and receptionist and meeting room for giving / getting presentations. Not the place for heads-down work. For companies that wanted to maintain a nominal presence in expensive CBD office blocks like London, HK, Singapore, co-working makes good sense.
For companies that wanted to maintain a nominal presence in expensive CBD office blocks like London, HK, Singapore, co-working makes good sense.
A lot of big companies want a nominal presence in Austin so the execs can write off attendance at the big semi-annual bacchanalia events, South-by-Southwest and Austin City Limits.
Plus Circuit of the Americas, the grand prix track and concert venue near the airport, just added an Indy Car event. No one imbibes like those fans.
The Austin drunk tank -er- “sobering center” will be busy year round soon.
The job moved to temporary Regus co-working space this week, located in what I believe is an old bookstore beside a food court in a private residence hall at the UT campus. The environment blows. I thought I was just getting old, but, obviously, co-working spaces aren’t great for anyone except tight-fisted MBA weenies attempting to cover cheapness with hipster schtick.
Their advertising says that the co-working office spaces are just so cool and trendy. What I hear from you is that they are cheap and “blows”.
I note that several left leaning sites are poking fun at the President for issuing an Executive Order to protect our infrastructure from CME / EMP. They are saying the threat of EMP is simple minded science fiction.
https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/435917-trump-signs-executive-order-on-protecting-us-from-potential-emp-attacks
UPDATE: I note the Yahoo article never addressed the CAUSE of the disaster. One way to avoid such situation is NOT VOTE FOR SOCIALISM!
Rocket man would do us in a minute if he thought that he would personally survive the event. I am fairly sure that he has the resources to performs a “limited” EMP over the USA now. We are watching him like a hawk with our geosynch look down satellites and he knows it.
Cubicles suck. One of the main reasons I haven’t left my current employer is that I have an office. With windows. I’ve worked in cubes before…not ideal, but some cubes are better than others, though not by much. I can only imagine how much worse an open workspace is.
Their advertising says that the co-working office spaces are just so cool and trendy. What I hear from you is that they are cheap and “blows”.
Watching me code through the big picture window is lunchtime entertainment for the patrons of the Subway across the food court.
If we are still here on Halloween — and it isn’t totally impossible that we will be here — I’ll put on a show.
“U.S. Projected to Add 1.5M Illegal Aliens to Population this Year”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/03/27/u-s-projected-to-add-1-5m-illegal-aliens-to-population-this-year/
Unfreaking crazy. This is an invasion.
Hat tip to:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/03/27/u-s-projected-to-add-1-5m-illegal-aliens-to-population-this-year/
“Cubicles suck.”
Man, do they ever. The only thing worse is a bullroom (desks with no walls).
Scott Adams feels your pain:
https://www.amazon.com/Cubicles-That-Make-Envy-Dilbert/dp/1449493785/?tag=ttgnet-20
ADD: There is a worse situation. When my son interviewed at Google last October, the 30 programmer team that he was going to manage was in a bullpen with no assigned computers or desks. There was just a bunch of cafeteria tables with computers thrown all over them. Talk about a nightmare, just like junior high !
Absolutely agree. The worst thing for development (or really, any deep-thought creative work) is the inability to close the doggone door.
The nice thing about my current position is that I can close the door. The bad thing? The owners give me grief when I close it and they want to drop by to chat. I don’t close it often, but when I do…
@nick
I was bored, so I searched the site for a post from you that talked about replacing your weather station batteries.
Found this one that appears to be the earliest: https://www.ttgnet.com/journal/2018/07/27/fri-july-272018-weekend-coming/
So, first mention of that task was 27 Jul 2018. Just thought I’d mention it.
As I said, I was bored…..
Hah!
Good night, 64 core CPUs will be coming out soon, “AMD EPYC Rome Benched: 64 Cores, 128 Threads Boosting to 2.2 GHz (for now)”
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-epyc-rome-processor-data-center,38939.html
What does one do with a 64 core, 128 thread cpu other than run it as a web server ?
“MAGA Bear T-Shirt (Made in the USA) (Parody)”
https://republicanlegion.com/product/smokey-trump-t-shirt-made-in-the-usa-parody/
This may be sacrilegious to the environmental wackos but it is hilarious.
Host your VM farm. Some of our SQL boxes at work have 16 vCPUs or more.
“Texas is Losing the War on Feral Hogs”
https://www.wideopenspaces.com/texas-losing-war-feral-hogs/
You know, the word “losing” implies that one can still win the war. However, we have lost this war. And it is getting uglier by the day as we are just scrambling for position at this time.
I just booked us into the Disney Coronado Springs resort for our June holiday. Was looking for an affordable Disney property that had pool and activities to keep 6 year old granddaughter happy when not at the park. We haven’t been at this resort before and I am happy to take advice. Our last trip to Orlando we stayed at a condo resort that had great water park but it was booked this year.
On a similar topic, last summer we had planned a visit to Atlanta and booked tickets at the Medieval Times location there. Then my wife had a heart attack and we had to cancel our trip. The people at Medieval Times in Atlanta called me to see why we didn’t use our tickets. They told me they couldn’t refund the cost but we could reschedule at any time. So when I planned our Orlando trip, I called medieval times to see if we could use the tickets in Orlando. Their HQ said that each location was separate so the manager in Atlanta would have to agree. I spoke with Jennifer in Atlanta who said she would look into it. After a couple of days of silence, I figured I could write off those tickets. But Sunday afternoon, Jennifer called me telling me she had arranged for our tickets to be valid in Orlando. I am very impressed with Jennifer and Medieval Times because they could have simply said, “Not our policy” and I would have been out $200. But Jennifer spent the time to make calls and negotiate and make a customer very happy. I sent her flowers to show our appreciation. Medieval Times …. highly recommended.
hcombs, be sure to ask about any big groups booked at the hotel. You might not want to be there if there are 1000 middle school kids there for a band competition…
I’ve never stayed at that resort, so if you done change, I’m def interested in your evperience.
I don’t know where affordable falls for you, but Port Orleans / Riverside has beautiful grounds and fun play areas with nice pools. Pop Century/ Sports/ Animation etc resorts always seemed a bit spartan to us.
6 yo is also the right age for character breakfasts, especially Princess ones. Make sure she has a princess dress! You usually need to book those well in advance, so dont wait.
n
Alaska Science Fair this weekend. I think my kiddo is the only one from her school participating. I tried to drum up participation however when I checked with the web guy and he queried his database he only found my child.
Too bad as I thought there was interest.
My 1st grader did a base / acid experiment. Combining the two in a bottle and checking for a reaction and gas via a balloon over the mouth of the bottle. She had less fun doing it this year than last year however she will enjoy chatting with the judges tomorrow.
Had an odd thing happen at a heavily attended meeting at work yesterday. After the thing happened four other employees separately and privately checked to see if I was ok as they were appalled by the inappropriate words. Based on the dismay of the four employees I documented what happened and delivered my statement to HR. I don’t want a stink or fuss. If it’s not documented it didn’t happen. So I documented it in case this pattern continues. Never had my gender be an issue in 25 years. Really peculiar.
Spring thaw is in full force. Crocus and snow drop are blooming. Mud is in full swing. Backyard is knee deep in snow. Front yard knee deep in mud. Awful mess.
Headed to Southern California for a funeral in early May. La Palma. Any DayNotes fellows in the area want to get a cup of coffee while I’m visiting?
Yep. Exactly. I have 25+ virtual servers, 14 on one server. Right now they share cores. I’d like to give them all dedicated cores.
DST begins here tonight. The EU has finally voted to let member states drop DST as of (iirc) 2021. I hope German an France opt out ASAP, because we would then probably follow.
I don’t know where affordable falls for you, but Port Orleans / Riverside has beautiful grounds and fun play areas with nice pools. Pop Century/ Sports/ Animation etc resorts always seemed a bit spartan to us.
I would recommend against booking the “All Star” resorts during hurricane season.
Disney has great contingency planning for storms at most of their hotels, but the All Star buildings get short shrift. I speak from experience.
As always with Disney, if you have the rental car and are on something of a budget, we suggest finding the nearest Publix to your hotel and stocking up on your way to the property. Publix will be higher than Walmart, Target, or whatever BiLo chain (Winn Dixie) survives in the region, but you know exactly where the money goes walking around the stores — management is obsessed with clean.
The Goodings in Crossroads is the last store in a once great Orlando chain, and that place is mercifully scheduled for demolition (along with the rest of Crossroads) in the near future — about 20 years past the point where they should have closed.
I would also be interested in a report on Coronado Springs. I also second the recommendation for Port Orleans/Riverside. That’s was our first on site experience when my son was 6. You can fish from the dock at the resort.
We’ve also stayed at the Polynesian, Wilderness Lodge, and Boardwalk. All were great, but overall our favorite was Boardwalk. You can walk to Epcot and Hollywood Studios. They also have a nice pool and water slide.
Character meals – absolutely do them if you can. Our favorite by far is the Tusker House breakfast at Animal Knigdom. The food is really good (big buffet) and good character time. You go have your picture taken with Safari Donald Duck on the way in, In addition to the usual table visit by the characters. Another benefit!and trick, is to book a reservation an hour before the park opens. This way, you finish your meal and can head further in. You are inside the official rope drop line, but still have to wait at another rope for the park to open. Doing this, we would head straight to the safari ride and be the first ones on. After that, straight to Everest to ride that 2 or 3 times with minimal waiting. One caveat – we haven’t been since Avatar Land has opened, so the dynamics may have changed.
Sigh, we resolved to not go back until Star Wars Land was open for a little bit, but I’m getting the bug again. It’s been a couple years. Fortunately we already have our big vacation mostly purchased for this year (southwest trip) so the funds, and time off for the wife, just aren’t there. Next year more than likely.
I agree about the AK breakfast. They also do a dinner, with a late Safari that was lots of fun. There are a ton of things like that, ways to leverage your stay. Of course they change all the time as things are added and deleted.
I always ask a friendly cast member if there is anything special or “cool” going on in the parks while we’re there. I’ve done some really interesting things that way.
Our “home” resort is Beach Club for Disney Vacation Club, but we’ve stayed all over. It’s very convenient to Epcot and Disney Studios.
n
Mr. hcombs, I’ve stayed at CS several times with the family. A nice place with the basics. The kids wanted to sleep in the parks with Mickey, so we usually stayed until the last was dead tired and just slept at CS. Barring any stuff Mr. Nick mentioned, it will be OK.
One trip to Disney World several years ago, MrsAtoz found out a friend was a bigshot there. She gave us a those front of the line passes for the whole family. Then she met a buddy at Universal who gave us the same. Thousands of dollars worth.
My 1st grader did a base / acid experiment. Combining the two in a bottle and checking for a reaction and gas via a balloon over the mouth of the bottle.
Cool ! What is she using for the reactants ? Hopefully the gas is not very flammable.
@lynn
Vinegar or lime juice were her acids
Bases were baking soda or baking powder or salt or soapy water
Baking soda reacted nicely of course.
What does one do with a 64 core, 128 thread cpu other than run it as a web server.
Java Fork-Join Pools. I completely loaded CPUs using Fork-Join while disproving one professor’s theory about running Dijkstra’s Algorithm in parallel.
The professor wasn’t happy, but I got an ‘A’ in the course.
Hardware has way outpaced software in the last 20 years. Unfortunately, for performance-critical software developement, we’ve run down an evolutionary dead end with C/C++ and the LLVM-based languages such as Rust and Go.
Hardware has way outpaced software in the last 20 years. Unfortunately, for performance-critical software developement, we’ve run down an evolutionary dead end with C/C++ and the LLVM-based languages such as Rust and Go.
My son thinks that Go has great promise for automatic multiple core sharing. I take it that you disagree.
I made a paper mache volcano in 2nd or maybe 3rd grade. Before I started 4th grade because we never had “cool” projects in Mobile. Painted to look like a mountain with sprigs of whatever for little trees. Vinegar and baking soda for “lava”. It was pretty cool. Made an A on the project.
My son thinks that Go has great promise for automatic multiple core sharing. I take it that you disagree.
The new languages with compilers targeting LLVM IR are syntactic sugar on top of C++ as long as the IR gets dumped to a static binary.
As much as I loathe Facecrack, they probably have the right idea with HHVM, abandoning the work converting PHP into C++ static binaries in favor of optimizing and compiling to assembly at runtime. Someone will have to come up with something similar for LLVM IR, and I suspect Apple has been at it for a while with mixed results.
It is my understanding that the latest Go compiler compiles directly to machine language now so it skips the intermediate C step. But, I could wrong.
It is my understanding that the latest Go compiler compiles directly to machine language now so it skips the intermediate C step. But, I could wrong.
Right. Static binaries. The Go and Rust compilers generate LLVM IR which is optimized and converted to reasonably tight assembly.