69F and 97%RH. Yesterday stayed dry and even got sunny depending on where you were in town. It wasn’t stinking hot, so I guess it’s still spring.
I look around and people in power are riding roughshod over the laws of the land. This sort of thing has been more widespread and less widespread throughout history, but it doesn’t bode well for the future. This nation, the United States of America, was supposed to be different from what came before. It was to be a land ruled by LAW and not by MEN (specifically a King.) The Constitution establishes the basis for all the laws of the land, and mainly LIMITS what the federal government can do, and reserving all else for the people themselves and the States.
Our form of government is specifically meant to limit capriciousness, arbitrariness, and the power of any INDIVIDUAL in government. Things like “I’ve got a phone and a pen” are the opposite of that. Trump’s personal call for a bump stock ban, and the resulting changes to regulation that AT THEIR HEART twist language and re-write the meaning of words (literally) should scare everyone. This is the action of a King. “I want this thing, and you will do it, if I have to declare that black is now white and white is black.” This is what the ATF did with the regulation change. They redefined the meaning of words. Bureaucratically.
The most basic ideas of the American experiment are under attack. Fairness. Impartiality. Rule of law. The value of individualism. Merit. These are cultural things that made the experiment possible, and allowed it to continue, but have been under concerted attack for decades.
The attackers know that if you break the culture, you will break the experiment.
And they have largely succeeded.
Way past time to fight back, but our only other choice is surrender.
n
Assassination, coup d’état, all the old tricks are coming back….
n
Our form of government is specifically meant to limit capriciousness, arbitrariness, and the power of any INDIVIDUAL in government. Things like “I’ve got a phone and a pen” are the opposite of that.
Presidents get impatient with Congress and issue executive orders. It is up to Congress to smack ’em down, but the testicular fortitude isn’t there.
Far worse than the bump stock ban is CAFE enabling the Tesla ponzi to continue extorting the other car companies. That’s not even a signed executive order.
Rule of Law and the constitution are under attack.
Sometimes the bureaucrats go too far and lose their comfy positions.
http://mustreadalaska.com/black-rifles-matter-house-members-call-for-resignation-of-human-rights-commissioners/
Busy week but thought folks would find this recent AK drama interesting.
It’s not a law, passed by Congress, signed by the president. This abdication of responsibility goes back quite a way.
When a law includes language that indicates “rules written by the entity, to have the force of law”, it’s an abdication of power and should be an impeachable offense. Federal regulations are NOT law and should NOT be enforceable. Yet they are.
@jenny, why does AK even have a “human rights commission”? Those sorts of groups are usually (in true lefty fashion) the opposite of their stated goals, and usually a power grab in the name of [some “underserved” group] but really just for the progs in control.
Doesn’t fit the ‘rugged individualist’ stereotype I have for AK residents….
n
It’s not a law, passed by Congress, signed by the president. This abdication of responsibility goes back quite a way.
Congress created CAFE in the 70s, but they’ve abdicated responsibility for setting the numbers.
Just had four 500 errors. One on reload, and three on attempts to log on so I could enter this comment.
Picture of a ‘black hole’.
http://jaltcoh.blogspot.com/2019/04/black-hole-seen.html
Wow we’re living in a glazed donut.
I’ve been getting occasional 500 errors today too.
n
anyone have any experience with
https://openweathermap.org
They have some interesting display options, although I can’t find a traditional weather map with fronts, etc…
n
anyone have any experience with
https://openweathermap.org
They have some interesting display options, although I can’t find a traditional weather map with fronts, etc…
No experience with that one, but I ported a big chunk of this application to the iPad for a class project … geesh … seven years ago. The source is a pretty good primer on accessing the NWS graphic feeds.
http://pileus.org/aweather/about
Sadly, the original developer seems to have lost interest, and I have never been able to get back to my iPad/iPhone port.
Well, sooprise!
The whole autonomous vehicle meme has been cover for the real scheme — automated vehicles.
“Well, we can’t give you that, but we’ll give you something *almost* as good.”
The only obstacle to automated vehicles was turning over enough of the fleet that most people had a vehicle amenable to the automation via software.
If your car has lane assist and collision avoidance, it can be automated and centrally controlled.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/10/ford-ceo-says-the-company-overestimated-self-driving-cars/
Regarding 500 errors – they are still randomly occurring.
I’ve just installed a caching plugin to see if caching things will help out – on the assumption that requests for the non-current page are cluttering up things. So if those pages are cached, then perhaps there will be less load on the server.
Not sure it will help, but worth a try. I have already increased memory allotted to the WP instances – one of the suggestions that many ‘fix the 500’ pages suggest.
Regarding blocking users by IP (or country) – not planning on doing that ever. Blocking by IP address range (or country-IP addresses) is usually not effective defense against load. (Except perhaps in extreme cases of denial of service attacks, which I believe is not the problem here.)
Still analyzing access logs (in my spare time – need to finish up the edit of Book Two of “Light Blink”; plus working on some ideas for a ‘prequel’ to the story).
But, there’s a nice view out the window today: partly to mostly cloudy skies, some minor showers. Along with an American Red Robin (male, I think) that is hanging out on the back porch, looking into the window.
@Jenny,
WRT to meeting for coffee, I do not have your web address from which to devolve your email address.
OTOH, I have your cellphone as 907- 867-5309.
CowboySlim @ CowboySlim@att.net
I don’t suppose you know that that number resolves to a real person, right?
Of course, everyone on this board gets the reference…
xkcd: “M87 Black Hole Size Comparison”
https://www.xkcd.com/2135/
Wow, I had no idea that the M87 black hole was that large.
Explanation:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2135:_M87_Black_Hole_Size_Comparison
I don’t suppose you know that that number resolves to a real person, right?
Of course, everyone on this board gets the reference…
Dude !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WTdTwcmxyo
True that. Probably really enjoys having the number.
How many of you know Echo Valley 2-6809?
Wow, I had no idea that the M87 black hole was that large.
Space is big …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv1spjsvu-A
“I don’t suppose you know that that number resolves to a real person, right?”
Of course, everyone on this board gets the reference…
We needed a unique IP address number yesterday, and no one appreciated, “69, dudes!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYWT4uYOPvs
That’s because Google Analytics code is being done on the server side, not at the client level (with JavaScript).
Ah. So directing (for example) google-analytics.com and ssl.google-analytics.com to 127.0.0.1 has no effect on being tracked. Well, I’m not sending info from my PC. Hopefully.
It’s not all about being tracked, it much about having to download the scripts over and over and then the script calls home.
I woke up last night all twisted up. Today my back, below shoulder blades, is saying “I dare you, you’ll never walk again!”. And it’s 80F and I’m cold. Oh. 30% humidity will do that.
And thank you for the Partridge Family ear bug.
@paul
The server-side GA code I use tracks the following items:
– a unique identifier for your visit (normally in a cookie, but if not, a random number). That value is used to track what pages you go to after the current one.
– Your IP address (anonymized, so only get xxx.xxx.xxx.000 ). That is used to gather your general geographic location (geocode). Since the last quartet (?) is zero’d out, we can’t track your specific geo location.
– the page name you requested.
The GA stuff is sent via a POST from the server to GA-land.
That’s all we track. The GDPR is just a cookie that shows whether you have accepted the ‘cookie banner’. If you haven’t, you get to see the banner again. I’m aware that some EU countries don’t think that is sufficient GDPR ‘acceptance’, but not a big deal to me.
There is also a cookie to keep your user name/etc that you enter for the comment box.
Interesting stuff.
It’s kind of weird to vist Home Depot or Lowes or WalMart and they know I’m in Burnet…. most of the time. Sometimes I’m in Lampasas. On my phone I’m in Georgia.
“Byron York: Barr is right, spying on Trump campaign did occur”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-barr-is-right-spying-on-trump-campaign-did-occur
This is what a failed coup looks like. Next will be the trials of Comey, Brennan, Clapper, and the rest of the the coconspirators. If we truly lived in a banana republic, then would be the firing squads. Instead, they will just go to a federal minimum security prison to be with Paul Manafort and Flynn.
Make no mistake, this was a coup attempt. And a clumsy one at that.
“Comey on Barr’s ‘spying’ claim: ‘I don’t know what the heck he’s talking about'”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/comey-questions-barr-s-spying-claim-i-don-t-know-n993561
Here is a man looking at prison and he knows it. Comey signed the FISA application to the FISA court. That FISA application was false and he knew it.
My mower tire arrived today. A day early.
The seller wins the “cheap bastard award” for packaging. Slap the UPS label on the tread, a round of tape over my name and send it.
I don’t have a box to dispose of, that’s a plus. Looks like a good tire, smells fresh. A trip to the tire shop for mounting happens tomorrow.
Make no mistake, this was a coup attempt. And a clumsy one at that.
They need to hang for treason. To discourage the others.
Here is a man looking at prison and he knows it. Comey signed the FISA application to the FISA court. That FISA application was false and he knew it.
Skate. At least Comey.
As much as I hate the word, Trump knows the ‘optics’ would be bad for the country to put a former FBI Director on trial.
Things went wonky there. Kept logging on but then came back to page and appeared to be logged out.
Kept showing GN’s last post with edit button.
Finally cleared. Both Chrome and FireFox.
Here is a man looking at prison and he knows it. Comey signed the FISA application to the FISA court. That FISA application was false and he knew it.
Skate. At least Comey.
As much as I hate the word, Trump knows the ‘optics’ would be bad for the country to put a former FBI Director on trial.
The optics will be bad if Comey skates. It will be perceived that it is ok to put spies and clandestine operators into federal campaigns.
@Lynn — The downside of planning a trip to FL to watch a launch is that the weather can be random, especially this time of year, and delays are frequent.
If you have another reason to be in the area, Kennedy is a straight shot down the (heavily tolled) Beeline Expressway from Orlando. You can take SR 50 out for free, but that road meanders all over the place, and the state is working on making part of that a toll road too.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/space/os-bz-spacex-falcon-heavy-launch-thursday-20190411-story.html
What I do know is that number is not currently, and never will be, assigned.
@Lynn — The downside of planning a trip to FL to watch a launch is that the weather can be random, especially this time of year, and delays are frequent.
Yup, I know that the hard way. The wife and I tried to attend the last or next to last space shuttle launch. We hung around for three or four days while it got delayed a day each day. The final straw was the liquid hydrogen loading arm broke and that delayed the launch for another two weeks or so.
“call 1-900- mix-alot and kick them nasty thoughts…”
or if you ever lived in the midwest, 588-2-300, empire….
n
Hey Rick, I got the 500 error when I tried to log in, which makes me think it’s a wordpress issue and not something internal to the site…
n
@Nick
I’ve been watching the site all day, refreshing this page often, and there have been much fewer 500’s happening, at least to me.
The 500 error is not really caused by WP, it is more of a resources thing, I think. My current theory is that although the page view count is mostly the same as before, there might be some causality from the ‘frequency’ of page requests that the shared server is not handling.
The memory available to WP is sufficient (it’s at 256M, which is a goodly number), and the WP code (including plugins and themes) is stable, so there aren’t any WP-caused errors. There aren’t any significant errors in the site log (other than the ‘warnings’ that are not the problem).
Since it is shared server, it may be that other sites that are sharing this particular server are causing problems. The caching that I have enabled seems to have helped somewhat, but it looks like another call to the DreamHost support tomorrow will be the next step. That will be done tomorrow.
As stated before, 500 errors are a big pain to troubleshoot. Especially since there is a shared server being used for this place. And it would cost too much to get a dedicated server – the site load doesn’t justify that cost.
Maybe I can get DreamHost to move this place to a different server. Except that is a big pain that can cause other problems – there are several sites here that are on that server. Not a big amount of work for me, until there is something that doesn’t get transferred to a new server, causing more troubleshooting.
In the meantime, still monitoring. And will be calling (chatting) with DreamHost tomorrow.
@Nick
RE “human rights commission”
I think it is a combination of the sissification of Alaska and our high native population. Alaska has gotten too comfortable. We haven’t had a run of truly rotten winters for a decade or two. More ‘soft’ people are staying, used to be winter drove them out.
There are still many ‘rugged individualist’ types up here, however we are rapidly getting overrun by the non-ruggedized humans.
@CowboySlim
Yeah, I did a late night upgrade of my site (a terrible idea, I know better) and site is down at the moment. I usually link it to my name when I comment. Spewed coffee at that old song. Thanks for putting that earwig in my head. Thanks for the contact address. Just shot you an email.
@paul
Mailing tires with a label, tape, and hope is standard practice up here. Only way to get a lot of stuff to the villages is via postal service. The postal service up here is very tolerant of innovative packaging. I’ve seen ice chests with a couple wraps of duct tape, or rubber maids with a hole drilled in each handle for a padlock or rope, sent regularly from our post office. The clerks don’t bat an eye.
@paul
hanging Or heads on pike. For variety.
@Rick
Thanks for all your hard work.
@Nick
You too! I look forward to coming here daily. Don’t always have time to read all the comments or post, however it’s a satisfying part of my routine.
Used to be true, but not anymore.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/feb/04/tommy-tutone-phone-number-ebay
In the case of our friend in Alaska, it does resolve to a lady’s phone number. She _probably_ knows the provenance of the number. It is rather memorable.
Yup, I know that the hard way. The wife and I tried to attend the last or next to last space shuttle launch. We hung around for three or four days while it got delayed a day each day. The final straw was the liquid hydrogen loading arm broke and that delayed the launch for another two weeks or so.
The beaches are better where I grew up in Pinellas County if you are going to hang out for a week or so within reasonable driving distance, waiting for a launch. Once the rainy season in Central Florida starts in the summer (June-ish), the weather is somewhat predictable, but you have to be concerned about hurricanes, especially later in the season.