Sunny, clear, hot and humid. Like yesterday. Despite predictions to the contrary. At least I hope so. Yesterday was a nice break from all the rain.
I need it to be dry enough to cut the lawn. I thought it was the week the service comes, because they weren’t here last week, but I guess not. Which means I need to do it. I like how it looks afterwards, and it’s not that hard, but it is one more thing in the day.
And I didn’t get much done yesterday. I felt weird all day. Kind of light headed, maybe just a notch below ‘dizzy’. Just didn’t think driving, climbing, or running power tools was a great idea.
So I spent some time with the puppy. We had several successful housebreaking lessons. Progress is being made, when the humans are on the ball.
I also sorted through some Goodwill stuff. Found a piece of gold jewelry in the bag of costume jewelry. Not a big piece, it’s a Kmart 25 years service pin. It’s probably worth more as a nostalgia piece than melt. It shows that people do miss actual gold and silver in the thrift stores.
I did a bit of laundry and dish washing too. Lots of domestic bliss, nothing with sharp edges, or potential for falling.
I am disappointed in myself for losing most of the day. Well, except for the time with the puppy. It’s hard to take any time when if feels like the hits just keep coming. I’m feeling far behind where I’d like to be, and don’t really know how to get there. I have a pathway, but there are a lot of forks and false starts. Still, I am FAR Far and away farther down that path than most people.
Which is good, because there is MONKEYPOX in Dallas. Not that it’s the end of the world, but plagues… war… famine… just sayin’.
So get to stacking while there is stuff to stack and places to stack it. We might need it sooner rather than later.
nick
In 1969 the Burroughs B-3500 was capable of doing integer math to 100 digits (not bits) precision when adding, subtracting and multiplying. Divide 1 by 7 and the result would be accurate to 50 digits. Floating point was available but better accuracy was accomplished by using integer math and moving the decimal point. This could all be accomplished in a single instruction.
“But if you asked one of those computers to calculate 1/7 and print the results to 100 places, only the first few numbers would be correct.”
In 1969 the Burroughs B-3500 was capable of doing integer math to 100 digits (not bits) precision when adding, subtracting and multiplying. Divide 1 by 7 and the result would be accurate to 50 digits. Floating point was available but better accuracy was accomplished by using integer math and moving the decimal point. This could all be accomplished in a single instruction.
If you are willing to accept the memory hit — and, I’m guessing a performance penalty — IEEE 754-2008 gives 34 digits of floating point precision, with Intel offering an implementation for their architectures. The Free42 HP42S emulator utilizes the library as does the Swiss Micros DM42L clone of the calculator.
When @Lynn last posted the test for the Pentium floating point divide bug, my DM42L gave an astoundingly small error number. I don’t have to worry about that calculator’s accuracy.
(I used to recommend Swiss Micros products without hesitation, but my last purchase had a really awful hardware problem which the company wanted me to fix myself. Ultimately, Paypal got involved with the refund after the calculator made a failed six week round trip by mail to Switzerland at my expense when the company’s support refused to provide proper advice on mailing to avoid customs issues.)
We didn’t see a return to masking in Round Rock/Austin suburbs when we went out last night, but our county’s hypocritical “Judge” will bow to pressure if Travis reinstates their mandate.
One thing the pandemic showed is the politicians true colors. The Williamson County Judge snuck into office as a Republican on the basis of being a minister in 2018, but he’s proven himself to be useless in pushing back against the Progs schemes as well as a raging hypocrite.
People are weird about questioning “men of the cloth” in my experience. Me? I fired the first minister who was to officiate at my wedding, Ken Boem, now the famed “horse track chaplain” at Churchill Downs who was working as a youth pastor at the church near our apartment at the time. I wasn’t the first to fire his sorry butt I learned later, including his first congregation in Ohio.
https://www1.cbn.com/700club/safest-bet
82F, sunny, and 86%RH this am. Taking the dog out for his morning constitutional…
n
@Ray Thompson
“In 1969 the Burroughs B-3500 was capable of doing integer math to 100 digits (not bits) precision when adding, subtracting and multiplying. Divide 1 by 7 and the result would be accurate to 50 digits. Floating point was available but better accuracy was accomplished by using integer math and moving the decimal point. This could all be accomplished in a single instruction. ”
A machine designed to run COBOL? Did you encounter any applications where doing integer calculation with many digits was useful?
I don’t recall knowing of this machine at the time. It was certainly not available to me, although it would be interesting (but too time intensive) to see if anyone was writing papers at the time based on computations with this machine.
There was a period roughly from 1960-1980 when a type of differential equation termed “stiff” was a subject of more than academic interest. As most differential equations of real interest do not have analytic solutions it is necessary to approximate the solution using the techniques of numerical analysis. Some of the problems of evaluating Taylor series expansions encountered in second-year calculus (slow convergence for pi is the classic) use the same techniques, if you continue the academic study for an additional year in undergrad and another year in grad.
The difficulty with stiff differential equations is that numerical solutions are unpredictably unstable and do not converge unless very small step sizes are used in the computations. During that time period a number of equations of interest (one was chemical reaction kinetics, esp involving catalysis) needed solutions, but computing was expensive and run time was roughly inversely proportional to step size.
But computing costs plunged and time was better spent elsewhere. The effective solution today is simply use tiny steps when necessary. The most interesting thing is that the property of stiffness is still not well-defined.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9799077/LAPD-orders-crowd-disperse-protests-transgender-rights-Koreatown-spa.html
–if the Proud Boys were really involved this is definite escalation of street violence. In the beginning they rarely fought back, and then withdrew, if they’re actively fighting now…
n
I also sorted through some Goodwill stuff. Found a piece of gold jewelry in the bag of costume jewelry. Not a big piece, it’s a Kmart 25 years service pin. It’s probably worth more as a nostalgia piece than melt. It shows that people do miss actual gold and silver in the thrift stores.
Anything Kmart will definitely be a nostalgia piece, but you may have to hold the pin for a while.
Friends who’ve been through The Keys recently say that the stores are still open down there. Maybe the last one open will be in Key West, morphing into a weird tourist attraction ala “The Last Blockbuster” in Bend, OR.
The one store I thought for sure would be among the last was the Kmart from my childhood in Clearwater, FL, but that one closed a few years ago, sold off by the company to BJ’s Wholesale. Sears/Kmart held incredible pieces of real estate in Florida, including that store.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/One-last-shift-After-45-years-together-a-Kmart-cashier-and-her-store-are-gone_164941234/
OTOH, a lot of retail will have to be rebuilt/relearned at some point as increasing energy costs make The Brown Truck Store And Food Court (TM) un-viable. Maybe Kmart will be back. Woolworths never really went away — the company morphed into Foot Locker.
I’ve lived to see peak Sears, Kmart, Walmart, Target, and, now, Amazon. Wall Street eventually wants justification for the stock price so being the dominant retailer in the US never lasts.
——————————————————————–
–add a chest seal to your TQ. If you carry one, you should probably carry the other too, although it seems to be a lot easier to improvise a chest seal than a tourniquet.
———————————————————————–
— ah, the rich cultural experiences available in the big city…
–I don’t think I linked to the daylight assassination of the guy on the bike…it’s off the front page.
—————————————————————————-
and on the other coast
–n
I’ve lived to see peak Sears, Kmart, Walmart, Target, and, now, Amazon.
–funny that Service Merchandise couldn’t hold it together long enough. It’s essentially what Amazon online ordering and Locker fulfillment is. If you squint and look sideways. There are a lot of things that you really need to see or touch before buying for keeps. Those things currently get delivered, returned, and sold for pennies later. There is a lot of waste in that system, and retail will squeeze out waste eventually.
n
“…now under control…” Not so much if you consider just ‘unvaccinated America.’ New cases, hospitalizations and deaths are now all trending upwards in every state.
The death rate from COVID-19 in the U.S. is rising steadily for the first time in months as the nation grapples with a renewed burst of cases in what’s become “a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.
The seven-day average of new cases has increased by nearly 70% to almost 30,000 per day; hospitalizations are up 36%. And deaths from the virus have risen steadily in recent days, reversing a months-long downward trend that began in mid-January.
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/16/1017002907/u-s-covid-deaths-are-rising-again-experts-call-it-a-pandemic-of-the-unvaccinated
IIRC, there were finance systems that did money calculations with integers, with the amounts in mills, i.e. 1/1000th of a dollar. I’ve also read of similar techniques being used in video games and early PC programs to avoid use of floating point.
–funny that Service Merchandise couldn’t hold it together long enough. It’s essentially what Amazon online ordering and Locker fulfillment is. If you squint and look sideways. There are a lot of things that you really need to see or touch before buying for keeps. Those things currently get delivered, returned, and sold for pennies later. There is a lot of waste in that system, and retail will squeeze out waste eventually.
Service Merchandise’s revenue model was based on getting people into the stores to buy jewelry, particularly diamonds, where they bypassed the New York middlemen and bought directly from overseas. Everything else was a loss leader, but, to be fair, they never sold cr*p in the other departments like Amazon does.
When I worked in one of the stores for a year in the late 80s, the return rate was fairly low. The big problem was employee theft from the poorly-controlled warehouses and absorbing the bottom feeder Wilson’s chain, itself a poorly integrated organization of the rest of the showroom concept retailers like Masters, Leeds, Standard Sales, etc which arose during the energy crisis of the 70s but staffed up with lower class employees.
Ultimately, what doomed Service Merchandise, however, was the passing of Sam Walton and elimination of the murch rumored handshake agreement between the Walmart founder and the Zimmermans, the family that built Service Merchandise. While they seemed like very different companies, both ran similar departments as loss leaders such as toys and sporting goods, and, in large areas of the south in particular, Walmart kept to rural areas while Service Merchandise built in the suburbs.
Metro Tampa for instance did not have a single Walmart until after 1990. The oldsters always griped about missing the extreme “limit one per customer” paper towel and tunafish deals at Walmart, which required an hour drive to buy at the closest chain outpost in Brooksville, but God forbid that Service Merchandise catalog didn’t show up around the time the Zimmermans were forking over the big check on the Jerry Lewis MD Telethon on Labor Day weekend.
(Work as an employee and Service Merchandise put unbelievable pressure for MD donations from full timers. It was the United Way racket long before United Way extorted tech company employees in a similar way the 90s.)
This post is the latest over at Come and Make It and it has alarm bells ringing in my head.
–cats dying from a human flu? Anyone got any info? I find “cat flu” but that’s different.
n
IIRC, there were finance systems that did money calculations with integers, with the amounts in mills, i.e. 1/1000th of a dollar. I’ve also read of similar techniques being used in video games and early PC programs to avoid use of floating point.
QuickBasic had a “currency” type IIRC.
The death rate from COVID-19 in the U.S. is rising steadily for the first time in months as the nation grapples with a renewed burst of cases in what’s become “a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.
So, lets say that the situation really has become “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” and that line isn’t just the latest propoganda from the Minstry of Truth. What’s the solution?
Now, keep in mind that we don’t violate the rights of the sick by making them stay home under threat of jail time like we do with TB *which has a proven treatment regime*. Or even Monkeypox which does respond to at least one of antivirals and possibly more. Why should the unvaccinated be less deserving of protection if they don’t want to accept the risks of an EUA shot?
It is a slippery slope tilted in favor of the big companies manufacturing the vaccines.
@ech
“IIRC, there were finance systems that did money calculations with integers, with the amounts in mills, i.e. 1/1000th of a dollar. I’ve also read of similar techniques being used in video games and early PC programs to avoid use of floating point.”
Now that you mention it, I believe I heard of such, probably as an example.
Stiff differential equations are still very much a thing, and they can be bad enough that it’s not enough to just use smaller steps. Commonly they’re solved by implicit solvers:
https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2020/02/02/stiff-differential-equations/
though other techniques are available as well.
As long as we’re imagining things that aren’t true, let’s say I could hold my breath until I floated to the ceiling.
I don’t know for sure that everything that came from the CDC, the WHO, the propaganda arms, and other government agencies over the past seventeen months was a lie, but an awful lot of it was outright lies. Not misunderstandings, not partial truth because we’re in a hurry, but falsehoods and partial truths intended to manipulate. There is no reason at all to believe anything they say on the topic of the Chinese Crud. And reduced reason to believe anything they say about any topic.
Fixed-point arithmetic is basically integer arithmetic in which a decimal point is understood and the math library or even the chip keeps track of where the decimal goes during the math operations. Prior to floating-point math coprocessors or CPU real estate, fixed-point arithmetic did most of what floating-point could do, and much much faster.
I don’t know for sure that everything that came from the CDC, the WHO, the propaganda arms, and other government agencies over the past seventeen months was a lie, but an awful lot of it was outright lies. Not misunderstandings, not partial truth because we’re in a hurry, but falsehoods and partial truths intended to manipulate. There is no reason at all to believe anything they say on the topic of the Chinese Crud. And reduced reason to believe anything they say about any topic.
My point was to ask the question about what to do if the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” really is the case right now.
I don’t believe the line for a second, but I find it interesting where we’ve decided as a society to violate individual rights in response to Covid.
Even some regulars here argued early on that those who are unwilling to take the shot need to be held down to the point that they (the regulars taking that side of the argument) would be willing to take matters of enforcement into their own hands and participate in the jabbing of the reluctant.
@Norman Yarvin
“Stiff differential equations are still very much a thing, and they can be bad enough that it’s not enough to just use smaller steps. Commonly they’re solved by implicit solvers:
https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2020/02/02/stiff-differential-equations/
though other techniques are available as well.”
Thanks for the link–good example.
Didn’t intend to imply that stiff differential equations have gone away, only that the orders of magnitude decrease in computational costs have shifted the solution focus. Tiny steps are more computationally intense, and were not practical ca. 1970.
Implicit differential equations were part of what I meant by D.E. of real interest”.
Languages like R and Python were years in the future, as was Mathematica. In 1970 you rolled your own out of virgin Fortran IV 😉
The lack of a definition still bothers me, and is on my list for possible retirement projects. But not too near the top, I’d probably get bored and go watch my rock tumbler.
The length of the result was specified in the instruction. From 1 to 100 digits was possible. Yes, there is a performance hit for the longer results. But the performance hit was much less than doing a floating point instruction. Thus integer math was almost always used. The ONLY time the COBOL compiler generated floating point instructions was when exponentiation was used in a COBOL statement.
Yes, especially in banking. Most money fields were in the 100’s of billions of dollars and the decimal portion extended to fill the rest of the field. Decimal point was implied in all the fields so all the math could be integer math. Carrying to 6 digits in the fractional part may not seem unnecessary but on a $500 million dollar loan it may make a difference. I also don’t know if regulations required that level of precision or if it was a management decision. Scaling was used to get to dollars and cents. 18 digits for a total field size seemed to be the norm although I have seen as high as 26 (rare).
Tell that to the Viagra folks.
from AoS:
The Saturday Night Joke
Donald Trump, Queen Elizabeth, and Vladimir Putin all die and go to hell.
While there, they spy a red phone and ask what the phone is for.
The devil tells them it is for calling back to Earth.
Putin asks to call Russia and talks for 5 minutes.
When he is finished the devil informs him that the cost is a million dollars, so Putin writes him a check.
Next Queen Elizabeth calls England and talks for 30 minutes.
When she is finished the devil informs her that the cost is 6 million dollars, so she writes him a check.
Finally Donald Trump gets his turn and talks for 4 hours.
When he is finished the devil informs him that the cost is $5.00.
When Putin hears this he goes ballistic and asks the devil why Trump got to call the USA so cheaply.
The devil smiles and replies, “Since Biden took over, the country has gone to hell, so it’s a local call.” (H/T Legally Sufficient)
I guess I should mention this,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9799195/Shooting-outside-Washington-Nationals-baseball-stadium.html
NOT an ‘active shooter’ event. Drive by gun fight between two cars- probably rival gangbangers, since that is statistically the most likely. Also, DC- sometimes murder capital of the US.
n
People diagnosed as positive with SARS-CoV2 should be treated exactly the same as those diagnosed with HIV: no restrictions on movement or activities. No lockdown. No mandatory treatment. Identities protected by law. Discrimination against them prohibited by law. Decriminalization of infecting others, negligently or even deliberately.
How fast do you have to be going to rip a Mercedes GL in half?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9800161/I-never-seen-like-Four-people-dead-car-SPLITS-HALF-following-accident.html
Worth noting that 2 of the 6 survived, and there wasn’t any fire.
n
–anyone think she’ll be hounded at her home? Driven from social and work opportunities? Have her lawyers threatened? Or will she quickly find another job, get a book ‘deal’, or find herself on tv giving interviews?
I guess we’ll see shortly.
n
Data from hospitals is that 99% of the COVID cases are unvaccinated people. I have no doubt about that. The experience in Israel supports that and getting all the hospitals and health departments to lie about that is impossible.
The solution is for people to go get vaccinated. Las Vegas is having a huge uptick in cases as they have a very low vaccination rate. The casinos have started to require that their workers go masked, even if they are vaccinated. The county has asked for voluntary masking indoors. (And I have a trip there for my annual poker meetup in 10 days….)
People diagnosed as positive with SARS-CoV2 should be treated exactly the same as those diagnosed with HIV: no restrictions on movement or activities. No lockdown. No mandatory treatment. Identities protected by law. Discrimination against them prohibited by law. Decriminalization of infecting others, negligently or even deliberately.
So why wouldn’t I enjoy the same rights if I popped a positive skin test for TB? Granted, contrary to what people like Tony Fauci believed 40 years ago, HIV is proven incommunicable by casual contact, but a scientifically valid treatment exists for TB.
The law says I have to stay home in the event of a positive TB skin test — which has a lot of false positives … cough — until a blood test says I’m clean or I successfully complete the specified proven treatment regime.
–anyone think she’ll be hounded at her home? Driven from social and work opportunities? Have her lawyers threatened? Or will she quickly find another job, get a book ‘deal’, or find herself on tv giving interviews?
I guess we’ll see shortly.
If this wasn’t an election year, the KKKlansman Governor would appoint her to a state position.
As things currently stand in the state, however, Clinton retread Terry McAuliffe is in trouble to the point that the leading Republican candidate for Governor is going to skip the upcoming debate without an announced followup currently scheduled.
For those unfamiliar with my choice of the name “KKKlansman”.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ralph-northams-medical-school-yearbook-page-shows-men-dressed-in-blackface-kkk-robe
@Nick
“–anyone think she’ll be hounded at her home? Driven from social and work opportunities? Have her lawyers threatened? Or will she quickly find another job, get a book ‘deal’, or find herself on tv giving interviews?”
Of course not. Asymmetry again.
If you recall last year I posted links to this miscreant:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/07/in-re-john-thompson-democrats-are-shocked.php
Inciting a riot and dropping the amplified f-bomb helped him get elected, despite a history of domestic assault and worse. Now and only now after it has become apparent that his election was fraudulent, they are throwing him under the bus. I’m hoping he clings to office and forces a full investigation, keeping it in the news for months.
Stiff differential equations are still very much a thing, and they can be bad enough that it’s not enough to just use smaller steps. Commonly they’re solved by implicit solvers:
https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2020/02/02/stiff-differential-equations/
though other techniques are available as well.
All of our differential equations use Newton-Raphson as the primary solver. If that fails then we use Lynn’s brute force solver. If that fails then we use senior junior programmer’s sliding scaling solver.
Very roughly 1 in 10 got it, and of those, fewer than 1 in 100 died.
US current numbers
34M cases – roughly 1 in 10.
608K deaths or very roughly 1 in 60 -so we’re either over counting deaths or a lot worse than the israelis at caring for sick people.
Which we look to be, because for similar case numbers, TN and IN had twice as many deaths. Or we’re overcounting.
n
What to do? Is it that big of an imposition of individual rights to have indoor (only) mandatory mask mandates? With position clearly stated by Joe of no door-to-door persuasions/jabs to try and quell the slippery slope pushback. Plus encourage folks to seek out N-95/KN-95 masks as they seem to be no longer in short supply. The need that I want really to address is the further protection of young children and first responders/hospital staff. You don’t want the jab? Fine, but when you get Covid and start to have trouble breathing, just stay home and sweat it out, because the ER won’t take you in.
Or I could look at this from the Prog perspective, who will assume that most of the anti-vaxxers are Trump supporters, and combined with stats that 99% of those recently hospitalized are not vaccinated, wouldn’t object to some thinning of the red herd.
608K deaths or very roughly 1 in 60 -so we’re either over counting deaths or a lot worse than the israelis at caring for sick people.
Americans have a lot higher BMI on average, a serious risk factor. No one talks about it, however.
The Kamel lies:
Kamala Harris makes surprise trip to Walter Reed for a ‘routine doctor’s appointment’ after exposure to infected Texas Dems
Right. Regular appointment on a Sunday. There is no way this dooosh-nozzle gave up a Sunday for an appointment. I’m betting it was a multiple COVID test. Long and short.
Dang, the sun went behind a cloud and I put my shoes on preparatory to cutting the grass, but the skies opened and we’ve gotten almost a quarter inch in 15 minutes.
Not gonna get cut today.
Wife texted, she’s on her way home. Kids have transitioned from GS sponsored ‘girls weekend’ to week long sleep away camp. Hope they get a few days without rain.
Hooray, wife just pulled up… now to sneak out the wild women and oh who am I kidding?
n
There’s only 10 points of BMI between NKorea at 21 and Samoa at 31.
US is 28.5, Israel is 26.3 and that just doesn’t seem like too much difference to me.
n
For whatever it’s worth:
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2021/07/18/for-second-week-in-a-row-more-covid-19-vaccination-deaths-than-covid-19-deaths-in-the-us-according-to-cdc-and-vaers-websites/
”
But the ProgLibTurds will push *you can’t die* from the mechano-gene-splicing pseudo experimental vaccine ’cause Fauxci says so.
About half of adults infected in an outbreak of the Delta variant of Covid-19 in Israel were fully inoculated with the Pfizer Inc. vaccine,
That’s because they have such a high proportion of their adults vaccinated. As of June 1, 80% of adults were fully vaccinated and the number was climbing. That’s one explanation.
Not worth much.
First, it takes 6-8 weeks for death data to get near final at the CDC. It takes that long for the death certificates to be forwarded by the counties to state to CDC. So there is no way to know how many died with COVID last week.
Second, I did a VAERS search on deaths reported associated with the all the COVID vaccines. It returned 4,903 deaths. I’ve mentioned here that I’ve looked at the raw VAERS data. Most is worthless. One entry had “My mother died two weeks after the vaccine. I thought you should know.” No other information. One entry was for an 80+ YO man in a nursing home. He had diabetes, heart disease, and kidney failure. He refused dialysis. A week later he got vaccine shot 1. A few days later, he died of, well, kidney failure. So, without doing a deep dive into the data, you can’t really use the raw numbers.
Third, his links don’t go to VAERS, but to “Open VAERS”, which claims to be based on VAERS. But their data doesn’t match VAERS search results. Beware.
When we lived on Space Lane I would catch sh!t for mowing barefoot. I had better traction barefoot than wearing sneakers. No stickers, either. Unlike here.
“Oh, if you slip the mower will chop off your foot!”
Like sneakers are any kind of protection?
Ok, sure, from black walnuts….
Ok. Now do “oopsies in the hospital” and general stupid stuff folks do like falling down the cellar stairs and drowning in their flooded basement or being bitten by dogs while texting on their phone and having a car wreck. Never mind all the cheer happening in Chicago and similar places. A couple of thousand is virtually zero spread across a population of 330 million.
I’m still of the mind that if covid is as horribly dangerous as the TV folks pant there would be NO homeless problem in Austin or LA or name your favorite city where folks are camping in parks and under overpasses. If it was that dangerous, the problem would be dead bodies laying about. I haven’t seen any reports of that. Haven’t heard about folks working at grocery stores dropping dead, either.
But, yes. Get the shot if it makes you feel better.
I’m going to pass. Just like I pass on the flu shot every year. 🙂
I wear long jeans and boots to mow. Hitting a tough length of briar vine that came flinging out against an ankle and drew blood made me skittish. Next time might be an old piece of wire that worked its way up out of the ground. Two rooms of this house date back to the 1890s, so there’s all kinds of detritus in the yard. Loads of broken purple glass and shards of old china. Last summer, I found several small pieces of flat iron, about 1/4″ thick, I guess the rain washed them out.
But, after dropping a concrete statue on my toe a couple years ago, I now wear steel toed boots for any yard work. I’m just too clumsy to trust myself! 😀
ech, thanks for catching that. I just read the article and took it at face value – I know better, now.
I’m still of the mind that if covid is as horribly dangerous as the TV folks pant there would be NO homeless problem in Austin or LA or name your favorite city where folks are camping in parks and under overpasses. If it was that dangerous, the problem would be dead bodies laying about. I haven’t seen any reports of that. Haven’t heard about folks working at grocery stores dropping dead, either.
In Downtown Austin, when the homeless contract Covid, they’re put up at the Crowne Plaza until they recover, complete with room service. I’m sure it is similar in other big cities with idle convention center hotels right now.
My wife rounds at Shoals Creek once a month. She’s familiar with the indigent care routine in Austin/Travis County, particularly psych.
This weekend’s fun was an attempted suicide by gunshot who had been the ward for 10 days, wound oozing pus, and nary an antibiotic administered in that entire time.
uhhh
stiffness, it was when I was at College, reminds me finite elements, laminar and not laminar flow and lipschitz, we were young….
@MrAtoz
I’m betting the VP got a prophylactic dose of the most effective medications available, which I can’t mention on the internet without tripping the Prog scanners.
I’m betting the VP got a prophylactic dose of the most effective medications available, which I can’t mention on the internet without tripping the Prog scanners.
If Covid is suspected, Kamala probably went to consult the Navy DO who took care of Trump.
Trump was back on the campaign trail within a week.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/07/man-shot-dead-point-blank-range-broad-daylight-democrat-hellhole-new-york-city-video/
The guy assassinated in NYC, linked so I can find it again.
n
@ayjblog
And why is it that no one has invented a cool new dimensionless number in decades?
Just now dropping in. Haven’t read any of today’s posts… later.
Question: a lot of you use notebook computers. My wife is complaining about the touchpad being active while typing, causing havoc with cursor relocation. I checked Settings and the Device Manager in Win 10 Home, and found no control to disable it while typing. I assumed that meant it was disabled, something older notebooks and operating systems seemed to just do. So, I did some Googling, and wow the complaints are numerous. MS and Dell are of no help, other than the suggestion to turn the sensitivity to the lowest setting, which does not disable the touchpad while typing. It seems I will have to resort to a third party piece of software, which I usually don’t like to do. Anyone have this problem, and a solution?? Thanks.
@Greg Norton
So why would Dr. Jill let Kamala anywhere near that good navy doctor?
@Jimb – re touchpad seettings – Windows key, type in Touchpad, and change the “Touchpad Sensitivity” from Medium to Low.
Fauci faceplanted during a CNN interview and showed he is dead ignorant about medical history before his own decades of exceptional service, and Jim Acosta complained:
“The most watched television show on Fox News
right now is outright hostile to the vaccine in this environmenthas ten times my ratings and I just want to hold my breath and scream.”https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/07/18/dr-fauci-undermines-his-own-credibility-even-further-n1462672
“In early May, we reported that the California Board of Education was proposing to eliminate calculus and revise its mathematics curriculum to make it more…equitable.”
Darn it! I was really looking forward to this.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/07/california-board-of-education-puts-pause-on-proposed-calculus-free-math-curriculum/
Until it was revealed that Wuhan lying noface ChiCom coronavirus vaccines were actually created by Dr. Jill under the personal supervision of Plugs McPlagiarism, there was a bit of skepticism on the Left…
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/07/why-do-some-mistrust-the-vaccines.php
So why would Dr. Jill let Kamala anywhere near that good navy doctor?
If Kamala passed, the only nominee who could possibly make it through the Senate at this point, without the tiebreaker, would be John Kerry. Figure the Elders would let Mittens vote that way, and possibly Collins, who wouldn’t have a problem with the folks back home if she supported a neighbor.
Teh-rays-aaaah Heinz Kerry is far more power hungry and ends-justifies-means than Dr. Jill Biden ever dreamed of being.
I have a couple of working laptops. Other than running slower than a 486/66DX with bottom of the line AMD crap CPUs, I HATE HATE HATE the effing touch pads.
Clear enough?
I had a Toshiba whatever with a little nubbin that was between the G H and B keys. The rude term for it is also a term for a part of female anatomy. It simply worked…. sort of like using an upside down mouse.
It was a nice laptop. Went wonky with age. Win 3.11 was flawless. Win98Se simply smoked.
@Paul
“Win 3.11 was flawless. Win98Se simply smoked.”
Let’s see, 3.11 was the first Windows release that could actually use the mouse packaged with it, and Win98 finally incorporated most of the features of Mac OS7?
Too busy inventing cool new colors.
JimB, the laptop might let you turn the touchpad off and on with a keystroke, probably the Fn key (usually lettered in blue) and one of the function keys in the top row. Look for blue lettering on the function keycap which looks something like the touchpad and two buttons below.
If the Democrats are looking for a confirmable VP, how about Mitt Romney? He’s a party wheelhorse who is fully on board with the progressive agenda.
@JimB
Tried Flexpaste?
drwilliams
I am only a humble engineer, who knows?
Thinkpad has a key to disable it, AFAIK if I understand correctly
@SteveF
“If the Democrats are looking for a confirmable VP, how about Mitt Romney? He’s a party wheelhorse who is fully on board with the progressive agenda. “
Might be worth it just to see a mashup of all the wonderfully complimentary things that the Progs said about Mitts when he ran for P.
I had a gateway 486 lappy with a trackball in a little pull out drawer! loved that thing. Hate the little t!t thing on the IBMs.
My little mini lappy I use on the road always gives me fits with the cursor jumping all over the place when I’m typoing because of the trackpad.
I just realized my typing uses speculative execution. Finglers autocomplete some words without thought. Works great when it works, costs about 4 extra backspace presses when it doesn’t .
n
“In early May, we reported that the California Board of Education was proposing to eliminate calculus and revise its mathematics curriculum to make it more…equitable.”
Darn it! I was really looking forward to this.
I thought Jaime Escalante proved that “equitable” was teaching East LA high school students AP Calculus out of Leithold’s “The Calculus”.
That isn’t an easy text, but it is arguably the best. Escalante didn’t compromise a bit and got the results.
If you want to have a look at the way Windows 11 is shaping then the following is the most comprehensive article to-date that I am aware of:
https://www.neowin.net/news/here-are-the-top-features-and-changes-that-microsoft-is-bringing-to-windows-11/
re touchpad seettings – Windows key, type in Touchpad, and change the “Touchpad Sensitivity” from Medium to Low.
Did that. I immediately saw a decrease in sensitivity, so told my wife to try it. She said no change. I watched her briefly, and she drags her hands across the touchpad while typing. I guess I don’t, but then, I only maintain her computer. I have never done much typing on it.
Sorry I posted this without more explanation. Several people have complained in the MS support forums, and that was MS’s first suggestion. Those people also claimed it didn’t work. I read elsewhere that MS accidentally removed the disable while typing feature in an update, and it has not been restored. I went so fast that I can’t find that post, but I think it was quite a while ago. It seems ridiculous. I did verify that I have the proper drivers, and other thouchpad controls are working. I will try a third party software solution.
“If the Democrats are looking for a confirmable VP, how about Mitt Romney? He’s a party wheelhorse who is fully on board with the progressive agenda. “
Might be worth it just to see a mashup of all the wonderfully complimentary things that the Progs said about Mitts when he ran for P.
It is the same problem the evangelicals had with Mittens running as the Republican nominee — he’s beholden to The Elders in Utah.
The Elders made sure Romney did the right thing with the Supreme Court vote even if it meant giving Touchdown Jesus the Payola seat. The Dems are not going to forget that easily.
Win3.11, aka Windows for Workgroups, aka WfW3.11, had networking built in. NetBEUI. As for the mouse, I don’t know. I had a 286 at work and I installed Win3.11 on it even tho I was told “it ain’t gonna work” and the mouse worked just fine. Didn’t have color. but it was good enough to play solitaire and explore the OS.
Mac OS? No clue over here. Other than the taskbar is at the top of the screen where it belongs.
Then Win95. Nice shell over WfW. IE4 was a what? A Service Pack without the name? Big improvement.
Win98 added some polish. 98Se added more.
And my fav from back then ? I had a beta of NT5. It was a blend of 98Se and what was released as XP.
Shrug.
Question: a lot of you use notebook computers. My wife is complaining about the touchpad being active while typing, causing havoc with cursor relocation. I checked Settings and the Device Manager in Win 10 Home, and found no control to disable it while typing. I assumed that meant it was disabled, something older notebooks and operating systems seemed to just do. So, I did some Googling, and wow the complaints are numerous. MS and Dell are of no help, other than the suggestion to turn the sensitivity to the lowest setting, which does not disable the touchpad while typing. It seems I will have to resort to a third party piece of software, which I usually don’t like to do. Anyone have this problem, and a solution?? Thanks.
When I first bought a “modern” laptop with touchpad, I had a terrible problem with wrist/fingers getting a little too close to the touchpad while typing and causing stray cursor movements. Eventually, I got used to the hyper-sensitive mouse pad, but avoiding going anywhere close to the surface took a bit of practice.
Oops, missed some touchpad comments above. Thanks to all… except the one about Flexpaste; I had to Google it, and then got the joke.
Wife is done for the day, and I have to do some other things. I glanced at some third party solutions, and might try one. As I said, this used to be somehow default behavior.
I never thought to look for a disable F-key. Constantly turning the pad ON and OFF would drive me nuts, but I will look. This function should be automatic.
As for touchpads, I have commented here that I once bought an original Cirque Cat (yup, not a mouse) touchpad. I used it for about four months, and it was pretty good, but it taught me that I like a mouse better than anything else. I also bought it as a potential solution for my wife, who at the time liked trackballs and hated mice. By the time we did some hardware juggling, my wife spontaneously converted to a mouse. She does things like that. Problem solved. The Cat is lonesome in a drawer.
I told my wife I could plug in a mouse, but it would be a last resort. It would kill portability. She agreed. She actually likes the touchpad, and never uses the touchscreen. I wouldn’t either.
As for the Thinkpad’s little pointing device embedded in the keyboard, I thought that was quite an idea because it could be operated without taking fingers off the home row. Then I tried one. It was hilarious how poorly I did with it. No good for me.
I think the scroll wheel is the best idea ever added to a mouse.
I used a borrowed (employer) notebook with that little pull out trackball drawer. Another good idea, but the one I tried was damaged or worn, and skipped or something. Unfair test.
Maybe a thin piece of cardboard (plastic) over the trackpad to reduce the ‘touchability’ of the trackpad . If connected by tape/something on the bottom side, it could be flipped down to enable using the trackpad . Like the cardboard backing of a pad of paper.
When I first bought a “modern” laptop with touchpad, I had a terrible problem with wrist/fingers getting a little too close to the touchpad while typing and causing stray cursor movements. Eventually, I got used to the hyper-sensitive mouse pad, but avoiding going anywhere close to the surface took a bit of practice.
Maybe that’s what I did when I used to use notebooks, but I do know that they used to turn the touchpad OFF when typing. I discovered that once when there was a delay trying to use the pad. I tend to go pretty fast around keyboards. Not bragging: I am also only a moderately good typo-ist.
That reminds me. When doing serious writing, which I don’t do much now that I am retired, I tend to first bang out the text, then go back and proofread and format. I can type almost as fast as I think… or maybe I can’t thing very fast, and want to get the thoughts down first.
Actually, when I did very structured writing, proposals and such, I almost always worked from an outline. That was good discipline.
Another thought. MS Word has evolved since I went to Linux about six years ago. Some of the changes are even improvements. One thing I notice is that it is infinitely faster that LO Writer. I used to be able to outtype that… wonderful word processor. It also would interrupt my work with constant pesky dialogs. Word is a writer’s tool, although not the best I have used. However, all features considered, it is still good. Or, at least it has me trained. Not sure which.
When I had to write reports, etc. I preferred to work in a plain text editor, building an outline. I’d bring the outline into word and fill in the points.
If you want me to be coherent, thorough, and insightful, it takes about one hour per page. I’m better now at just banging stuff out (or I think so) because of all the online writing I’ve done in the last few years. Last time I did the math is was 1.8M words… and some of them were even helpful. 🙂
n
still, for 500-800 words, with at least minimal proofing, some editing for clarity, etc, about one hour, maybe 1.5. Which should explain why some posts are much shorter than others.
@Greg Norton
“I thought Jaime Escalante proved that “equitable” was teaching East LA high school students AP Calculus out of Leithold’s “The Calculus”.”
Double yup.
Nick, you write well. I think it is very hard to come up with a good topic every day. Some topics just need a few remarks, but others can take a lot of time looking up details and verifying references. The beauty of a forum like this is that sometimes those details are unnecessary. Leaving them out stimulates discussion and enriches all of us.
Thanks JimB, I usually think of it as a conversation starter. Funny that some days no one even mentions the post subject, but we’ll still have 80-100 useful and interesting comments about other things.
n
just checked the stats, I’ve done 1300 posts in a row. Don’t think I missed a day in that time, although some were pretty short… And 9500 comments over a longer time period.
For the period since the change to wordpress there were 162k comments. Some of those pre-date me, because although I was a visitor and daily reader, I didn’t ever even look at comments for a very long time.
Holy cow, one of the craft/acrylic/modellers I watch on youtube just uploaded something he’s been working on for 4 months.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIYqz-RTAKA
Freaking amazing.
n
Ya know, I’ve looked at this article again.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9799077/LAPD-orders-crowd-disperse-protests-transgender-rights-Koreatown-spa.html
I’ve clicked over to the twitter feeds from the insane lefties. I don’t see any pictures of anyone who looks like a proud boy. I see plenty of antifa and lefty protesters mixing it up with cops.
Of the confiscated items, I’m pretty sure the rainbow shield was not of Proud Boy origin…
Other than the headline and subs, I don’t even see a mention in the article of Proud Boys. Just one woman who says ‘right wing anti pedophile’ like it’s a curse, and mumbles something about someone yelling ‘Jesus’ at her.
If anyone has already done the work, and there are actual proud boys somewhere fighting at the protest, link the articles please.
n
“Ethan of Athos (Vorkosigan Saga)” by Lois McMaster Bujold
https://www.amazon.com/Ethan-Athos-Lois-McMaster-Bujold/dp/067165604X/?tag=ttgnet-20
Book number eight (in chronological order) of a sixteen book space opera series. However, some people call this a military science fiction series. There are several other books and short stories in the Vorkosigan Universe. This series won the Hugo and Nebula awards for best series in 2017. Also, several of the individual books in the series have either won awards or been nominated for awards. I have read this book at least twice. I reread the well printed and well bound new MMPB published by Baen in 1986 that I just rebought on Amazon. I have rebought the rest of the books in the series in various formats, mostly MMPB.
Dr. Ethan Urquhart is Chief of Biology at the Severin District Reproductive Center on the planet Athos. Athos is a planet of men only, no women are allowed or even mentioned in polite society. All babies are genetically engineered to be male and grown in uterine replicators.
However, the base human egg cell lines are having problems dividing after 200 years of performance. So they ordered new human egg cell lines from Jackson’s Whole. But, the new cell lines that showed up on the annual space courier ship were dead cow parts. So, the reproductive council sends Dr. Urquhart on the courier ship to purchase new human egg cells. And Dr. Urquhart meets his first woman, Elli Quinn, subcommander of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet, at the Kline Space Station.
Vorkosigan Saga (Chronological) by Lois McMaster Bujold
https://www.goodreads.com/series/98254-vorkosigan-saga-chronological
My rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.2 out of 5 stars (254 reviews)
“Stream It Or Skip It: ‘McCartney 3, 2, 1’ on Hulu, Where Macca And Rick Rubin Join The Chat”
https://decider.com/2021/07/16/paul-mccartney-3-2-1-hulu-review/
OK, this is a totally cool. I am a BIG Paul McCartney fan. I actually saw him in concert for the first time five or seven years ago in Dallas.
Paul happens to mention in third episode that “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was inspired by John Lennon’s son, Julian, who had brought a drawing home from school of a classmate named Lucy with diamonds drawn all around her. John showed the drawing to Paul and says we can write song about this. Not a song about LSD.
BTW, Rick Rubin is only 58. The beard and wild hair make him look way older.
Pearls Before Swine: Damned if you Dew
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2021/07/18
Oh my !
Oh my indeed. Oy the puns…
n
“In early May, we reported that the California Board of Education was proposing to eliminate calculus and revise its mathematics curriculum to make it more…equitable.”
Darn it! I was really looking forward to this.
I thought Jaime Escalante proved that “equitable” was teaching East LA high school students AP Calculus out of Leithold’s “The Calculus”.
That isn’t an easy text, but it is arguably the best. Escalante didn’t compromise a bit and got the results.
I wish that I had someone like Jaime Escalante to teach me Calculus in high school. I took trigonometry at Rice University between my junior and senior year in high school and was suppose to take Calculus my senior year. Instead, we moved out to Sugar Land and their high school requirements for Calculus included a class called Elementary Analysis which I had not taken. So I took that class and a computer class where I taught the other students Fortran by writing a chess game instead of Calculus. Big loss.
I then took my first Calculus course at TAMU in the summer in six weeks. Wow ! Throw me in the deep end and see if I drown. I made a B but did not get enough comprehension for the second Calculus course in the Fall.
“…now under control…” Not so much if you consider just ‘unvaccinated America.’ New cases, hospitalizations and deaths are now all trending upwards in every state.
Why should I care about the unvaccinated? They had their chance just like I did. Make choices, take the consequences. We were founded as a free country. Those who are vaccinated are protected to a high degree.
OK, a bit unfair. I haven’t been following this, but I think those who are dying are of the higher age groups and those with comorbidities, the very people who should have been vaccinated. How about the young? Aren’t they still mostly asymptomatic? They probably have a low percentage of vaccinations, but I saw on the nooz that they also have a large percentage of immunity from asymptomatic infections.
Serious questions, no disrespect intended. My wife and I got vaccinated as soon as we could, mostly to protect my 99YO aunt, who wasn’t offered the vaccine until a couple of months later. She belongs to an HMO, and that seems counter to the founding principles of HMOs. We tried to encourage her to go outside of the HMO, but she would not. Fortunately, she didn’t catch the bug, and had a very minor reaction to the vaccination. Good outcome.
Jaime Escalante proved that “equitable” was teaching East LA high school students AP Calculus
Our AP Calculus teacher took us to see “Stand and Deliver” to encourage us before we took the exam. Good film.
Sad day after a rough night. Our old dog, 13, had been having periodic seizures, we knew time with her was short. Starting about 9:30 pm last night she had cluster seizures. Maybe 6 or 8 seizures in 12 hours. A friend, who is a vet, did an in home euthanasia after church. We are sad. We are glad we had time to say goodbye, and that her quality of life was generally good until her last hours. I’ll miss my good natured “do it all” dog. Household is subdued tonight.
Very sorry to hear that Jenny, no matter what the circumstances it is always hard.
n
Condolences, Jenny. It is always hard to lose a family member, especially one who gave love unconditionally.
These guys are a lot more safety minded and better equipped than my crew in Shanghai… and they work to a higher standard than my chinese guys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouvnf8Kg8qI
Also a reminder why you can’t afford to have this sort of work done in the western world.
n
I have the same problem: can’t type without touching the damned thing. I have it disabled in the mouse settings. I use either the Trackpoint or a real mouse.
Among the new emojis about to enter Unicode is a “pregnant man”. Just exactly who has been campaigning for such a thing? Especially seeing as only biological women can be pregnant? AFAIK, even the trans-community isn’t actually for it – it seems to be the SJWs who want to virtue signal. It’s a shame that standards committees can’t resist this kind of crap.
Anyway, what it actually looks like is a guy who overdid it at an “all you can eat” buffet.
Because of herd immunity. Without which, the virus has a gigantic pool to mutate in, potentially making previous vaccinations worthless. Plus, of course, the people who medically cannot be vaccinated.
Back when I was in school, there wasn’t any question about getting vaccinated. It was just part of being a civilized human living in a civilized country.
@Jenny: sorry to hear about that. It’s tough, letting our friends go. Always remember the good days with your pup.
I hear that. I’m taking two weeks of vacation, of which today (it’s Monday here) is the first day. Lots of projects I want to get done, but…meh…my motivation is nowhere.
Coming up on Fall semester here, which is always a massive pile of work, starting as soon as my two weeks are up, so the start of August. It’s nice having an easy Spring semester, but Fall is when I pay for the privilege. I usually start well – anyone can do overtime, right? But by mid November, I’m usually pretty burned out. We’ll see how it goes this year…
Younger son was here for the weekend, and talked a fair bit about his current job, which involves auditing smart contracts in the Ethereum blockchain. I’m glad I’ve learned something about blockchains over the past few years, so I could mostly follow what this involves. One non-technical point of interest is the sheer amount of speculative money sloshing around. Some customer comes up with a new service that lets people “invest” (read: speculate wildly), and in no time at all $millions have been put into the new project. In the auditing, they check the code for problems, and they generally find plenty of issues, including really stupid ones. Not always before the project goes live.
Anyhow, lacking motivation, and – being on vacation dammit – I’m going to start the day with a second cup of coffee and some computer games. Stellaris, here I come!
Sorry for your loss, Ms. Jenny. I don’t have any working dogs, just lazy, lovable dogs I blubber over when they pass. Whatever brought canines into human lives, thank you.
Yup. Batman level virtue signaling.