Hot and humid, good chance of rain, possibly heavy and prolonged rain. Whereas yesterday it rained for a while and then the sun came out and it was nice for the rest of the day and night. And it stayed cool.
I took the Expy for my pickups because I didn’t want stuff getting wet, but I could have taken the ranger. I’ll take the Ranger today, even in the rain. Too much stuff to pickup, including 5 sheets of plywood. Yep, buying 3/4 ply sheathing for half off of retail. I’ll use it here or at the lake. I’d have bought all 10 sheets, but my bids didn’t hold up on the others. The rest of the pickup is stuff for the house or the BOL.
Of course yesterday ended with the school shooting in west Texas. Take a minute and pray for the parents who didn’t get their kid home from school yesterday, and for the other families affected. More will be likely to come out of the investigation, and we’ll learn something from it. The cost was damn high though.
Learn the lessons for yourself and your family too. Don’t take it for granted.
Stack something.
n
Grasshopper, when you are able to snatch the correct main() despite the distraction of false main()s, then you will have achieved wisdom.
Hecho en China, shipping costs, and that country’s currency games vs. the dollar in the last 30 years made the production costs so low that the “manufacturers” and retailers in the US are better off not trying to limit the fraud by hiring full time staff to deal with the return volumes as long as the numbers remain manageable. Of course quality of the merchandise suffers.
The black sorcery of the Make incantations is not strong. Mere mortals can decipher the spells.
As expected, our spongebrained President:
Biden Turns Texas Horror Into a Partisan Screed Full of Bad Jokes
“Did someone get. Killed? Let’s not honor them. Guns! Deer in Kevlar! Look! A cloud!”
What a disgrace. No heart at all.
Link:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2022/05/24/biden-turns-texas-horror-into-a-partisan-screed-n2607761
I will disagree with you on that issue.
We got my mother-in-law an iPad, well, actually my old iPad. She wanted one and wanted to learn how to use the device. It was a continual disaster. The concept of double tapping was more like a double mash hard which of course never worked. Swiping, touching, basically anything involving touch was a really foreign concept. The process lasted a week before we gave up. If the iPad had been new it would have been returned.
She had an old flip phone for mobile use. It died. We got her a new phone, iPhone as Android would have been impossible for her to learn. She hated the phone as there were no buttons. She would have needed to change eventually as her old phone was old technology that the cell providers were deprecating the service. We had to return the iPhone and find her a flip phone that worked with new cell service.
Older people, especially those with little to no experience with computers or technology in general, have difficulty using tablets. Is it a matter of not wanting to learn something new, the inability to learn something new, or just being old? I don’t know. The experience with the MIL was an eye opener. For those people there are many surprises lurking.
63F and saturated. Kinda drippy damp out. Openweathermap says light rain starting around 11am and continuing. National forecast puts us in the “t storms possible” area. I would really like “sunny and dry” to help me with my pickups.
I’ve got 5 sheets of plywood to get, and a bunch of other stuff.
n
@ray, there are a lot of phones with buttons, next time look at ZTE and the other bargain brands. Many of them are flip phones too.
Consider that her eyesight might be poor, the icons probably make zero sense to her (no cultural referents) and her sense of touch might be very poor if she has arthritis. Fine motor control might be an issue too.
About ⅓ of the time, capacitive touch buttons don’t work for me on the first or second try. Don’t know why but it’s frustrating.
n
If I have the time, I’ll look at recreating the Yacc/Bison input file and editing it to work with something other than Plan 9’s implementation of Yacc.
The project probably started in the 90s as a one-off for a salesperson trying to sell AT&T Unix hardware to someone. As is the case with many of those, it stuck around.
I cannot use gestures or taps or swipes. I have been at a keyboard for too long. Do I pound the “button icon” the same way I pound my keyboard? Maybe, but so what? It is appropriate for anything that looks like a “button” to behave like a button. I suspect part of the problem is that my brain works in words, not pictures or movements, and current design fads want iconography instead of text. They think it serves as a universal language, but in fact, iconography and gesturing are both new, man-made languages themselves and must be learned. At the same time, they do not obey the natural rules of language, so they are not “intuitive” at all.
I’ve talked before about not having made the transition yet to a smart phone, and that is why. I promised to make the change last month, but have found excuses to keep avoiding it.
I’m not too old, and there’s nothing wrong with my brain. I’ve been using computers since 1980. I’ve had a touch screen on my laptop for …. 18 years? I’ve two different tablets and have had an eReader for 10 years.
I’m not illiterate. I can learn anything I need to learn. I need to be able to set the screen to respond to a strong hard touch, instead of an inadvertent eyelash, and to disable the “long hold” commands as I never want those – such features should be a part of the legally required accessibility options.
Not with our provider, that we needed to use. Xfinity mobile would not allow foreign phones, only theirs, and they only had one flip phone with buttons. We needed her on our account as there was no cost to add a line. The MIL did not want to spend $40.00 a month for a cell phone with a different provider. Her old phone was on AT&T which we paid $50.00 a year, MIL paid $50.00 a year which all she thought it cost. She was limited to 1,000 minutes. For four years she used less than 30 minutes. A couple of those years AT&T just waived the charges.
We eventually moved the MIL to my old iPhone. I had gotten a new iPhone and thought it would be a good use for the old iPhone. After several tries she was able to use the iPhone as nothing more than a phone. I removed all the apps I could except for those that Apple would not remove. Those apps were placed in a folder. This left four icons on the phone. One for calling, text app, photos, and the folder containing all the other apps. That folder was moved to a second page. Thus on the page the MIL saw there were three icons. We were able to convince her that a smart phone was good as she could see pictures of her grandchild that could now be sent to her phone. We were also able to teach her how to text, a laborious process. She only used that phone for a year and then she died.
There were times when the MIL would call the wife on her home phone and the spousal unit would have to walk her through, slowly, getting something accomplished on the MIL’s iPhone. Gave me a lot more respect for tech support for cell phones.
Even my wife sometimes has issues with her iPhone and I have to help her and get it straightened out. She wants the phone to work her way, not the way it was designed. When I show her how to do something, and she does not like the way it must be done, the comment is “well that’s stupid”. The ability to learn new things is not a strong genetic trait in her family and wife got the same gene. MIL was mostly “my way or not at all”. Wife is “my way or it sucks or not at all”.
How does a loner kid who is bullied because he is poor (or possibly because he wears eyeliner) buy two rifles and ammo? I can’t afford two new rifles, and I haven’t been to the range in years.
for that matter, why does a kid who “self harms” in a public enough way that people KNEW it not have a psych record?
n
I’ve been a computer user since 1973, Fortran, punched cards, 029 keypunch. I’ve stayed current and have 2 degrees in computer science. I worked until recently in technology. I watched the transition from punched cards to character cell terminals to PCs to windowing systems of various sorts. I’ve gone from flip phones to android.
Macintosh and iPads make me crazy. You just mentioned “double tap”. Is that a thing on ios? No one told me. I just know on the Mac, there aren’t enough mouse buttons.
Most every time I get out my ipad, if I want to do anything except use the kindle app, I end up saying “WTAF?” and “How do you do [simple task] on this OS?” and “What, I can’t have 2 apps active at the same time?”.
I’m sure there are answers to all of those. After all, there’s a kind of Unix underneath there somewhere. But to call it intuitive is stretching the truth.
Then, consider all of this in the context of someone who has never been a computer user at all. It must look like quantum mechanics and tensor calculus to them.
I wonder how much the district paid for this boondoggle? And if voters and taxpayers knew about it?
suppose they have a money back guarantee?
FWIW, the FBI report on school shooters said something like 40% of them had been previously assessed by a school “threat evaluation team” and returned to classes. Took about 2 years before they shot up the school from that point.
n
This is another point. Why are there no written, printed, intelligent user manuals for tech devices?
Last month, I bought two new essential oil ultrasonic diffusers. Each one came with a complete user manual that is accurate for every element of the machine, right down to the photo on each matching the color of the machine in the box.
I’ve never understood why the tech industry is so averse to documenting step by step “how to do this” for devices. Instead, people have to ask for help from other people who figured it out or learned it from some other person who did their own debugging to figure it out. So much easier to just write it down in actual words, then everyone who can read can follow the instructions.
Yes! And even without vision problems, the icons don’t make sense, and they change. Great example is when suddenly, recently, every gadget went to having a set of three lines in the top corner that presents the menu, instead of just displaying the list. How was anyone supposed to know where to find the menu ? We all found it by accident when we first used a page with that icon design. By accident… not by being taught nor by there being a list of icons we could refer to.
I’ve been a Mac user since the original Mac (took it to Korea on my first tour). Also Windows from the beginning, but I’m in the Apple Garden.
Apple is like the Mandalorians: “That is the way.” It’s their way or the highway. You can buy a good Logitech mouse with all the programmable buttons you want, though.
I’m interested in Apple’s WWDC next month which might announce a new iPad Pro with their M2 chip. They might even run some Mac software. The current iPad Pro will run Quickbooks online in the Safari browser. That is all I need to run our biz financials on the go.
S01 of “The Lincoln Lawyer” and “Night Sky” are on the torrent-tubes. Queued up. I do have Netflix, D+, Hulu, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, etc. subscriptions the family shares. Never know when the internet will go out.
So, the Uvalde ISD has been spying on the kids. If it is like all other “school” tech, no one bothered to learn how to use it, nor to monitor it. They probably paid extra for the company to do the monitoring for them.
Our local school district can’t even be bothered to maintain the public parts of their website. I used the website to find the date for this year’s rodeo (the FFA has a rodeo every year), and told my kids, because we thought it would be fun for the little grands to come up for. Turns out that page had not been updated since last year … they only put this year’s Rodeo info on the school Facebook page. So we missed it, because this year it was held two weeks earlier than last.
The tragedy at Uvalde is unspeakable. I don’t know how that little town will ever get over it. It sure makes me wish that all my grandchildren were moved to home school or private school, but I won’t say that to their parents. If we could afford the tuition for private school for them all, I would offer it.
Brittney Griner’s wife breaks down in tears over her Russian imprisonment: Begs Biden to ‘urgently use his power and go get her’ – and reveals the WNBA star fears she’ll be ‘forgotten’
– uh, no. She’s a drug addict, drug smuggler, who thought she was above the law of the land. She thought her various privileges would protect her, and she was wrong. She’s lucky they aren’t prosecuting her for the homosexuality, which is ILLEGAL in Russia.
n
Never let a crisis go to waste. Is “All right, all right, all right” reconsidering running for Governor?
https://nypost.com/2022/05/25/matthew-mcconaughey-note-to-hometown-uvalde-after-texas-school-shooting/
– or in other words, stop taking the drug and the disease comes back. “Symptoms rebound”. FFS newspeak is getting out of hand. As far as I can find with a search the phrase didn’t even exist prior to April of this year. There are other references, but not that phrase in that context.
n
Overindulgent grandparents giving the kid too much money for birthday/Christmas. “Poor Salvador, maybe he can buy a Playstation and make some friends.”
That reminds me – we’ll see what my wife’s nephew is driving on Sunday. He may not have the Tesla, but even his current vehicle, a pricey truck, was an indulgence from my wife’s mother at the expense of her own transportation needs.
Kids. The software spys on the entire friggin’ community online. Anything on social media to do with Uvalde.
“Boondoggle” is probably the right word. The company’s software most likely didn’t work beyond the contrived demo. My guess is that shots of Pappy Reserve at SxSW or an education conference were involved in the sales process and were the most important criteria.
Points well taken. I cannot disagree.
It took me awhile to get used to the ecosystem of those devices. I bought a MacBook Air just so I could learn to use a Mac. One of the stupidest decisions in the Mac world was not using CTL-C, CTL-V, etc., standards in most worlds, to copy, paste, etc. text. You have to use the command-C, command-V, etc. keys. I suppose if one has been trained on Macs the use of the control key seems stupid.
The lack of manufactures following a standard, just to be different is part of the problem. I am certain Apple avoided the control key because Microsoft used the control key. As far as I know Microsoft may have even threatened a lawsuit so Apple was forced to change.
That still annoys me. Some use three dots, some use three lines. I guess they needed something short to save space. Some GUI “expert”, fresh out of college, having never had a real job, probably came up with that solution.
I am fairly lucky that I can adapt, especially with technology. It comes easy to me. Case in point was taking over the video broadcast system at the church. My ONLY qualification was that I was not afraid to push buttons. It was dumped in my lap with no documentation or training. A major paradigm shift for me in an entirely new world. I had to learn switching, chromakey, cabling, video standards, SDI and conversions, lower thirds, audio paths and delays, making physical connections, video routing, etc. Did I learn it well? I don’t know. I learned enough to make it work. And 10 months later still get asked to resolve problems from people that are supposedly trained in the industry.
I embrace and enjoy technology and maybe that is the difference. And like gadgets. I was also a dork in school and have no personality. Like when that lady asked if she looked good in a dress and I said it looks horrible. Really made her angry. I was being honest.
I have a real problem with schools being concerned with what students do while not in school. Beyond looking for dangerous threats to society or the school, what a person does outside of school is not the school’s concern. Threats of violence are against society, not the school. There is no reason for a child to get suspended for racists comments or videos that are not done during school hours or on school property. Yet that will get a student suspended. That is a problem for the parents and the legal system, not the school.
If a student want to run naked down the street that should not be a cause for disciplinary actions by the school. Don’t ask how I can relate.
@greg, I do not think gramma was footing that bill. I’d be surprised if 1/10th of 1% of the population of Uvalde could afford $5k at the gun store.
n
The median home price in Uvalde for the week end on May 20th 2022 was $68,600 compared to $626, the median rent. Unemployment sits at 6.5% as of May 20th 2022. The population of Uvalde is 16,256. The median age of the locals is 31.9.
12.7%–Bachelor’s degree or higher
$626—Median monthly rent
5.6k—Estimated housing units
$39,494—Median household income
16.3k—Population
added — the white space mangler mangled that. added – maybe I fixed it now
I too, had a senior lady friend who had difficulty with even a flip phone. What she really wanted was a crank on the side so she could say, “Madge, get me Harold!” Failing that, a Trek communicator would be acceptable.
Stylii helps those who have difficulty manipulating a touch screen. I find the lack of a back button on iPhone non-plussing.
The Dumbest Chick In Congress:
AOC shames pro-lifers for ‘supporting laws that let children be shot in their schools’ but is unable to name any such laws
And that is saying a lot! There are plenty of contenders on her own “squad”.
These nuts just blurt out nonsense. Congress. Geez.
PLTs are all over Twitter praying Redumblicans, the GOP, and Gov. Abbott to “fcuking die” (as TheKamels niece “Meena” says). Twitter does nothing since their threats of violence policy only applies to Conservatives. If Musk doesn’t buy Twitter, at least he tanked the stock revealing how biased Twitter really is.
“It is the way.”
And a bang-up job they’re doing of it.
Hooking? I don’t know what a crossdressing teenage boy can make in Uvalde.
That’s the perfect situation for the drug-pushers, even better than having the government buy enough doses to give everyone in the world two shots. Getting people hooked on a drug so that they’ll get sick or even die if they stop taking it is … is … it’s like a vision of the promised land!
Flip-phones vs smartphones:
I went through this a year or so ago. My wife’s cousin, Liz, used to use a Samsung flip-phone, with a custom-to-provider UI. When it broke, I shopped for, and found, a slightly later model, with generic Samsung software.
She didn’t like it. So then, glutton for punishment that I am, I offered her my cast-of Motorola E2 Android smartphone. I’ll give her this, she tried, but after a week or so, eventually gave up, and went back to the replacement Sammy.
Eventually, D2, who is a fruity evangelist, managed to get her onto Jane’s cast-off iPhone SE – the old one, not the SE2. And she’s still using an iThing, a year or so later.
Let me note here, Liz is a neophobe (is that a word? Anyway, she hates using something new-to-her). She’s a few years older than me. Luckily, I don’t follow in her footsteps.
G.
@nightraker:
Indeed. I use a stylus because my fingers are too stubby, and I miss keys. In act, one day Postie arrived with a “Signed-or” parcel, and didn’t believe that the capacitive stylus I offered to use would work on his touch-screen PDA.
Of course, it did, and I pointed him at the local Pound Shop, where I’d got mine, when he asked about sources.
G.
Pound Shop: shop where everything costs £1. Or it did when the shop opened. Nowadays there’s a number of products that run to £several.
So true. I’m on my third iPad, which sine the original, has been my primary web surfing method. I had a MacBook Pro – circa 2010 – for a few years, but it was a work machine and I had to give it back.
I do have my dad’s original Mac. The internal floppy drive doesn’t work. I’ll look into that one day…
My wife is that way. Absolutely despises change that she did not make. Updates to IOS when Apple makes significant changes have always been a period of time I hate. Nothing but complaints from the spousal unit about it being stupid. Her mother was that way. Change is despised. The change to Windows 10 was a time of much conflict. Good thing her computer will not support Windows 11.
Small town in The South? You never know.
Uvalde has hunting, and the McConaughey brother who is arguably better qualified to be Governor built a decent business in town, featured on two reality TV shows.
The latest macOS update is taking forever on my M1 MBP. Over 15 minutes now. Almost in the “is it borked” range.
Well, the install is counting down.
12.4? Yeah, that took a while on all of the Macs capable of taking the upgrade around here.
I’ve not seen the Apple Silicon machine crash or enter a “borked” state, but, to be fair, the Intel machine also on the 12 series is also well behaved.
The Apple Silicon did have some weird issues with DisplayPort and my USB-C dock for a while, however.
>> “Boondoggle” is probably the right word. The company’s software most likely didn’t work beyond the contrived demo. My guess is that shots of Pappy Reserve at SxSW or an education conference were involved in the sales process and were the most important criteria.
I was always wary when the demo laptop was almost the size of a Buick and it took half an hour to get the software up and running.
Took almost 30 minutes on my MacBook Air (M1 chip). Came back almost like it was a new installation, as in out of the box. I had to go through some of the original questions again. The apps were still there but it is just the standard apps that come from the factory, I think.
One other thing that is different about the MacBook Air. There is no backspace key. Instead the Delete key does that and works different from Windows. Delete in Windows deletes in front of the cursor. On the Mac Delete deletes in back of the cursor. I don’t care for the behavior but that is probably my long exposure to Windows.
“Beto O’Rourke confronts Texas Gov. Greg Abbott at Uvalde press conference: “This is on you””
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/25/beto-orourke-greg-abbott-uvalde-shooting/
Bozo is a man of ill manners.
Older people, especially those with little to no experience with computers or technology in general, have difficulty using tablets. Is it a matter of not wanting to learn something new, the inability to learn something new, or just being old? I don’t know. The experience with the MIL was an eye opener. For those people there are many surprises lurking.
I wonder what the millennials will be like when they get older ? They are very different from us, having been raised to expect computers all over the place. I suspect that they will expect voice activated servants all over the place.
No printed manuals because the instructions are often unintelligible, and because paper is heavy and expensive.
And no “step by step” documentation because programmers cannot write in English, and because they are often unable to explain why they do what they do. And most software has 4 or 5 ways to do anything, the directions would be highly repetitious.
I used to teach basic computer skills, from “Intro to computers” to advanced Excel and Access. I’d lay out the guts of a standard PC on the table, so that everybody (these were all adults, from 30 to 70) could understand what each part did. I opened up a (busted) hard drive so they could see the platters, and had several floppy disks, and memory chips. If there was ever anything that I was really good at, it was explaining to newbies how computers worked.
Then we’d get into the basics of Windoze. I’d explain how to do some basic function, and somebody else in the class would say “But I do it this other way”, and someone else would say “No, I do it THAT way”. Then somebody would ask “But which way is the RIGHT way?”, and I’d reply “All of them. Which version of Windows is this? (At that time, Windows 3.1) The ”3″ tells you how many different correct ways to do anything there are.” Now, of course, we’re on Windoze 10 (or 11, I guess) and my joke explanation works again.
Clicking and double-clicking took 30 minutes all by itself.
Just under 20 minutes. All is working fine.
I didn’t get that, but got some “set up” messages on previous MBP updates.
“That is the way.”
Simultaneously true, and also complete BS.
For most of my career, I was known to be that oddball engineer who could talk to “normies” and also to techies, and make myself understood to both. I could understand the business problem from the user’s perspective, and explain what was needed to programmers. I could figure out what odd user interface the programmer implemented (“Well, I could have done it the way you wanted, but my way is more efficient!”), and step-by-step how to use it until we could fix it. (The user was not always right, but the programmer’s optimizations were often wrong.)
I wrote user documentation for external test engineers and for end users, like GS civil servants. It turns out that use case analysis goes a long way toward outlining the end documentation.
If you can write code to persuade a stupid computer to implement an LALR parser generator or the Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm, how can you claim you can’t write step-by-step instructions how to perform functions in code you wrote?
“Cannot write in English” is only an excuse for H1B and other immigrants, and is an argument for terminating such immigration. I suspect “cannot” is more often “will not”, and they get away with it. To my way of thinking, it’s showing disrespect for the users who ultimately write your paycheck.
/rant
@RickH, can the powers that be move us to a less occupied database server now ? The site is working perfectly now, just slow.
>> “That is the way.”
So said Steve and no one questioned Steve.
Anyone remember Steve Jobs or Bill Gates demo a user manual?
’Nuff said.
That is because of the lack of Gravatars.
That is because of the lack of Gravatars.
That is because of the lack of Gravatars.
‘Nuff said.
I only point this out so you are prepared when Mr. Lynn goes all spelling Nazi on yo’ azz.
Not unfeeling, but nothing new to say on the shooting.
Our Assembly continues changing city code to move power from the administrative branch to the legislative branch. We picked up one conservative in the most election and are now 3 conservatives, 8 socialists on our assembly with a deeply ethical conservative mayor. Last nights festivities were the same nauseating garbage I’ve been whining about for the last couple years. Focus on making the chief financial officer report to the assembly instead of mayor, and trying to ram thru a change that gives a ill defined list of 11 things for which the assembly may forcibly remove the mayor.
Our assembly is lawless.
House projects – I took the solid wood w/glass window side door off its hinges. Removed the knobs a d deadbolt. Sanded it, then many coats of Watco Danish oil finish. Took an hour and looks like a new door. It was very heavy. My ten year old daughter was indispensable in getting it locked back into hinges while I grunted out lifting and balancing it. Phew.
Power washed the main part of our second story deck. The main part is 12×22, plus a 20‘ walk, plus stairs down with a landing halfway down. Next is to apply something to protect it for a year or two. Old finish is worn off and wood currently has zero protection from elements. Deck receives full sun most of the day.
Given the press of other deferred maintenance and long list of to do’s, but not wanting the deck to deteriorate, trying to decide what can be applied with minimal effort that’ll give me a little breathing room. Longer term I’ll sand, repair boards, give it a high quality longer lasting finish.
Deck is over a concrete patio with our deep freeze and other Precious Treasures, overlooks an overgrown tiered garden.
I think for ease of cleanup and not killing too many perennials and not spending more time peeping than finishing, I want water based (or at least water cleanup) that can be sprayed on. Semi transparent with light color would improve the looks. Deck is wood, with a composite something running on top of side rails.
This is a new skill set for me, though I suppose not much different than other things I’ve tackled (painting walls, staining furniture).
Limited availability of product in Anchorage. Some Thompson’s, lots of Cabot, some Olympia products.
Thoughts / recommendations on what to avoid?
My name is Steve and I approve this message.
“WWW: Wake (The WWW Trilogy)” by Robert J. Sawyer
https://www.amazon.com/WWW-Trilogy-Robert-J-Sawyer/dp/044101853X?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number one of a three book science fiction series. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Ace in 2009. I have purchased the following two books in the series and am reading book two now.
Caitlyn Decter is 15 years old, a math prodigy, and blind. Not because her eyes are defective but because her retinas and brain do not communicate properly with each other. The condition is rare but a Japanese researcher has created a solution and wants to try it out on her. The result allows her to see out of one eye and to meet an entity on the internet named webmind.
This is not the first time that an author has proposed an artificial intelligence on a common platform. Orson Scott Card created the Ansible Network, an instantaneous cross star system communications network, in his Ender books that has an AI named Jane in it.
The author has a long running website at:
https://www.sfwriter.com/
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.3 out of 5 (176 reviews)
I plan on contacting DreamHost support with an ‘after-action’ summary that includes the slower response due to data queries. This will happen ‘real soon now’ – this week. Been watching the site and response times so I can provide longer-term stats.
I’d say this three times, but, as shown by MrAtoZ’s comments, saying something three times will not make it true.
We’ll see what the spin is on the local Faux News tonight.
The fourth generation pure Irish American Robert Francis O’Rourke is still trying to be the “Mexican Bobby Kennedy”.
Never let a crisis go to waste. Robert Francis has been trying to be a Shadow Governor like Stacy Abrams in GA but has met with limited success so far.
Ten months between the primary and general election. Texas, y’all need to rethink that.
Thompson’s Waterseal has always worked for me in the hot Texas sun. I spray our fence with it. It has to be reapplied every couple of years, but if you decide to use a longer lasting finish later, the Thompson’s won’t get in the way. I love using it because it is so easy to apply and to clean up, so quick, and looks so good.
I’m impressed with you tackling taking that door down and then trying to put it back up. Our height (or lack of it) works against us on some jobs, even without the strength issue. You and your daughter deserve big pats on the back for that one.
“Alibaba President Shares at the World Economic Forum on Carbon Footprint Tracker Technology for Individuals”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/05/alibaba-president-shares-world-economic-forum-carbon-footprint-tracker-technology-individuals/
Be scared, very scared.
This is will end with you reporting to your local termination station for …
Wasn’t that the plot of an “Ol’ Doc Methuselah” story?
It’s been years (decades?) since I read one, but I seem to recall it was a series of stories set in a future where doctors were rare and unusual, because of mass human created plagues. Seemed far-fetched at the time…
re personal carbon trackers and such, let’s roll out the first phase on Algor, Soros, the German Stereotype, Obuttsuck, and their ilk. Use them to establish the baseline for consumption and then yell at anyone who exceeds it.
No ability to read or write proper English or use punctuation. Cursive writing may as well be hieroglyphics.
That is because of the lack of Mr. AtoZ.
That is because of the lack of Mr. AtoZ.
That is because of the lack of Mr. AtoZ.
Fixed it for you.
re school shootings and calls for gun grabs,
Austin keeps trying to export the homeless to the narrow strip of city limits that extend out near us to catch the Applied Materials plant’s property tax cash flow.
https://www.fox7austin.com/news/austin-city-councilmember-speaks-out-break-ins-vandalism-candlewood-suites
I can’t decide who is more useless – the swishy Austin Mayor or our county’s “Judge”, the Right Reverend Bill Gravell, who has been in the loop on the plans for the hotel for at least a year but feigns indignation whenever problems arise.
Unfortunately, voting out the Right Reverend this Fall will mean a Dem goes into that chair. He was primaried, but Republicans are soft about kicking out a “man of the cloth” in this county.
I fired the minister originally scheduled to perform my wedding. I didn’t hesitate to vote out Gravell.
“Texas School Shooter Had No Known Mental Health Issues or Arrests”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-school-shooting-victims-were-killed-in-one-classroom-11653484041
“Only advance sign from gunman were Facebook messages shortly before shooting, according to state officials”
So, none of the proposed new gun buying tests would have worked to stop him.
Hat tip to:
https://www.drudgereport.com/
>> So, none of the proposed new gun buying tests would have worked to stop him.
Won’t stop the PLT whiners from every opportunity right now to grab airtime and continue to whine.
@Jenny, to reinstall a door, use a simple lever or wedge of wood. A small pry bar operated by foot while holding the door can make the weight seem less of a fight. I find it best to get the top hinge aligned first: maneuver the door so the top hinge halves are close; have the pin or a tapered drift (a nail can do) poised in the upper eye of the hinge, ready to drop and hold the hinge together temporarily. Then swing the bottom hinge into alignment and insert its pin. Finish by inserting the top hinge pin, then any others last. With practice, it can be easy. My dad taught me to not fight heavy things. Brain over brawn.
Today there is some actual technical discussion, love it. For my part, I worked with some Human Factors people a long time ago. I learned some useful things. I also learned that some things can be logically designed, yet not very convenient or well liked. Having the user be part of the design is sometimes helpful, but care must be taken.
I also learned from personal experience that ease of learning and ease of use are different qualities, and are often unrelated. I would like both; but if I can only have one, I will take ease of use. Of course, I get to decide what ease of use is for myself.
I also learned that personal experience, with enough time spent to really get used to something, is the only way to decide what is truly for me. I think all of us have had the pleasure of using something that works satisfyingly, and just feels good, like a pair of comfortable shoes.
I tried to think of some examples, but realized that each of us has to recall our own from experience. As humans with deep seated likes and dislikes, we know what we like when we experience it. However, we owe it to ourselves to try different things occasionally to see if we are using what we like best. It is also sad that we are increasingly forced to use new things we don’t like as much as the old ones. I would call that regression.
Doing an errand at lunch today, I noticed that “My City Was Gone” is … gone … from the top of the Limbaugh timeslot on the San Antonio talk station.
End of an era.
Gym rats throughout the spacetime continuum are reading your words with disgust. If something is heavy or awkward, pump iron until you can handle the thing easily.
Doing an errand at lunch today, I noticed that “My City Was Gone” is … gone … from the top of the Limbaugh timeslot on the San Antonio talk station.
End of an era.
Yup, she wanted her annual million dollar royalty.
Where is NaN when we don’t need him?
>> No ability to read or write proper English or use punctuation. Cursive writing may as well be hieroglyphics.
Languages evolve and how they’re used changes.
Is there a need for cursive writing when everyone has a smartphone / tablet / laptop?
No money in talk radio anymore. Plus, the last time the rights expired, I got the impression Hynde renewed it for Limbaugh as a favor to her dad, who was a huge fan.
Didn’t “Clay & Buck” lose half of the stations?
No money in talk radio anymore. Plus, I got the impression Hynde did it for Limbaugh as a favor for her dad.
Didn’t “Clay & Buck” lose half of the stations?
Yup. There will never be another radio guy like Rush. You know, the first time I heard him say “Talent on loan from God”, I thought he was being blasphemous. After a while I came to think the opposite, that he was praising God for the gift of the talent. I hope that God took his talent (and him) back.
Wow, we have a stalker.
OK, groomer.
@jenny, I was going to write exactly what JimB did about hanging doors. I’m glad and impressed you took on the project and succeeded and your daughter was there to witness. Actions really do impact so much more than words.
WRT weather seal, I like Thompsons. you can try one with color in it, I use that on my teak outdoor furniture and it makes them look like new (after a pressure wash). The downside is that it’s oil based, and one hell of an herbicide. If there is somewhere you don’t want plants to grow for a couple of years, Thompsons will do the trick. Not sure I want it in my water table though. I apply it with a garden pump sprayer when I’m doing something big like the fence, or a paper towel on something small like a table or chair. If you go the sprayer route, mark it clearly as Thompsons, and only use it for that. A tarp will aid your cleanup immensely. The one gallon $8 plastic sprayer from HD works fine.
@jenny, you can pass along to Stu why he shouldn’t invoke the troll.
———————————–
Scanner has a surveillance op going right past my neighborhood, like 4 blocks from my house…
———————————-
-If anyone has any experience with email spoofing, such that this investigator’s statement makes sense, please email me flandrey at aol com
“This email did not originate from [username] or from a [one of our] server[s]. The account was being spoofed from outside the [organization].
It is in regard to an email that looked legit, from inside the org to someone else inside the org, and sending a reply went to the spoofed person’s inbox.
n
So, a huge failure of courage, leadership and failure to follow doctrine.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10855093/Furious-father-Texas-school-shooting-victim-slams-police-failing-stop-gunman-HOUR.html
n
@nick: according to one of the results from a simple googles/bings/ducks:
So even though the message appears to be from “whoever”, and through the ‘whoever domain’, it isn’t. You can use a tool like this one https://mxtoolbox.com/EmailHeaders.aspx to analyze email headers.
In gmail, you can use the ‘show original’ on the three-dot thing on a message to get the email header (actually, the entire message). Copy/paste that into the above tool to get an analysis of the header.
Email spoofing is a common technique for hackers to get your credentials, or send you an attachment that looks valid. Opening said attachment usually installs malware on your system.
I found that Robert could write extremely clearly (perhaps with Barbara’s help?) beginning with his early computer books; that is what drew me to him and this place.
Bill Gates: The Psychopath As Philanthropist
The Microsoft founder wants to own your DNA but, don’t worry, it’s for your own good!
Emerald Robinson
https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/bill-gates-the-psychopath-as-philanthropist
BFF with The Meerkat of Omaha, until he wasn’t.
The problem with programmers writing documentation is that they don’t know what it will be like or how it will work by the time it gets to the end user, either.
As a user, I find it inexcusable that the minimum for docs isn’t at least every single choice in the menues being described. Use a tool to extract the menu structure. Annotate every choice. Done.
n
Owlkitty Park
brilliant fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W85oD8FEF78
step-by-step
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtIoMT1WX4U
Pron and cat memes, the heart and soul of teh intarwebs.
n
“and ceiling cat looked upon the work of the hooman and pronounced it gud.”
n
The widely held belief among the stockholders was that Gates would be a kind of replacement figurehead Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway when Buffett passed, part of a triumverate, with Greg Abel as CEO and Ajit Jain running insurance and investments.
The last job had a qualified, experienced technical writer on contract doing the documentation, but at most of the places I’ve worked, it was a quota hire position of some kind.
“User manual” is a vague, non-specific term.
For an IKEA table it’s basically a physical inventory and illustration of parts, assembly instructions, and a few rudimentary safety admonitions. Periodically a user does something creatively stupid, sues, and hits the legal jackpot when an assortment of grade school dropouts, alcoholics, and methheads on what passes for a jury in Arkantennebamas agree that the manufacturer was negijint in not telling BillyBob that he shouldn’t use it as a ladder to scale a tree with a chainsaw with a wired-down throttle.
It’s a table, man.
For a table saw, once the thing is assembled, it’s a tool with a nearly infinite number of uses. You want a user manual that explains how to do stuff, you’re largely within the real of generic “table saw”–start with Patrick Spielman and work up. The manual for Woody Woodbuster is a different animal that for Mark Micrometer. The latter reads “best accuracy in adjustments requires consideration of backlash” with comprehension, whereas the former has no idea and skips it or (now) goes to the internet and gets edumacated.
The original Adobe Photoshop was a new breed of cat. No user base–needs a manual. Version 256 has 250 iterations of “new shiite you didn’t know you needed” a brand-new place to hide the lasso tool and three shift button combinations to open sub-alt menus on the unsharp mask for more realistic pron effects.
I came out of a mainframe/timesharing background to a desktop that could dual-boot CPM and MS-DOS. The learning and innovation curves were steep, but we stuck with it because we could get shiite done in less time. Fiddling for a week to successfully interface a strip chart recorder meant that you didn’t have to guestimate the scratches from the pen that was dried out when you started and eversomuchmoreso a couple hours into the run, which had been better than a clock and a clipboard so you could record that sweet new digital readout that replaced the analog dial.
Yeah, Lotus 1-2-3. MINITAB. Sweeter.
The big software companies fell into a rut a long time ago. The new version goes out the door defective and gets fixed in the field. Except when the snot-nose development team decides their way is better and the user base rebels, maybe some competition occurs (unlikely), the team doesn’t get bigbuckbonuses and gets replaced by the “fix this carp” team that gets us back to the functionality of the previous version. Maybe.
Sweaty Liar Bill Gates’ (no, the browser is integrated I swear!) best marketing move ever was the Mouse Too–put a mouse in the box even if the software can’t do anything with it, and put two buttons on the damn thing because that will look better. Confusion in the marketplace.
So, why does an Apple mouse have one button?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/16/creation-myth
So, why does an Apple mouse have one button?
– because the xerox parc mouse did? Or because the xerox parc mouse had more than one?
n
Ask and ye shall receive. Spring semester is over on campus, and grades were turned in Monday at noon.
F google. They changed something this week. Until now I could stay logged in as nick all the places I’m nick, and as someone else all the places I’m someone else, like youtube vs my calendar. Now I can only be one at a time.
Weasels
n
@JimB / Nick
I usually use a scrap of tapered wood to help ease a door back into place. I couldn’t find one this time and over-estimated my strength. I’ll try top hinge first next time. I usually do bottom first in deference to my height (4’11” is shorter than short). I don’t know if it was the 1960’s glass or the wood or my age making it so stunningly heavy. It was difficult to wrangle and I wound up laying it down immediately outside the frame as it was too much to heave further. I’ll have to pull it down for a few more coats in a week or two. That old wood was thirsty. Looks much better. Worth the grunting and blue air. I’ll break down and get help from my very tall husband next time.
I see that Thompson’s makes a water based product for decks. Since I’m looking for breathing room and ease more than longevity and high performance I may see if I can find some.
And Cowboy Slim – ixnay on the olls-tra
Someone else cooked tonight. I used the time to heft nine bags of manure to trash cans by the driveway. I met a gal who’ll make goodies of it.
goodies
– please jebus let that be a transcription error from “good use”….
n
>> So, a huge failure of courage, leadership and failure to follow doctrine.
So since this is from the DM our MSM will ignore it.
More PLT talking heads instead overlooking the 2nd Amendment.
>> He was.
He wasn’t.
He hasn’t.
You got this from Rush?? Or was it directly from God?
@Jenny, you have a concrete surface underneath your deck that needs to be protected when you coat the wood. I do too. I used dirt instead of any kind of tarp or disposable plastic sheet. A thin coat broadcast with a shovel worked well, and swept up after the drips dried. Next day would be safe. Only cost a few minutes of work, and the dirt went back where it came from.
I have also used a dirt surface for spray painting small objects. I learned this after seeing other people’s permanently marked concrete surfaces. Simple ideas rock.
@nick
from “good use”….
-laughing- I was gloriously spell wrecked and didn’t catch it. Though the corgis perk up at the concept of manure goodies. Fine snackin’s
@JimB
dirt
Brilliant! I’ve got a ready supply adjacent to the concrete pad and can sweep it off to a gravelly area of the hill with little effort. Thank you! Tarps are a hassle. I’ll throw a small manageable one over the chest freezer, scatter the dirt, and done.
Easy-peasy.
God, no doubt.