07:55 – UPS showed up yesterday with an order from Costco, a dehumidifier and a case of canned beef. Barbara hadn’t decided what to have for dinner, so I called her and said I’d make dinner from our emergency food stocks. That always makes her nervous–she doesn’t trust my cooking experiments–but she finally agreed. So I just made a simple casserole with some rice, a can of the beef, a can of beef broth, and a can of corn. It turned out well, as Barbara admitted. The next time I’ll use twice as much rice, which’ll make enough for two meals.
At this point, I’m still spending half my time building and shipping science kits, the second half working on the new AP Chemistry and Earth Science kits, and the third half doing everything else that needs to be done.
11:10 – Do Not Call has become a complete joke. For a while it kind of worked. For the first couple or three years after it went into effect, we got noticeably fewer spam phone calls than we’d been getting. But it’s been getting worse gradually, and recently not so gradually. We’re at the point now where we’re getting 20 or 30 spam phone calls a day, many of them from a vacation scammer who uses Orlando, FL as its caller ID. Enough is enough.
As I said to Barbara last night, I gave up reporting such calls to the FTC. It’s a waste of time because they never do a damn thing to resolve complaints. By this time, there should be a lot of phone spammers sitting in federal prisons. What we really need–and I mean this literally–is for some civic-minded hero to hunt these bastards down and kill them. Maybe someone should start a Kickstarter project to get funding for travel, ammunition, and other incidental expenses. I’d happily contribute and I wouldn’t expect any reward other than reading the news stories about a rash of dead phone spammers.
Last night, I took the extreme step of turning off the ringers on all our phones. Phone spammers hang up without leaving a message about 99.9% of the time. Real callers can just leave a message. I’m trying to get our Panasonic cordless phone system set up to silence ringing but let us hear messages being left on the speakers in the base unit and the phones themselves. So far I haven’t been able to do that, but I think it’s doable.
Barbara suggested just dropping our land-line, which I may end up doing. The only reason we had a land-line was that Barbara wanted it to make sure that her parents could get through to us in an emergency. That’s no longer an issue, so we may just go to cell phones only. The only real problem with that is that our house is down in a hole physically, and cell signals are pretty unreliable. That, and the fact the phone spammers are calling cell numbers more and more often nowadays.
Oh, yeah. To add to my aggravation today, I went downstairs after Barbara left this morning to empty the dehumidifier bucket and found that it hadn’t shut off. There were a couple gallons (~ 8 or 10 liters) of water on the basement floor because the auto-shutoff didn’t work. I looked in the bucket and where I’d expect to find a freely-moving float I found nothing but a rigidly attached piece of white plastic labeled “DO NOT REMOVE”. The manual is useless, so I suppose I should call their tech support line and find out what the problem is. Either that, or just run a hose to outside or to our sump pump.
I am not giving up on Linux, but I did reach a decision this morning: I am advancing the purchase of the new audio/video digital workstation and will dual boot that with Mint and Win7.
Mint problems are just increasing as time goes on. I suspect things that are added as I install the various items I need, are causing the machine to get flaky. In addition to the Libre Office lockups, which are slowly increasing in length of the lockup (started at 15 seconds and now is over 20), the wireless network connection suddenly started crapping out at least once a day. It refuses to reconnect, unless I reboot the router (the Windows machine is still connected with no problems over there) or reboot the Linux machine. Just logging off and back on to my account, does not clear the problem, as it did in XP; it takes a full reboot to clear things up.
Really exasperating that Linux is taking so long to equal what XP was 10 years ago. The network problems decided for me that a VM in Linux for Windows is not the solution; I am going to make it dual boot. Having the network go down in Linux would mean the same for a VM there, and I do not need that. If everything just worked in Linux, I would be really happy; but it does not.
The other thing that factored in the decision to keep using Windows, is the fact that it is perfectly super-clear, that the geek gurus on the Linux forums have contempt for people with problems, and treat the enquirers very discourteously. That is just plain bullshit. Time after time I see developers on help forums telling people to figure out a patch themselves, when it is clear the person seeking help is not even an experienced user, let alone a person with coding ability. Some guy named Jean-Baptiste Kempf who appears to be the lead developer of VLC is a real SOB and ought to be banned from his own forums. He is a real asshole. I have seen this discourteousness in a few Windows forums — the Hydrogen Audio forum and the Rockbox forum are two, — but generally Windows users and developers are committed to willingly and courteously helping each other; Linux developers are in-your-face bird-flipping scumbags. I do not need to spend my time reading their attitude when searching for solutions. So my traveling machine will be Linux-only, but all others will be dual boot.
“….a simple casserole with some rice, a can of the beef, a can of beef broth, and a can of corn.”
Not bad. Next time throw in some onions and garlic and splash a bit of Frank’s Hot Sauce over it all. Do a side of cornbread, the Southern style, not that stupid sweet cakey Yankee crap.
Your IT decision sounds about right, Chuck, for what you do and your needs. I’d actually just use Windows, period, for the audio-visual work and play with Linux on your personal laptop/s and suchlike, run a test lab for the work stuff on it, maybe. But for day to day reliability and having things work, hell, use whichever tool does the gig for ya. I know of a longtime rock concert lighting director who’s done shows for major bands going back thirty years and he won’t move off XP for his stuff. He considers Linux users “hobbyists.” Sorry my recommendation of Mint is not working out; of the various distros that had the best chance of doing what you need with less hassle but I see a pattern now of diminishing returns.
Another gorgeous day here on the bay so fah. Mrs. OFD will be wrapping up her gig tomorrow morning down in lovely Manchester, NH and motoring on back up here. If we have money, I’ll be paying a pile of overdue bills this weekend and we’ll also get a bunch of stuff done at the house and with my truck. If not, we’ll be treading wottuh and being very pissed off at her paymasters, who, right now, I’d like to beat to a pulp and put to work in a re-education labor camp.
Do a side of cornbread, the Southern style, not that stupid sweet cakey Yankee crap.
Hey, I resemble that remark. Born in “northern” WisCONsin. 😉
many of them from a vacation scammer who uses Orlando, FL as its caller ID
Many of the calls we now get they are spoofing a local number to make you think the call is coming from someone you may know. Since I live in a small town that is a very real possibility.
That, and the fact the phone spammers are calling cell numbers more and more often nowadays.
We get just as many calls on our cell phones as we do on the land line. When we wait until they answer (calls almost always start with a recording) I ask for their company name and they immediately disconnect. I call the number in the caller ID and the number is always disconnected or if it works, it has a full mailbox.
I used to get many calls from the same number so I went into my Comcast and Verizon accounts and blocked that number. But since these cretins are now spoofing the caller ID the blocks no longer work.
I also feel that these low life shit eating scum should be killed and a bounty collected. Same as they do for feral pigs.
My Ooma phone allows black and white listing. I use a black list and they have lists you can add. On my iPhone, any call from someone I don’t know, especially “toll free” I send immediately to VM and then add that number to my blocked caller list. That really cuts down on repeat violators.
“….a simple casserole with some rice, a can of the beef, a can of beef broth, and a can of corn.”
Not bad. Next time throw in some onions and garlic and splash a bit of Frank’s Hot Sauce over it all. Do a side of cornbread, the Southern style, not that stupid sweet cakey Yankee crap.
————
My very first thought. Large jar of salsa. Shouldn’t that be in the emergency food? Easy fix for anything.
There is a hilarious photo of Lurch playing the guitar over in China circulating on the net. Every place we’ve stuck our military nose is going to shit, a defacto invasion over our southern border, a Marine rotting in Mexico while Lurch plays the guitar in China. Can’t make this shit up. What a country! As Yakov would say. I wish Israel would nuke somebody in the ME. Maybe that would calm things down.
In re: the spam calls; we get those, like Ray, at least as often on the cells as the landline now; I went to the Do-Not-Call Registry thing online and listed our three numbers with it three weeks ago. Zero effect so far as I can tell. Useless. And I hear the same thing from others online.
From the Third Time’s a Charm Department: another recruiter based in VA is trying to get me hooked up again for a Windows sys admin job working for a DOD contractor up here which in turn works for a major and apparently extremely busy Fed agency. Last two times some tiny unknown glitch in the background checks knocked me out and I have no reason to believe this time will be any different but I have nothing to lose so whatever. The last go-round I was told there was a discrepancy in the paperwork (I had done due diligence and completed tons of paperwork plus the fingerprint cards at the local PD, etc, and had previously held ITAR and security clearances at IBM, a huge DOD contractor, and had told the background check people if they needed any more info or had other questions to CONTACT ME accordingly. Six weeks went by and they did not.) ….a discrepancy in the paperwork somewhere and that I was thus disqualified from even setting foot on Fed property (kinda the tone they used) but they wouldn’t tell me what the hell it WAS!
So I’m just doing this now for fun and if given the opportunity will ask somebody WTF is the discrepancy so I can CLEAR IT UP!
Other than that I have one possible bite up here in town for yet another Windows gig; and have been reflecting that if I had really ramped up hard and didn’t have buying a new house and moving during my time at IBM, and gotten the Red Hat certifications and been a good little do-bee, it would all have been for naught now. All that study and expense for the exam/s, etc., por nada. And it doesn’t look like there are any other Linux, let alone RH, gigs on my horizon in this area anytime soon, either.
So at some point soon I’ll probably take RH off the machine it’s on now and replace it with Mint and use it upstairs in the workshop mainly for firearms and home repair videos and any top-secret crypto chit that needs to be done, via Tails and vm’s, etc. Meanwhile the other machine to my right here is now running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS so I can play around with Mirantis OpenStack but I’ve run into yet another roadblock and will give it a bit more time and then I’ll probably throw a Windows server on there. The OpenStack experiment claimed it’d be up and running in an hour but ’twas not so, Grasshoppers; Ubuntu Server was a bust; Virtual Box has continued to be a bust; both of which they stipulated were needed to run this. And to even get to this point involved a hassle at every step of the way.
So looks like a return shortly to the land of Windows here, on at least one more machine, anyway.
What’s funny is that when you snoop around at the M$ sites, it’s all about Server 2012R2 but the local organizations up here are still on 2008 Server at best, or more often, 2003 Server, and the desktops are only now being moved from XP to 7. No one has 8 yet.
But bedrock, of course, is the network; and 80% of the world’s networks run on Cisco infrastructure so I’m also building a CCNA/CCNE lap upstairs and figure that at least there is one cert that could be useful out there and runs with any o.s.
“Mint problems are just increasing as time goes on.”
I am noticing the same problem with Mint 17 KDE, but concluded it was early version growing pains. Yesterday I did a slightly delayed update, and there were lots of things updated. I couldn’t see any improvement, but need some more time and experience to be fair. Then, I needed something from the identical test computer with Mint 14 KDE. Wow. It just seems to run faster, with no hesitations when Alt-Tabbing to Writer. Over on 17, it sometimes takes several seconds before the buried Writer window appears. Meanwhile, on a much slower old computer running Windows 2000 (!) similar things are humanly instantaneous. Some progress.
I had said I would try to sort out the networking issues a day or so ago, but haven’t done that. Too many unrelated things needing attention.
Agree with your take on the forums. I have never wholeheartedly embraced this format, mostly because of its often low information content, but it is the only place where we can get up to date answers. I really appreciate all the posters’ devotion and sharing attitudes, for the most part, but get annoyed with all the posts that say something like “good question, but I have no answer.” A waste of time. I tend to avoid the ones that have rude attitudes, but that is sometimes not possible.
With the looming possibility of getting a new Windows notebook for my wife’s special sewing machine needs, I am once again going to compare Windows and Linux. Like you, I will probably still keep fighting with Linux. There is just too much good there.
OFD, I have often wondered what my experience might be with a supported distro, such as Red Hat. This seems to be the most popular distro that businesses use, although I don’t know much about how they actually use it. One impression I have is that, although very stable, it falls down on things like proprietary stuff, which makes it less versatile, a tradeoff I can understand. As an aside, I used to think that only distros based on “stable” repos were worth my time. I had some scars to support that, except Mint has been by far the best distro I have used, even with its few rough edges. Few, but certainly exasperating.
One area that supports a persistent notion is that all Linux users I know still use Windows to “get their mundane work done.” This is nothing new, and is reminiscent of the old Sun Workstation days, where those happy users also had a Windows computer handy for those mundane office tasks. I can’t accept that notion in these days of powerful, inexpensive hardware and “advanced” operating systems.
I am currently using only Windows 7 for desktops and I still have a Linux server. If I were to try desktop Linux again, I’d be very tempted to skip dual boot and use a virtual machine instead. But Chuck’s more demanding audio needs might not be met by a virtual machine. If I were going to go dual OS on a laptop, I’d be more likely to use dual boot there.
Is chipped beef still around? Haven’t seen it in awhile, but haven’t looked either. My mother used to buy it to make Shit on a Shingle (SOS).
I probably get more spam text messages than I do spam calls on my cell. Even then they’re few and far between. However, with more and more people opting to drop their landline and go cell-only, I’m sure spam calls to cells will be on the rise.
Spam faxes used to be an issue in the 1990s. The best payback for those was, if it was a local number spamming you, to fax back a sheet of black construction paper to use up their ink. Of course, the major fax spammers had outbound only faxes and were spoofing the sender’s phone number anyway.
We get collection calls for the guy that had our number before us. I’ve told them several times we just got this number in June of 2013 and whoever they’re looking for is no longer reachable at this number. They assume I am the guy and that I am lying to get them to stop calling, so they continue calling. I’ve thought about pretending to be him and saying, “F_ck you. I’m never paying! Go get a judgment against me or stop calling.” The whole problem could be avoided if they did like they used to and let a number sit for 90-days in a disconnected status before issuing it to a new customer. Now, you’re lucky if it sits a week in a disconnected status.
I hate the food savings flyer dropped in my driveway. It’s essentially junk mail that doesn’t come via USPS. It’s basically like the coupon section of a paper, rolled up, rubber banded, and delivered to everyone’s driveway like a newspaper. You cannot opt out of it. So, essentially, somebody gets to throw unwanted crap in my yard every week and I can’t do anything about it.
Quick segue to some newspaper nostalgia and pet peeve: Remember when newspapers were placed/tossed on your front porch by a boy that lived in your neighborhood? Now they’re thrown from a car window by an adult that has 50 routes and the paper barely makes it into your driveway instead of the street.
We don’t use a dehumidifier, but my brother does and he keeps his in the basement and has it positioned over the basement floor drain so he doesn’t have to worry about it overflowing and doesn’t need to empty it (floor drains are required by code in all basements around here). Not a bad solution if your floor drain is accessible and positioned in a way that you won’t be constantly tripping over the dehumidifier.
Amen to that. Most of the cornbread I’ve gotten in restaurants over the last several years (all over the country too) has been so sweet it’s more like cake than bread. It’s become a dessert. Unfortunately, it seems most customers prefer it that way and so the market is responding accordingly. There used to be a BBQ place in town that served up some traditional cornbread with bits of chopped jalapenos mixed in. Loved it. I have had some pretty dry skillet corn breads in the past that were awful and I think that’s a lot of people’s stereotype of traditional cornbread. So, now they’re more typically super moist and super sweet.
The open source community is full of assholes. Their contempt for the “average user” is one of the reasons why desktop Linux has never gone mainstream. Most everyone I know that has spent any time using Linux has some story about seeking help in a forum somewhere and getting some jerk response like, “Don’t like it? Submit a patch.”
I’m on the Oz DNC, and that stopped commercial calls just about dead. Charities, politicians and (I think) religious organisations are still allowed to call, but I just hang up. Nobody except my sister makes legit calls to my land-line but I have to answer it in case it’s her. I only get one SPAM call per week on average now. When I was getting many more calls on my cell phone I’d mark SPAM calls as such so I’d know not to answer next time.
I did have a robo call from someone pretending to be one of the major Australian airlines, wanting details. I just hung up.
As well as the fraudsters I think politicians who robo call should get a bullet in the head for a first offence.
@Jim B:
“OFD, I have often wondered what my experience might be with a supported distro, such as Red Hat. This seems to be the most popular distro that businesses use, although I don’t know much about how they actually use it. One impression I have is that, although very stable, it falls down on things like proprietary stuff, which makes it less versatile, a tradeoff I can understand.”
RH and its downstream clones like CentOS and Scientific Linux are used in corporate and government mission-critical environments, usually in racked server farms; it’s a server behemoth that way. Not so much for the normal home usage, though. Before I left, IBM had put together a pretty slick RH desktop/laptop proprietary config, though. They made all us low-level scum install it and use it which was fine with me. But manglers begged off and clung to their Windows XP and 7 machines.
Given that, I’d probably not use RH, etc. on any home machines here for home use; for that, YMMV, but I have good experiences with both Mint and the latest Fedora distros, but again, as someone has said here, a lot depends on your hardware and network config, too. Right now I have Mint 17, I think, on a Sony laptop that I haven’t looked at in a while and I’ll probably put it on the current RH server machine at some point. Or whatever latest Mint is out by then.
Ima gon gib this Mirantis OpenStack caper one more day and then bag it and throw a Windows Server on there, probably 2012R2 ’cause dat what M$ be flogging now, for certs and otherwise. And for any Windows sys admin gigs now I’d better ramp up fast on PowerShell and know that at least as good as I had bash and vim.
I was fooling around with Kubuntu a decade ago, starting with Dapper Dan, then Edgy Ed and throwing in the towel with Funky Fox. Fortunately, due to work at home necessities, I was dual bootable with XP.
I came to the realization that this endeavor was symptomatic of the terminal phase of the industrial revolution. That is, I was working for the machine; the machine was no longer working for me.
“I came to the realization that this endeavor was symptomatic of the terminal phase of the industrial revolution. That is, I was working for the machine; the machine was no longer working for me.”
Good point, and roger that here. I also came to that realization as regards my years of IT work out there; I am no different than some machine operator/material handler from the 70s, which job I did in fact do back then in several MA factories. Or a machine operator from even earlier, back during the 1930s or the 19th-C, even. The pay certainly hasn’t changed much, in real terms, nor our place in “society.”
I’d like to slide on outta that way of life in the next couple of years and into my own gig here, so working on it….
Don’t know if I have mentioned this but I was involved in a major accident on April 21. Chap pulled out from a highway crossover across the left lane and into my lane. I smacked him at about 45 MPH. Car was a complete loss and I had some injuries. He was cited for failure to yield and DUI and was hauled off to jail.
The really lousy part is having to deal with his insurance company. I went through my insurance for the car. They company they hired to appraise the car and determine value was nit picking for everything. Got dinged for wear on the seats, well duh the car has been driven. A minor chip in the windshield, ding. Carpets worn, ding, which was wrong because they were floor mats. Also got dinged for oil seepage on the engine. How he determined that without crawling under the smashed car I do not know. There were no oil leaks on that car, it was in top notch condition, all maintenance done with records, etc. But like insurance companies their job is to minimize the payout.
His insurance is the real joke. They are only assuming 85% liability because they say I could have done something to avoid the accident. I braked when I saw him but he was too close. Had I not braked I would have hit him in the side. As it was I hit him in the rear and thus his insurance company says I am partly to blame. My insurance, the THP and the witnesses all disagree. My insurance company is going to aggressively go after his insurance company for the full amount they paid.
His insurance company paid my deductible minus 15% and also paid for my iPad damage minus 15%. I expect his insurance, one of the bottom feeder companies, to do the same for medical. I have not settled the medical at this point and am taking my time. I expect another battle with his insurance company.
However, since it was a DUI I am allowed to collect my out of pocket expenses (the 15%) directly from him. We will see how that goes as that is a court ordered judgement, failure to comply is contempt and immediate jail.
I have been to both of his court hearings thus far. In the first hearing he was asked if he had an attorney. He did not and said he did not need an attorney. He was told by the judge his hearing date would be reset and he will have an attorney.
The second hearing yesterday he showed up with an attorney. My conversations with the DA’s office turned up that this is his fourth DUI. They are waiting for drug test results as there was no alcohol in his system. So the next court hearing is in October and I will be there.
In this recent hearing he indicated to the court that he will pay $250.00 a month to his attorney and his attorney will pay me. The DA informed me that if I do not get the money to immediately call their office and they will seek a warrant for his arrest and contempt charges for his attorney.
He is also facing a minimum of 120 days in jail. The next hearing will determine if he wants to plead guilty or proceed to a court trial. I will be subpoenaed to this next court proceeding which is unnecessary as I am going to show for each of his court dates. I am hoping I get to speak and I am going to ask that he be put away for the maximum time allowed by law which I hope is five years.
He will also have his driving license revoked and he can never drive again, legally. This is not a suspension, but permanent loss of the license. Will that stop him from driving? I doubt it.
This entire insurance and court system sucks. The DA indicated that I will be victimized twice, once for the accident and again by the court proceedings. The judge cannot force his insurance company to assume 100% as this is a criminal case and such a ruling must come from a civil court. That will cost me more than I would gain. It would only be moral victory, akin to pissing in the wind.
The only good point is that I will not be out much as he has to make up the difference. The DA informed me that there are rules for compensation for pain and suffering. I don’t know if his insurance company abides by such rules as their immediate offer was for $2200.00 to cover my deductible and medical. That is about half of the current medical.
As a side note it is incredible how violent an event can be involving airbag deployment. Thanks to the safety systems in my car (air bag, crush zones, seat belt tensioners) I was bruised and battered but nothing was broken or sliced up. The biggest injuries are from dealing with insurance and the legal system.
Wow. Sorry to hear that. Sounds like you end up screwed no matter what.
Happy to hear you’re alright, Ray. 🙂
Insurance companies frequently benefit from settling. They offer you some small amount that you can have NOW if you sign away your right to additional or future claims for the incident. OR you can wait possibly a couple YEARS to get the full amount. Many people opt for the immediate payout, go buy themselves a couple new toys, and let the medical bills go to collections.
Yes, I remember you describing the accident not long after it occurred and some of the crap you’ve had to deal with since.
Rest assured DUI-asshole will be out driving again, and drunk, too. These people won’t stop until they’re either killed or judicially blinded. I used to think, well, amputation, but they’ll drive with prostheses. Here is the choice, asshole: blinding or death.
OTOH, let’s not fry people for having had two beers on a full stomach at a company picnic and they’re a little sleepy; bitch-slap them, fine them, etc. but don’t kill them. Second offense: public flogging. Third offense: see above.
Between stuff like this with the insurance companies, hospitals and courts, we may start seeing rough frontier-type justice in the years ahead.
“I’d like to slide on outta that way of life in the next couple of years and into my own gig here, so working on it….”
Considering the treatment that way of life has thrown at you recently, good decision. I hope you are successful and happy, which is the best I could wish anyone. Like you, I didn’t want to move around the country in pursuit of a career, but that didn’t work so well. I always lived in areas where the majority industry and even employer was the only game. I didn’t like that, but it only hurt me once, and I am glad to be away from there for other reasons: hated the climate. If I had to start over (and be young!) I would try hard to do something that is independent of location. That is much easier nowadays.
Thanks for the advice on RH; I suspected as much. I also read about the IBM setup, but it faded before I could give it a try. I don’t mean to bash Mint. I have the highest regard for Clem and his team. There isn’t anything better for my needs, and I will pay the price to keep using it. Yup, I am a slave to the machine, but I enjoy some of those aspects. To me, Linux is like the early days of computing: exciting and always changing. Freedom, too. But… for most of my work I just want to be bored with consistent reliability. Always been that way. As an engineer, I remember being a slave to Hollerith cards and night runs to afford CPU charges. Then came smaller iron and eventually VMS. Once learned (I am a mortal, and we never learned ALL of VMS,) it was about as good as it got, weekly/monthly changes notwithstanding. I was never a sysop, and barely a user 🙂
UNIX workstations and their beautiful GUIs were a next evolution, and they seemed to have it all over the bigger iron for engineering and a lot of other uses. I remember McNealy wanting to introduce a home Sun box, and actually hoped for it. Then Windows matured and was even cheaper. Always a trend to cheaper stuff. Finally, Linux. Free. Open. Costs time, but retired peeps supposedly have a lot of that. Put in this perspective, we do live in exciting times.
Just have to mention Android and the portable revolution. I am actually looking forward to trying desktop Android. Not Chrome, because I don’t yet trust the cloud and its dependence on an always-on Internet connection. Here comes another time sink!
End of reminiscence.
Thanks for the detailed sucking insurance experience. This is why I run uninsured / underinsured motorists on all my vehicles. I had a wreck 18 years ago where a lady ran a red light and I t-boned her. She had let the insurance go the month before so I just turned everything over to my insurance company and let them fight it out.
My insurance company is going to aggressively go after his insurance company for the full amount they paid.
I wish that I could not believe that the other insurance caompany would only pay 85% of your damages. Sounds very actionable to me for a hungry insurance company like yours. Don’t worry, they have a lawyer on speed dial who specializes in these cases.
I was in an auto accident years ago, and had bruises and scrapes on my wrists from the airbag deployment. I thought this and the airbag smell was awful until a couple of hours later when I decided to shower to try to get rid of the smell. One look at the seat belt marks on my chest made me realize how glad I was that my car had airbags and that I had been wearing my seat belt.
“End of reminiscence.”
Yes, if I was thirty or forty years younger and getting heavy into IT, I wouldn’t mind moving all over the world to get work; but as you say, that is less necessary now. First things I’d learn would be:
1.) The Network. 80% of it being Cisco products. But at least understand TCP/IP real well, the routing and switching basics, and something of the related security considerations and protocols.
2.) Pick one of the major operating systems and learn it thoroughly. Pick a second o.s. as backup.
3.) Learn business fundamentals.
4.) Be ready to move; the employment market now has never been more volatile in this field and we’re all just mercenary drones; make as much money as possible with the best bennies you can find and save like a maniac, don’t go into major debt, and start preparing for a Grid-Down world just in case. Learn a hands-on trade and how to do most stuff around a house and vehicle.
5) As they used to say at DEC; Do the Right Thing.
To prove the other Dave’s point, I will cite the most obvious example: Barack Hussein Obama, Senior. Three drunk driving accidents. The injuries from one accident cost him his legs. Hand controls made further drunk driving possible, only to be stopped by his third drunk driving accident which was fatal.
In re: vehicle accidents:
I have never been in one of anywhere near my own fault in 45 years of driving. In both accidents that I had, I was in someone else’s vehicle, once as the passenger, once as the driver, and no seat belts in either case (this was the 1970s). In the first accident my shins got a little bruised from the AF truck dashboard; we hit a parked Plymouth Fury left in the wrong lane at 03:00 with pea soup fog, lights off, no one around. Both vehicles totaled and the Fury knocked back about twenty yards. Second accident a drunk operator with a full car of drunk passengers ran a red light in Boston, again in the wee hours, and I swerved to avoid hitting them head-on and collided side by side. Their vehicle was smashed up pretty good; my girlfriend’s (now a spinster whose mom just died recently and living down in her childhood house in MA) just got a few scratches and minor dents. No one hurt. We all got out and then the other guy said, ‘everyone OK; let’s get outta here before the cops come.” I said yeah man, and we all boogied. I had to pull over a few blocks away and get out, ’cause my legs were shaking uncontrollably. Funny how your body can do chit that you can’t control.
Nothing since. I am super-careful, have had tons of advanced driver training, the street cop experience, and I don’t do anything stupid.
Move to the Great State of Texas! Everyone else is, legal or illegal.
Specifically Houston, there are 10,000 people per month moving here right now. And that is just the legal ones.
don’t go into major debt
Oops! I’ve got three mortgages on various properties, one commercial. No other debt though.
5) As they used to say at DEC; Do the Right Thing.
I miss DEC, they built mostly good equipment using refrigerator cases. That old 100??? MB 8″ disk drive was a joy to listen boot up with it’s two speed motor that changed gears at 2,000 rpm. Wrote a lot of software in DecWindows that we threw away and moved to Sun Workstations.
“In addition to the Libre Office lockups, which are slowly increasing in length of the lockup (started at 15 seconds and now is over 20)…”
I had a similar problem on both my Ubuntu 12.04 and Mint 13 systems so I replaced LibreOffice with Apache OpenOffice 4 to see if it would make a difference and have not had any lockups since then. Might be worth a try. I’m mostly using Calc.
“Barack Hussein Obama, Senior. Three drunk driving accidents.”
Oh crap, I’d forgotten about that dude.
The “I-Team” of WBZ Channel Four down in Boston years ago did a series of stories on the convicted DUI assholes leaving the various district courts in the area and then jumping right behind the wheel again and peeling out. Some of them flipped off the cameras, of course. While opening a nice cold Bud. Saw it myself; I always hoped the cops watching got the plates and made a visit after.
Just one link from Drudge on what Mexico is doing about immigrants from Central America and Mexico. Providing a train ride! Glad it derailed.
(Reuters) – A cargo train used by Mexicans and Central Americans to travel toward the U.S. border derailed in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca on Wednesday, stranding about 1,300 migrants, emergency services said.
Lots of links on Obummer doing nothing. Flights all over the US, etc. It’s over.
I tried a Republic Wireless Moto G earlier this year but decided that they still hadn’t worked all the bugs out of their system and returned the phone for a refund. I still think that their development efforts on the hybrid WiFi/cell combination is worth keeping an eye on if you want to drop landline service while living in a pocket of poor wireless carrier coverage.
I would say that they are very close based on my experience.
My younger sister spent more than 15 years in the Public Defender’s Office in Jacksonville, Florida. She will assure you that the guys & gals with multiple DUIs simply won’t stop driving just because some mofo in black robes told them to. And those people, who are on the road, and blowing a 0.18 BAL or more, five or six days a week, are the real threat. This is not to dismiss the incidents where the gal who had one glass of wine too many at dinner, or the man who had an extra beer on the golf course, then go behind the wheel. There are far too many of both of those sort.
And please provide the link to the anti-phone-spam project on Kickstarter, I’d be glad to chip in. Right now my problem is the telco who won’t stop forwarding my late sister’s number to my house. I did this for six months after she died, and then tried to cancel. But I’m still getting calls via her old number; it seems to be worse when people use the auto-callback system.
OR you can wait possibly a couple YEARS to get the full amount
In the state of TN I have one year. I am in no hurry and will settle sometime around October. After that I don’t think this insurance company will do any better as it is bottom feeder company.
This is why I run uninsured / underinsured motorists on all my vehicles.
I have such insurance. In fact, my insurance is top notch coverage with an added million dollar liability coverage. My insurance paid for my car because of the difficulties of working with the other insurance company. My insurance has some fairly competent lawyers I suspect. I was informed by the DA that I was lucky he had insurance as almost all of the DUI’s involved in crashes have no insurance.
I wish that I could not believe that the other insurance caompany would only pay 85% of your damages.
‘Tis indeed true. My insurance adjuster, insurance agent, THP and witnesses are all shocked. There is a law in TN that you can be held partly responsible if for example, you have not cleared the frost from your windows, mirrors missing etc.
One look at the seat belt marks on my chest made me realize how glad I was that my car had airbags and that I had been wearing my seat belt.
Indeed. After you get over the shock of the explosion, the smoke clears and your brain starts functioning, you just sit stunned. I had marks on my hands and significant bleeding from a finger. I was very sore and waited for an ambulance and transport to the ER for checking with X-Rays and Cat Scan.
The next day I had bruises across my chest from the seat belt. I never contacted the airbag because the seat belts tightened and pulled me back against the seat. Only damage from the bag was burns and cuts on the hand.
Rest assured DUI-asshole will be out driving again, and drunk, too.
THP was surprised that he even had a valid drivers license as he has three prior DUI’s. In this case the other driver had not been drinking alcohol as the blood tests came back negative. The DA is waiting on blood tests for drugs and that takes much longer.
Years ago the state of TN decided to test all DUI suspects for alcohol and drugs. Problem is the state did not allocate extra resources to do the testing. Some tests take more than a year to be returned. In this case they are moving faster because there was an accident involved. The DA hopes to have the tests back by October 22 which is the next court date.
On that date he will either plead guilty or have a jury trial. I suspect a guilty plea will be entered as when doing that some of the other charges will be dismissed. I will be there and hope to make a statement before the judge passes sentencing. If a jury trial I will have to testify. That will be followed by a sentencing hearing at which I would also request to speak to the judge (or jury).
I fully intend to follow this all the way and get him the maximum possible sentence. That SOB needs to be behind bars snuggling with bubba big boy.
Funny how your body can do chit that you can’t control.
I fully expected to find a load in my britches. I know it took me a few days to have a decent bowel movement as my ass was puckered so tight.
I have never been in one of anywhere near my own fault in 45 years of driving.
I have never had an at fault accident in 48 years of driving, 50 years if you count the two years had a restricted farm license. I have been in five accidents that were the fault of others. I try and anticipate situations and am constantly considering alternatives “in case”. But sometimes you cannot avoid the person rear ending you or pulling out when you are doing 50 mph and 20 feet from the intersection and someone crosses a complete lane of traffic to block your lane.
Dealing with insurance companies should not be this difficult. Decent insurance companies are a pain. Add in the bottom feeder designation and you have a difficult combination.
My only recourse to get 100% out of the insurance company is take them to small claims court. That will cost my a lot of time and some small amount of money. Even then a judgement would be hard to get paid as they are in Atlanta and they would simply ignore a TN court order. Having dealt with the TN Insurance Commission they are worthless and will do nothing to help.
The bottom feeding company knows this and are using it to their advantage.
“Lots of links on Obummer doing nothing. Flights all over the US, etc. It’s over.”
Seen some of those links, where he’s shooting pool, playing golf, having a beer, yukking it up with legions of worshipers. Best thing that can happen is that due to “national security” reasons he stays for a third term while the Mooch bides her time in the Senate and then takes over twelve more herself. That will wrap things up nicely and bring on the pending mayhem/dystopia so we can reformat, install a new o.s. (without the Senate, for starters, ever again, and without about 3/4 of the Fed), and reboot. If we can’t manage that, and there is sufficient evidence in my mind to indicate that, then we’ll need to break up the Empire into like regions and try to climb back up to some semblance of Western civilization again.
Well, obviously that’s not the best thing; the best thing is that the people of this country would finally wake up and take over the nation again and throw the bastards out, while my firing squads work overtime. Maybe with the right leadership and a whole galaxy of good will we can stave off utter disaster.
@J Kamp Thanks for the tip on Apache OpenOffice. It is installing now. I do not do a lot of work in Excel, but what I have done was proving a lot easier with M$ than with LO Calc. I use and update several graphs daily; in Excel, I could just use the mouse to pull down the outline of what cells were included in the graph. Can’t do that in LO Calc; I have to manually enter the cells to be included for both the X and Y axis and it refuses to accept blank cells, making that process a daily activity if I want the graph to be corrected daily. In Excel, I just pulled the border down by a month into empty cell territory, and it updated the graph as I entered data. The X axis is mostly dates, and is most conveniently stored in column A, but LO Calc wants to make column A the Y axis and column B the X. Typical thinking of the French, who figure large in LO’s development.
One mistake I made was in assuming that every version of Mint would be an improvement on the last. Not so. I had far fewer problems in Mint 15 than I am having now in Mint 17 and I judge 17 to be a step backwards from 15.
The thing that had kept me from abandoning tries at Linux fulltime, was really Evolution. I had lots of problems with it back a year or so ago when I installed it with Mint 15, and that drove me to stay with XP a while longer (to the end of XP’s life, actually). But I have had zero problems with Evolution this time, and that has made it possible for me to put up with other Linux faults. The former Evolution problems pushed it over the edge into unacceptable territory previously. Evolution finally works.
I am not unhappy with Mint, just disappointed that 17 is not better than 15 — 15 not even being supported anymore.
On the caller front, for several weeks, I got calls almost daily from an 800 number with a recorded message that someone in a Federal prison was trying to call me, but did not have enough money in their account to complete the call. I could use a credit card or Paypal to put money into their account. Not sure whether that was a scam or not. I am not personally aware that anyone I know is in a Federal prison. What really made it suspicious, is that the person who supposedly was trying to call me was never named. “Someone in a Federal prison is trying to reach you,” was the only identification. I put the number on my phone’s blacklist, which does not actually stop the call, but just keeps my phone from ringing when it comes in (thanks Google, for being so unhelpful with Androids). I still got the calls on my VM. They always came at either 08:00 or 20:00, which also seems weird. None for about a week now. Hopefully, they gave up. Even if it is legit, I really object to the caller not being named.
That will wrap things up nicely and bring on the pending mayhem/dystopia so we can reformat, install a new o.s. (without the Senate, for starters, ever again, and without about 3/4 of the Fed), and reboot.
I am curious as to why you think that any such circumstance would bring on better conditions than today. It won’t, you know. We will get something like the French revolution or the Russian revolution where there are great intentions and then on the second day of the interregnum they will start the mass manufacturing of guillotines.
Nope, if fighting breaks out then I expect a full blown civil war. And the USA to break up into five or six new countries. And the protectorates will get pounced on immediately by their neighbors. Puerto Rico, anyone?
In fact, we ought to give Puerto Rico away today. I’m sure that somebody wants that rat hole.
“…and then on the second day of the interregnum they will start the mass manufacturing of guillotines.”
And? Your issue?
” And the USA to break up into five or six new countries.”
Again, and?
The Empire is over. It is not sustainable. Oh sure, a few more years, but after that a whole lotta chickens come home to roost.
“And the protectorates will get pounced on immediately by their neighbors.”
We don’t know that. War is not the answer. Well, it is sometimes, but rarely. Certainly not in our military history, not ever. I don’t see why the various regions couldn’t work out trade agreements and resolve issues peacefully; the alternative is chaos and Hobbes’s state of nature, where the hand of every man is raised against every other man. We can’t do that chit anymore.
And if we’re gonna give territory away, I’m in favor of losing Puerto Rico, Hawaii, most of Kalifornia, large swaths of the Southwest, most of Florida, and mos def Mordor and Manhattan.
“… just disappointed that 17 is not better than 15 — 15 not even being supported anymore.”
I took Fedora off the machine with the solid-state drive; so now I’ve installed Mint 17 on it, Quiana Mate, with 16GB of RAM and it’s doing its updates presently. Looks pretty good so far; this machine will go upstairs to the attic workshop for video stuff and cert study for other things. The Mint laptop I’ll probably reconfig as a terminal for the Cisco network I’m building.
And I took RH off the 32GB RAM machine; no point in goofing around with it anymore; there are no RH jobs to be had for me up here. Shot my wad for two years with the last one, in a mission-critical, DOD contractor, manufacturing site that stretches over a couple of square miles across two towns and a major river. Buh-bye, nice knowin’ ya.
Now it has Windows Server 2012R2, with all current updates. Any of the pending job chances I have are Windows shops, what can I do? Ramp up on it plus Cisco, plus security, and really get moving with PowerShell. M$ sez its admins better learn it and pronto, ’cause CLI is where it’s at, baby; my two years with RH and bash and the previous ancient seven years with VAX/VMS and OpenVMS should stand me in good stead. Just gotta learn the damn syntax.
I am in depositions with the lawyers for these insurance companies all the time. When we go off the record, the attorneys talk frankly, and the ones who work for the worst of them sometimes apologize to the other attorney, but maintain that their boss at the insurance company is stonewalling the case, and will not agree to anything but a ridiculously minimal payout. I have seen cases where someone was on their deathbed from an accident where there is no question about fault, but the insurance company refuses to pay medical. And I have been doing this long enough to see whole reorganizations in the legal departments of these insurance companies that deny practically all claims, but it still does not change their habits or procedures — it is just different faces in the depositions doing the stonewalling.
Judges are part of the brotherhood, and that is a problem for the system as a whole. They know that if the case stretches out, their brothers will make more money from everybody, and they are careful to see to it that cases are not settled quickly. We are the only Western country I know of, that allows doctors and lawyers to be the bosses of their own trades. Certification in other countries is a government activity, as it should be, so there is independence and checks on ridiculous activity. No thanks, we will have none of that for us in the US. Let’s make the system as unresponsive as possible, please.
Bill Gates and other billionaires are shooting their mouths off about immigration reform (amnesty really). Send our entire military to the border to do their job, protecting the country. Immigration reform solved.
“…and then on the second day of the interregnum they will start the mass manufacturing of guillotines.”
And? Your issue?
I don’t want to be guillotined?
Nope, if fighting breaks out then I expect a full blown civil war. And the USA to break up into five or six new countries. And the protectorates will get pounced on immediately by their neighbors. Puerto Rico, anyone?
Yeah, I would like to spend winters there, please. Rat hole? Have you been there lately? It is an entirely different place now than it was in the era of West Side Story. It sure beats Detroit.
As I keep repeatedly pointing out, there is not going to be any country breaking up into smaller entities. Where in the world do you see that happening? Yeah, everyone here but me predicts it, but it ain’t happening, guys. And it ain’t going to. Greece and Spain are still in the EU, and guess what? even more countries are lined up to join. Moreover, Putin is trying to put the old empire back together, not break it down. Big is the watchword and the solution to everything in this era. Smaller most definitely is not.
Talk of state secessions is cheap. About equivalent to the idea that Libertarians will ever again rule this country.
I will be very surprised if civil war ever happens here. If it does, it will — IMO — be the very rich against the middle-class becoming desperately poor. It will not be state against state, or states against the Feds.
As for HIllary having a political life. She will be 69 for the next election cycle. We are electing younger and younger people to that office, not older and ancient.
The Blacks are starting to figure out that amnesty is very, very bad for them as a class:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/382338/black-americans-true-casualties-amnesty-j-delgado
They’ve been running Houston for the last 20 years (I have no idea how Houston elected a lesbian white woman to be mayor three times). The Hispanics are poised to take over Houston as soon as they can get the vote and the Blacks are not happy about that at all.
http://therightscoop.com/houston-black-woman-goes-on-epic-rant-about-unaccompanied-illegals-why-cant-they-go-back/
I am getting about a fly a day buzzing around me. No idea where they are coming from, because the house is closed up due to the central air, and there are not that many outside these days. Somehow, I lost the fly swatter. Since I purposely limit my shopping time, I have had to come up with another solution. What has worked, but is an expensive waste of fluid, is spraying them with my medicinal spray bottle of ethyl alcohol. Once sprayed, they ultimately land for inability to fly, I drench them, and they die within seconds.
Re: spam/robo calls
Now that I’ve moved back home and stay with my mom pretty much 24/7, the landline they’ve had since ’56 is pretty busy with siding offers, firefighters’ fundraising, credit repair schemes, etc. I’ve been considering sign up with NoMoRobo.com
“I don’t want to be guillotined?”
Man, if I was gonna be executed that would be my first choice; superfast and precise and outta here! Second choice would be firing squad, for the soldier I once was, but that can get messy and some guys aim and shoot and some don’t. Sucks when you hear the squad commander yell “Fire” a second time.
“Where in the world do you see that happening?”
India, South Africa, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Albania, the UK sooner or later, probably Spain, possibly China, and sooner or later, right here.
“…the very rich against the middle-class becoming desperately poor. It will not be state against state, or states against the Feds.”
Agreed, that is my view also.
“…the Blacks are not happy about that at all.”
Of course not. They’ve been at war for years now in some cities and in the prison systems. If things ever blow up here in this country, there’ll be hell to pay between those two groups. All known and more or less planned by the globalist elites who still run things. They don’t mind a race, class or economic war at all. Mass die-off suits them just fine.
“…No idea where they are coming from…”
Next time you soak one of them, take a good close look with a magnifying glass and see if you can spot any tell-tale electronics. They’re making really tiny drones now and no doubt your attitude and public utterances about things out there has attracted some attention.
India, South Africa, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Albania, the UK sooner or later, probably Spain, possibly China, and sooner or later, right here.
Nothing there that is either recent (not a consequence of the fall of the USSR) or unexpected (Scotland has been boiling since the Middle Ages and it is still not a done deal), and the predictions I discount — especially China, which is reassembling its entire old empire, not disassembling it. South Africa? Africa has been active in forging new economic partnerships that — like the EU — will likely ultimately result in new political unions. Same with South America. Oz has been eyeing tie-ups with Asia for years now.
They’re making really tiny drones now and no doubt your attitude and public utterances about things out there has attracted some attention.
Well, I hope alcohol spray works as well on the larger bodies coming after me, as it does on the drones. It is expensive, but I have plenty.
Talking of robo calls…
I just got one purporting to be from Virgin Australia, a major airline here, thanking me for choosing them for my last flight. Apparently I’ve won $999 credit towards my next flight, “to claim press ‘1’”.
Click.
Ray wrote:
“My only recourse to get 100% out of the insurance company is take them to small claims court.”
Similar thing happened to my father in the late Sixties. He was rear-ended, the other guy’s insurance company told my father “We know we’re at fault, but you try and prove it.” This annoyed my father no end, so he hired a friend who was a recent law graduate and sued. He got his dough.
What OFD said: There’s a whole art form used by insurance companies to avoid, or at least delay paying out money. Oil leak from your engine? They probably throw that onto every single case, I mean, why not? It doesn’t cost them anything. Ray has the right strategy, though: his insurance company has a financial interest in seeing the other company pay out – let them invest the effort.
My latest Linux adventure… I’m trying to get my wife’s company off of windows. The old POS system (written by yours truly) runs on Windows and prints receipts via Microsoft Word. The new POS system (written by yours truly) runs whereever and prints receipts via LibreOffice.
This works just fine on Windows. It works just fine on Ubuntu 12.04. It works just fine on Mint 16 as installed on my work laptop. But on a fresh install of Mint 17 on the POS machine? Forget it. I’ve invested hours playing pinball (i.e., changing random things), but I have zero clue what the problem is. All the individual pieces are there, they all work, but Java will not talk to LibreOffice. Aaarrrgggghhhhh…
The only positive point is having been in IT long enough to expect this kind of crap. With the original Windows installation, years ago, I left an empty partition. On which I have now installed Mint as a dual-boot. The new software plus LibreOffice works just fine on the old WinXP installation, so that’s how it’s going to be until I have some sort of epiphany.
“All the individual pieces are there, they all work, but Java will not talk to LibreOffice.”
Just for laughs, and if I was playing pinball, I might try to do it with OpenOffice instead. And possibly a Java update.
I just put Mint 17 on what had been a Fedora 20 box; haven’t tried to do anything with it yet beyond the updates and adding a couple of sw packages here and there. We shall see.
Both LO and OO are trying to dump Java, and people are complaining about things not working in the latest LO as a result. Apache is taking the lead in this move to get rid of Java, so Dave’s advice about trying OO might be prescient.
You might also pinball back a version or so in either/both to see what happens.