09:35 – Déjà vu all over again. Except this time it’s different. At least one and possibly both of the Colonial Pipeline pipes was damaged yesterday by an explosion and fire. That’s 100+ million gallons of fuel per day that won’t be making it to the East Coast for an indefinite period. No word yet on how long it will take to repair the lines, but my guess is it’ll be a lot longer than last time. Rather than just having to deal with a fractured line and a large pool of gasoline, this time they’ll have to deal with the aftermath of an explosion and fire.
Fuel progresses through the pipelines at a walking pace, which means it takes a week or ten days to get from the site of the break to the Colonial tank farm in Greensboro. So that’s the good news. We have another ten days’ worth of fuel that’s still in transit. The bad news is that that’s all we’ll get for some time to come. When the pipeline broke on September 9th, the news didn’t hit the media for ten days. During that time, people were filling their tanks normally. By the time most people became aware of what had happened, repairs were underway. Panic buying starting on September 19th and 20th quickly caused big fuel shortages, but it was only a week or so before supplies resumed.
This time, it may be a lot different. The 100+ million gallons/day that the pipeline delivers is a lot of fuel, but only when consumption is normal. When people realize there’s a problem, the panic buying starts. Instead of waiting until they’re down to a quarter tank before filling up, as most people usually do, everyone rushes out to fill their tanks, and gas stations quickly run dry. Panic breeds more panic, so the new norm becomes to keep your tank as full as possible. When people see an open gas station, they get in line even if they’re nearly full already. There’s no way the distribution system can deal with this kind of volume even with the pipeline running at full capacity.
Right now, we’re in the calm before the storm. Supplies aren’t yet restricted. Prices are going up and will continue to do so, but gasoline remains available, as it will for the next few days. As the pipeline runs dry, more and more gas stations will be unable to get gas, and panic buying will start occurring in spades. My advice is to get ahead of the curve. Panic-buy today, regardless of price. It’ll cost more tomorrow, and much more next week. Minimize your driving. Car pool to work. Put off any long trips you have scheduled, at least until the supply situation clears up.
Barbara is scheduled to drive down to Winston on Thursday to spend the day running errands. We’ll keep an eye on the situation. It takes only four or five gallons of gas for Barbara to get down to Winston and back, but depending on the developing situation it may turn out that we’d be better off rescheduling that trip.
It might be a good idea depending on circumstances to continue the trip and treat it like it’s your last trip to Winston for a while. Make a Sam’s Club or Costco run like you don’t know when you will go again.
That’s probably what we’ll do. When she read my post this morning, she announced that she was going down Thursday no matter what. If the SHTF, I don’t think Barbara will let it interfere with her regular routines.
We’re not really short of anything, but I did just put in a Walmart order for a bunch of egg noodles and pasta. We tried the house-brand Walmart egg noodles and couldn’t tell any difference between them and the name-brand stuff, so I ordered a bunch of them that I’ll transfer to foil-laminate bags. I also ordered one 5-pound bag of house-brand pasta elbows because we’ve never tried those. If they’re okay, I’ll order a bunch more of the 5-pound bags and put them in foil-laminate bags as well.
WRT Walmart’s house brand (Great Choice?), I have tried their canned vegetables and found that they have way more head-space (distance between the top of the product and the top of the can) than the brand names. I don’t remember the exact figures, but the drained product was about 20% less by weight and volume. In other words you are paying a lot for vegetable water.
Trust no one.
Watch both hands and both feet.
Yeah. I mostly order dry bulk stuff and name-brand canned/bottled items from them. I mean, five pounds of pasta is five pounds of pasta. Not much water weight there.
I’ve not found any difference in most Great Value products from Walmart as compared to brand names. Then again a can of vegetables does not amount to much to worry about. But besides that any brand name usually cost less at Wally World then the other major chains, Costco maybe but not by much. A more pleasant shopping experience however,
“‘We are losing control of the streets’ Merkel’s Germany descends into lawlessness”
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/727263/Angela-Merkel-migrant-crisis-worsens-as-Germany-descends-into-lawlessness
“During the first six months of 2016, migrants committed 142,500 crimes, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office.”
“And Germany has been hit by a spate of horrendous violent crime including rapes, sexual and physical assaults, stabbings, home invasions, robberies, burglaries and drug trafficking.”
“Adding to the country’s woes is the fact that thousands of people have gone missing after travelling there on invitation from Anegla Merkel.”
“Germany took in more than 1.1million migrants in the past year and parts of the country are crippled with a lack of infrastructure.”
Wow, who would have thought that this would happen ?
The Kirkland canned peas are nasty (soft, poor color). I prefer just about any brand to them.
Many house brands have a higher percentage of ‘stems and seeds’ to use a phrase some will recognize. Unless I had good experience with a particular house brand, I prefer to stay with a major brand. They are more consistent.
That said, I have no idea if some of the foreign brands I’m buying for variety are major or even high quality brands.
nick
Squeezed in another Costco run yesterday and picked up another 7-10 days food. We’re ready to hunker down for awhile if need arises.
This election is scaring the bejesus out of me. Don’t know if that makes me paranoid or observant or both.
My daughter agrees with your assessment of Kitkland peas, Nick. She’s not a picky eater but won’t touch ’em. Easy enough to make a different choice.
Kirkland canned corn is really nice. Crisp, fresh taste. Wish the peas were as good.
Anyone else notice Costco dropping higher end brands, that they brought in and developed a market for, and replacing with Kirkland brands?
Our local store now ONLY carries Kirkland bacon (not as good as others), with the exception of a very high end applewood brand. They used to have Blue Ribbon for thick, and something else for thin. They stopped carrying ham steaks entirely. They dropped the national brand of naan and replaced with their own (not as good).
I know there are a multitude of factors, but it looks like they are building a customer base, then substituting their own (not as good) brand for some items. I LIKED having a choice, I don’t like just having Kirkland.
nick
@jenny, you are not alone. It looks rough any way you like to consider it.
If trump wins by a landslide there are going to be a craptonne of vocal objectors, and if either wins by less than the ‘margin of cheat’ there will be widespread rancor, and probably violence, esp if Progs think they were cheated by the already demonized and ‘othered’ right.
n
House brands are a lottery. In many (maybe even most) cases, they are actually brand products: the brand’s factory has a bit of spare capacity, so they produce some product under someone else’s label. The catch is: which brand? Some brands are good, some are bad, and which factory has spare capacity changes. So consistency is pretty much not guaranteed over longer periods of time.
Not to mention that if Clinton wins, the Republic will face its most serious Constitutional Crisis. The Clinton Foundation is clearly a very thinly veiled bribery and influence pedaling operation. Three FBI offices wanted to open investigations into the question. Allegedly the DC office has it’s own investigation, but given the handling of the email server, I have my doubts.
Many house brands have a higher percentage of ‘stems and seeds’ to use a phrase some will recognize. Unless I had good experience with a particular house brand, I prefer to stay with a major brand. They are more consistent.
And Del Monte has stems and seeds in it, IMHO.
Kirkland canned corn is really nice. Crisp, fresh taste. Wish the peas were as good.
Green Giant Super Sweet corn is better.
http://www.greengiant.com/products/detail/green-giant-steamcrisp-super-sweet-yellow-white-whole-kernel-corn-11-oz-can/
I am a canned vegetables snob. Sniff.
And Sams Club Le Sueuer Green Peas are the best:
http://www.samsclub.com/sams/lesueur-peas-8-15-oz-cans/prod15160200.ip
Anyone else notice Costco dropping higher end brands, that they brought in and developed a market for, and replacing with Kirkland brands?
Yes. Most people call that the old “bait and switch”. Supermarkets are really bad about it.
“Windows 7 games for Windows 10 Anniversary Update and above”
http://winaero.com/blog/windows-7-games-for-windows-10-anniversary-update-and-above/
Gotta have my Spider Solitaire.
Wait, peas are seeds. That what you want.
Actually peas and corn I prefer frozen if possible but will eat canned.
Green beans should be fresh but canned are good. Fry up some bacon pieces, drain most grease, add some onion and garlic, add some ‘shrooms, drain the beans, add to pan, salt & pepper to taste and stir until hot. Mmmmm……
Got back a little while ago from my shot/s down at the VA Med Center; five-person team did a great job, only one very short burst of pain when they first stuck the needle in and clear sailing after that, other than feeling a bit of pressure from time to time. Should take a day to a week for me to see results.
Then we took a slow meandering route back up here from White River Junction on a brisk fall day (down there); it hit the 20s and they had 3 inches of snow 100 miles SOUTH of us, lol. We’re in the 40s and 50s, w/no snow and no frost and 2/3 of our foliage still on the trees. Theirs is mostly gone to “…bare ruined choirs…”
The KirklandAll canned peas are nasty (soft, poor color).FIFY
Gotta have my Spider Solitaire.
Minesweeper was proven NP Complete within the last decade. You always have the excuse that, while playing, you are conducting important Computer Science research towards the question of P = NP or P != NP.
Anyone else notice Costco dropping higher end brands, that they brought in and developed a market for, and replacing with Kirkland brands?
– Head athletic socks — Jury is still out on Kirkland brand. The Burlingtons at Sam’s Club are cr*p IMHO.
– Various canned vegetables — the Kirkland branded replacements tend to be certified organic and a lot more expensive. We essentially have a Sam’s membership for the 2 liter Coke products and Del Monte green beans.
Le Seur canned baby peas ain’t bad, IIRC. I’ll check them out again. Also canned mixed peas and carrots if you season them real good. And you’re hungry.
Use Mr. dkreck’s suggestions for the canned green beans; for canned corn I like to just used plenty of salted butter, fresh-ground black pepper, and sure, maybe throw in some crisp bacon pieces and minced or diced red pepper.
From the Wouldn’t It Be Nice Department (apologies to Brian Wilson):
What if either Cheeto-Head OR Cankles was elected and nothing much happens; we just keep slowly muddling through most stuff and very slowly spiraling down the drain without too many peeps getting hurt, other than progs, SJWs, and the usual suspects. The Empire is not gonna last forever, but wouldn’t it be nice if it didn’t go down in an Apocalyptic shit-storm?
Well, as I keep saying, that’s exactly what I expect.
– Head athletic socks — Jury is still out on Kirkland brand. The Burlingtons at Sam’s Club are cr*p IMHO.
Sorry but the Dickies socks at Walmart are the best. Especially the extra large (yuge !!!!) size 12EE feet on your truly that really like the Dickies socks labeled size 12 to 15.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Dickies-Big-and-Tall-Men-s-Dri-Tech-Comfort-Crew-Work-Socks-5-Pack/15167654
No word yet on how long it will take to repair the lines
Colonial says the pipe will be operational by the end of the week. Prices that had risen by $0.25 yesterday evening are now back down to normal in my neck of the woods, at least for today.
Gotta have my Spider Solitaire.
Minesweeper was proven NP Complete within the last decade. You always have the excuse that, while playing, you are conducting important Computer Science research towards the question of P = NP or P != NP.
“NP-completeness”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NP-completeness
Excellent ! My eyes glazed over on the first sentence of that article. Reminded me of going to Calc I or Calc II with Dr. Hartfiel in 1978 at TAMU. He always lost me at the beginning of class, even before he got excited and lapsed into German.
My solution rate on Spider Solitaire is 19% at the office and 20% at the house. Both are slowly trending downward, just like my IQ.
From the Wouldn’t It Be Nice Department (apologies to Brian Wilson):
What if either Cheeto-Head OR Cankles was elected and nothing much happens; we just keep slowly muddling through most stuff and very slowly spiraling down the drain without too many peeps getting hurt, other than progs, SJWs, and the usual suspects. The Empire is not gonna last forever, but wouldn’t it be nice if it didn’t go down in an Apocalyptic s***-storm?
Well, that is my thought, that we will sink slowly over 10 to 20 years into dystopia. However, this 299 Days series that I am reading says that the financial failure of the USA will cause secession of various states all over the place. And violent rebellions against the ultra left wing state state governments such as Washington state.
Sorry but the Dickies socks at Walmart are the best. Especially the extra large (yuge !!!!) size 12EE feet on your truly that really like the Dickies socks labeled size 12 to 15.
Never tried Dickies. The Burlington brand athletic socks Sam’s sells are terrible.
Excellent ! My eyes glazed over on the first sentence of that article. Reminded me of going to Calc I or Calc II with Dr. Hartfiel in 1978 at TAMU. He always lost me at the beginning of class, even before he got excited and lapsed into German.
I’m on my second attempt at a Masters so I’ve suffered through three classes that include weeks (plural) of lectures realated to “NP Complete”.
I half joke that graduate-level Computer Science is all about learning to accept “Step Two” in the cartoon without asking too many questions.
http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/pages/gallery.php
I’m on my second attempt at a Masters so I’ve suffered through three classes that include weeks (plural) of lectures realated to “NP Complete”.
I live in the world of NP Complete. My software tells people based on composition, temperature, and pressure what is inside their pipe: vapor, hydrocarbon liquid, aqueous liquid, or some combination thereof. Solids will be added soon as our LNG customers are having problems with heptane freezing in their heat exchangers.
Anyhow, we have tried to live in the world of trying to predict what phase(s) are going to be in the pipe without rigorously calculating the answer. In almost all cases, it is easier to just do the rigorous calculation. In chemical engineering, they are called “stability calculations”. I call them horrendous nasty calculus with variable and strange limits.
I half joke that graduate-level Computer Science is all about learning to accept “Step Two” in the cartoon without asking too many questions.
http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/pages/gallery.php
That is cute. And 98% true. Especially for multiple thread software. I added three new threads to our user interface for our version 15 release which already had three threads. I have gotten my fingers burnt very badly using global variables within multiple threads so two of those threads have been collapsed back into the main thread. And that third thread is looking suspiciously like the cause for a couple of crashes that we have been having.
The Catholic Church’s ban on female priests will stand forever, Pope Francis said Tuesday.
I guess commies can be sexist douches, also.
You’re doing it wrong.
How do you handle it? Monte carlo? Probabilistic states for each tuple of condition variables?
I notice more chaff, more variation in size of pieces, different mix of veg (with more cheap veg in the mix) or more peanuts in mixed nuts, etc.
Sometimes there really is a reason it’s cheaper.
n
(and those reasons might not actually matter, forex, if you like peanuts)
Where were you six months ago ? Anyway, the multiple threads was a solution to another problem which has since been solved itself.
Are you asking about the stability calculations ? We found that they are not stable as the aqueous liquid phase transitions to the vapor phase. Highly non-linear calcs that depend way too much on the vapor pressure and ideal gas heat capacity equations. Proposed by a Danish ??? guy named Michelson.
Or are you asking how we do a three phase calculation ? First, we calculate a non-so-rigorous thermodynamic equilibrium using the Bool and Schul method. It almost always works. If there is free water then we take that answer and feed it into our rigorous three phase solver using the Seader and Henley method. If you give it a working answer, it will solve but it has severe boundary issues. Very severe boundary issues (the current boundary tolerance is 1.0e-12). Way over my head.
C This algorithm is from “Separation Process Principals”, Second Edition,
C J. D. Seader and Ernest J. Henley, 2006, John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
C pages 150-151, “Rigorous Method for a Wapor-Liquid-Liquid System”
I really like the Kirkland wool socks but they are very seasonal, so I usually just buy them on ebay.
WRT spyder solitaire, I used to play it alot. Then I had the perfect game, beat it on the highest difficulty, and decided I’d NEVER be able to do that again. So I quit playing.
I’ve played thousands of hours of various Mah Jong solitaire games instead.
nick
(yep, literally thousands of hours. I used to have a job that mostly meant monitoring power point computers for 8 hours a day, when they were actually in use less than 30 minutes. No internet. LOTS of mahjong. Got to the point with one game that I could beat it faster playing cold than one of the other guys could hitting Hint for every move.)
I was asking about the modeling in general, not any particular piece. On previous contracts I’ve worked on modeling electric power over transmission networks using exact calculation, monte carlo, and probabilistic approaches. (Not all together; different approaches for different applications.) Of the three, I think the prob. method worked best, though today’s 100x more powerful computers might be fast enough for the exact calc. method.
(Also, to be clear, I was implementing the approaches come up with by PhD electrical engineers, half of whom also had Professional Engineer licenses.)
Right here, probably writing something rude and not as funny as I thought it was.
However, as regards your software, you’ve written many things over the years that make me think you really need a hardheaded, experienced software engineer on staff. The CS or SE degree isn’t the important part. Real-world experience on medium-sized projects that have grown out of control is the important part, along with the ability to stand up to the boss and tell him where he’s going wrong. Whether you’d be willing to listen to him and take his professional advice, rather than simply fire him when he told you something you didn’t want to hear, is something you’ll have to ask yourself.
“I guess commies can be sexist douches, also.”
I saw that earlier this evening. I do not fucking DARE to mention it to Mrs. OFD. Let sleeping dawgs lie.
coming soon to a fiat currency near you!
\”Venezuela’s Currency Disintegrates: Bolivar Plummets 20% In One Week”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-01/venezuelas-currency-disintegrates-plummets-20-one-week
Betcha folks wish they had some gold to get them thru….
nick
I was asking about the modeling in general, not any particular piece. On previous contracts I’ve worked on modeling electric power over transmission networks using exact calculation, monte carlo, and probabilistic approaches. (Not all together; different approaches for different applications.) Of the three, I think the prob. method worked best, though today’s 100x more powerful computers might be fast enough for the exact calc. method.
Monte Carlo and Probabilistic ??? do not work for us. We have too many solutions for the approximations, we need the exact calculations. I call our solution the plane of convergence with many hills and valleys. The first solver is tough enough to walk up and down the hills and valleys to get within shouting distance of the answer. The second solver will get the best answer in that hill or valley, you just gotta hope that it was the right hill or valley. If the first solver was wrong, the second solver rarely converges. An added complexity is that we allow mixtures of up to 1,000 molecules and each phase will resolve to their own unique mixture.
However, as regards your software, you’ve written many things over the years that make me think you really need a hardheaded, experienced software engineer on staff. The CS or SE degree isn’t the important part. Real-world experience on medium-sized projects that have grown out of control is the important part, along with the ability to stand up to the boss and tell him where he’s going wrong. Whether you’d be willing to listen to him and take his professional advice, rather than simply fire him when he told you something you didn’t want to hear, is something you’ll have to ask yourself.
Most of those problems are trying to convert real life to a simulation model. There is not a one to one mapping in just about any case. But my technical support guy has his bachelor Chem End from IIT Bombay (best technical school in India) and PhD in Chem Eng from University of Alabama (he is a big Tide fan, we do not speak of the TAMU – Bama game). He has been working for me for 21 years. What happened to the time ?
My calculation engine guy has a PhD in Chem Eng from Clemson. He is working on adding solids to both solvers right now. He has been working for me for 8 years. That is mostly 650K lines of Fortran.
My user interface guy is a ECS (engineering computer science) from TAMU. He has been working for me for 10 years. Our user interface is 500K lines of C++ using MFC for the main window and a custom toolkit for the dialogs.
My son has degrees in physics and chemistry from UofH and floats between the user interface and calculation engine as I need him. He has been here part time for five years and full time for seven years. He and I actually converted our user interface from smalltalk to C++ 15 years ago, that was an experience. And I float back and forth between the user interface and calculation engine as needed. I am a mechanical engineer from TAMU with a PE. I’ve been working on the calculation engine for 31 years (starting in 1975) and the user interface for 25 years.
We swing a lot of code for a very small shop. As a result, it mostly swings us on a ever growing pendulum. The customers are hugely influential in most of what we do but occasionally I take a leap of faith and work on features that I think are missing. We talk about things continuously and it can get heated as we are all slightly opinionated (ok, very heated).
We swing a lot of code for a very small shop
As I stated after my visit to the office, it would be a nice place to work but I ain’t smart enough to mop the floors but I could mow the grass.
What I don’t see there, Lynn, is a software engineer. As I stated above, the degree isn’t important. The important part is the mindset and the training and the experience to treat a software development project as an engineering project. It’s an engineering discipline just as much as civil engineering is, and as much of a specialty. Without the software engineering perspective, you have at best an idea guy giving direction and a bunch of craftsmen doing their thing. If you apply this to putting up a building without an experienced general contractor, the problem is clear.
I’ve gone in on a lot of projects which were developed by engineers and scientists. The individual pieces might well be well suited for their task (and in fact they usually were; the engineers had enough pride to make each piece as perfect as they could), but the whole had endless problems, anything from parts not fitting together, to random and mysterious failures, to maintenance horror when something had to be changed. And the projects suffered from a lack of application of solutions to known problems, even something so simple as proper version control or tracking of requirements to code implementation.
The way to address these problems is to bring in the software project guy who can work on getting things organized — getting requirements under control, getting a release schedule under control, getting versioning of the code under control, making sure regression testing catches if something breaks when you edit a source file or upgrade a library, nailing down the contract between a service and its callers, and all the rest. Not all of this is out of control on every project, but at least one of these is out of control on every out of control project.
@OFD:
You mentioned wanting to learn some bicycle repair…
This looks like a pretty good list of tools (though it’s more geared(!) towards high-end racing bikes). At least, I think, you should add it to your references…
I don’t think I mentioned before, but I have done some amateur (and worse: paid by a big box store) bicycle work in the past.
http://lifehacker.com/the-mobile-bicycle-repair-box-1788409874
File under For What It’s Worth: Through end of voting this evening, ~38,000 early votes have been cast here, about 32% of all registered voters. Rs are at about 37% voted, Ds about 33%, and Others at about 20%. Early voting continues through Sunday November 6.
This is probably still the best reference work for bicycle repairs and set-up…
(Seems like pages were on line at one time.)
https://sutherlandsbicycle.com/product/repair-manual-7th-edition-book-cd/
Sheldon Brown was an amazing collector of bicycle information, much of it “out of date” now so more useful for the common rider or technician…
sheldonbrown.com
Thanks for those links, Mr. Spook; this fall and winter will be a good time to learn that stuff and grab a few more tools, locate an inexpensive used mountain bike in good shape and do some hands-on so I can get out there in the spring.
Many projects underway here, bit by bit.
Not good, and plays right into the hands and mouths of whatever politicians who start “waving the bloody shirt” after the requisite “mourning” and “sympathy” for the deceased. I’ll just go ahead and predict that Cankles will be first out of the slot, as this is an especially juicy tidbit for her and the progs and SJWs and BLM crowd; the suspect is a grubby looking Whitey:
http://whotv.com/2016/11/02/suspect-identified-in-murder-of-two-metro-police-officers/
And yet another, supposed, “lone-wolf” attack.
DH wrote:
“I saw that earlier this evening. I do not fucking DARE to mention it to Mrs. OFD. Let sleeping dawgs lie.”
Mrs OFD for Pope!
Bring back Hugo Chávez!
What I don’t see there, Lynn, is a software engineer. As I stated above, the degree isn’t important. The important part is the mindset and the training and the experience to treat a software development project as an engineering project.
Gotcha. I would call this function a Product Engineer or, a Product Champion. And yes, that is one of the 10+ hats that I wear. I am actually headed down the road to add this person to our organization, albeit wearing a slightly different hat:
https://www.winsim.com/jobs.html
Note to self, new person must have swordsmanship skills.
NP Completeness – my eyes glazed over too, and I’m a CS graduate.
Do you get people repeatedly using your free two week password?
Do you get people repeatedly using your free two week password?
All the time. The website software (written in C++ by yours truly) keeps a log of passwords issued and locks them down to two. Supposedly. I reset it each time we have a major release and people sneak through that door all the time.
Yep, yep, yep. That was a major problem for the electric power consulting company I consulted for, years ago. The best was the requests for support from people who hadn’t bought the (very expensive) products, always from overseas, always from people whose English was sketchy at best.
Do you get people repeatedly using your free two week password?
All the time. The website software (written in C++ by yours truly) keeps a log of passwords issued and locks them down to two. Supposedly. I reset it each time we have a major release and people sneak through that door all the time.
Or, they install our software on their buddy’s laptop and use it there. Or another computer in their office. That usually gets them another two passwords unless we block that computer id also after the first password.
Our software security has been hacked by both of the Russians and Chinese. They kinda alternate. The last version they hacked was 14.01d, we are at version 15.04.
I have sued several companies here in the USA for using hacked versions of our software. I’ve always won. Plus the FBI caught a guy selling our software on his server in California, plus about a thousand other types of software. They put him and his buddies in jail.