07:50 – I had one of those days yesterday that was, as Pournelle says, eaten by locusts. At the end of the day, I’d worked hard all day but felt as though I hadn’t accomplished much.
In retrospect, though, I guess I actually did accomplish a fair amount. It was just that it was a bunch of small stuff. I processed orders and shipped a couple of kits, answered in detail several queries about kits, did more research on shipping to Canada, reviewed the Preface for the forensics book, did final assembly of a dozen chemistry kits to add to inventory, made up boxes and started assembly on a new batch of 30 chemistry kits, downloaded and burned the current version of Linux Mint, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Speaking of Linux Mint, I really have to do something about my main office system. It’s quite elderly, although still fast. (It’s an Intel Core2 Quad Q9650.) But it’s running Ubuntu 9.04, which hasn’t been supported for a long time. This system was scheduled for replacement 18 months ago, but I never got around to it. Barbara’s old system failed, and the only system we had available at the time was the six-core Core i7-980X box that we built as the Extreme System for the 3rd edition of Building the Perfect PC. That one that was to be my new system, but she’s using it now. Meanwhile, my den system has also failed. That was the mini-ITX system we built for the book, and I need to do something about it as well.
So I think I’ll order a replacement Intel Atom motherboard/processor for the den system, rebuild it, and convert it to Barbara’s system. (She mainly does web browsing and email on that system, so the six-core system she’s using now is gross overkill.) I’ll then do a quick refurb on Barbara’s current system and convert it to my new main office system and retire the current one to stand-by status. To replace the den system, I’ll just build a microtower system with a low-power processor.
11:04 – I just ordered an Intel D2700MUD Atom motherboard/processor combo and a 2GBx2 Crucial memory kit for it. I wasn’t about to order anything ever again from NewEgg, so I searched Amazon.com. Amazon didn’t stock that board, but several of their vendors did. I decided to order from PC Rush, which had a large number of excellent reviews. Their price, including free shipping, was $85.55.
I added the item to my cart and then searched the PC Rush storefront for compatible memory. Compared to NewEgg’s search system, Amazon’s sucks. I wasn’t able to find any compatible memory on the Amazon PC Rush storefront. Or perhaps I could have, if I’d been willing to scroll through 300 pages of items from that storefront. So I Googled PC Rush, went to their site, and added the BOXD2700MUD to my cart. Then I went over to the Crucial website and used their configurator to search for compatible memory for that board. It returned only one hit, on the CT2KIT25664BC1067 2GBx2 kit, for $29.99 with free shipping. So I went back to the PC Rush site, which also had that kit, but for $36. I added it to my cart anyway, figuring it was worth the $6 difference to have to place only one order. But when I added that memory kit to my cart (which already contained the motherboard with free shipping), my shipping cost went to $16 for ground shipping. Geez. So I deleted the memory kit from my cart and submitted the order for the motherboard only. It took me about two minutes to order the memory kit on the Crucial site, and saved me $22.
My first thought was to install this motherboard and memory in my mini-ITX den system, but I think instead I may install it in a new Antec Sonata or other micro-tower case–I have plenty of those sitting around–and put it in Barbara’s office to replace that six-core system. The Atom is much, much slower than the Core i7 she has now, but she probably won’t even notice the difference using the system for web browsing and email. I, on the other hand, need as much CPU as possible for doing stuff like video production. I’ll just pull her hard drive from the big system and put it in the new one. Then, with a quick upgrade to the current Linux Mint, she’ll be good to go. I’ll do a quick clean/re-furb on the six-core system, put in a 3 TB drive (which has been sitting on my desk for months now), and rebuild my main system. My current system will go under the desk, not plugged into anything, and sit there moldering in case I need an emergency replacement. Then I’ll probably order another D2700MUD and memory for it and use those to upgrade my den system.
14:07 – With the exception of Angela Merkel, eurozone “leaders” are delusional. Here’s yet another example. At today’s summit of the Big Four (Germany, France, Italy, and Spain) leaders, those leaders spent their time discussing a “growth pact”. The summit was followed by a press conference. A typical headline is something like “Europe’s Big Four Agree €130 billion stimulus package, 1% of EU GNP”. All hail the €130 billion growth package. The problem is, it’s not a €130 billion package; it’s a €10 billion package. That is, only €10 billion is “new money”. The rest is imaginary–leveraging that €10 billion to €60 billion using accounting smoke and mirrors and demonstrably false assumptions–or money that’s already been spoken for and allocated. The eurozone leaders, including unfortunately Merkel, seem convinced that the markets are stupid. The markets will shrug this off, just as they shrugged off the so-called €100 billion Spanish bailout, which hasn’t even been requested yet, let alone approved, let alone paid.
Meanwhile, we keep seeing articles about Merkel coming under pressure. Merkel is not under any pressure. There’s nothing the EU, the IMF, the US, or anyone else can do to force her to pay the outstanding debts of the rest of the eurozone. Her voters across the political spectrum don’t want her to do it. She doesn’t want to do it. She’s not going to do it. Even if she were inclined to do it, the German constitution prohibits her from doing it. And even if she ignored her own convictions and the German constitution, German citizens would crucify her if she did it, perhaps literally. It’s just not going to happen. And yet it’s the only hope for the eurozone, which is why everyone keeps talking about it as though there’s even the tiniest probability of it occurring.
Hey Bob, is Maximum PC stepping on your toes here with their new special summer magazine, “How-To Build the Perfect PC”:
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I am getting ready to upgrade about four of our PCs with Intel E6750 cpus and Intel D975bx2 motherboards to Intel I5-3570K cpus and Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H motherboards. We are upgrading our shop to Windows 7×64 which I believe needs a minimum of 8 GB of ram and that old D975BX2 barely supports 4 GB on a good day. I hate to throw away those old cpus and motherboards but I have no idea what to do with them as I do not even have their boxes.
I never throw away ANYTHING!
Well, that’s a slight fib. I ditched a couple of HP scanners a few months back, bought in 1998 and ’99. But I still have a Celeron 366 system (1999 vintage.) I think I have 10-12 desktops and two laptops, I really ought to go count them… 🙂
The all-time record around here was 32 functional desktop systems, of which maybe two dozen were actually plugged in and running, connected to monitors and keyboards by KVM switches. I think I posted a photo years ago of the table behind my desk, with maybe eight systems stacked under it, all of them running.
As of now, the only systems running are Barbara’s and my office systems. The den system went belly-up. There are probably half a dozen systems sitting in the work room, some of which probably actually work. Some of them may even be unused. I can’t remember.
We’ve got 15 systems running in our office at the moment. I have upgraded almost half of them to Windows 7 x64. BTW, Windows 7 x64 now supports 20 users connections instead of the old 10 limit. So, I am going to upgrade our Windows 2003 Server with 20 CALs to Windows 7 x64. All it does is file and print serving, we don’t do domains.
We usually manage to keep our packrat tendencies in check. A couple of weeks ago, we ordered a skip and filled it up. For the few things that you really would have found a use for, it’s worth getting rid of the hundreds of things you really never will use. So we are down to “only” 9 computers in the house, but those all see at least semi-regular use.
Speaking of throwing things away, the greenies in Switzerland are campaigning for a ban on plastic bags, because they take so long to decompose. This makes just as much sense as greenie arguments always do, since Swiss garbage is incinerated and used to generate power.
I know Chuck will disagree, but I really hope our host is right. Sometimes one doesn’t understand what political pressure can be brought to bear, but I hope Merkel/Germany do hold the course, and torpedo any attempts to create “Eurobond” and other means of subsidizing profligacy. As an example: Merkel was fighting a tax on financial transactions (which many economists have been touting as a quick way to raise money) – she caved just this week. Maybe not a bad thing, if it will serve to limit the kinds of rapid machine-trading that have nothing to do with economic productivity, but it is still an additional tax that will never go away.
I thought 7 machines was a lot. Not counting the two working machines that work but aren’t plugged in.
One of my customers is in Greece and is about six months late in paying me. I’m beginning to wonder if they will be able to. They are a refinery and usually have hard cash but one wonders if the whole thing is falling down. Luckily my invoice is dollar denominated.
I am also having trouble getting money out of my South American clients including Mexico. It is beginning to look like anyone who was marginal a couple of years ago is now thoroughly in the ditch.
Am I the only one who is scared of Mr. Obama coming to the rescue of the world?
Am I the only one who is scared that Mr. Obama is already throwing money out the back door to all of the world’s problem children?
Well, there are four of us. Everyone has their own PC, there is a server, there are two laptops, and two computers that get used mainly for my wife’s business (so maybe they don’t really count).
Obama throwing money around? The “Shadow Stats” site had an article a while back that claimed the US annual deficit for 2009 was around 9 trillion – if the government followed the same accounting standards that it requires of companies. I’m not enough of an accountant to evaluate this claim, but other aspects of the site are very believable. So, yes, I can imagine Obama (or Bush, or Romney) throwing money at the world’s problems.
I have several computers in the house and only two people in the house. I have been networked since 1995 with high speed internet to all the systems. Back in ’95 I only had two systems but have acquired more. A couple of systems I just don’t want to throw away as they still work, are 64 bit running W7. One desktop is used by me and is an I7, 16 gig, with 3 1tb drives. Wanted to split up the storage to get multiple paths to Photoshop work disks. Wife has a laptap that needs to be replaced sometime soon. I have a HP Netbook that I won at a dog and pony show/lunch in a drawing. Lastly I have my IPad. Wireless naturally.
I used to have several partial systems with many parts. I have tossed those out as they were just taking up space. Hard to throw out five 160 gig disk drives but I really have no place to put them.
Coupla decrepit laptops here at home, one running Vista and one on Ubuntu 11.04. Two 64-bit boxes, one running Win7 Ultimate and one running RHEL 6.2. A netbook at work with Lubuntu/Deft and my work laptop is about to be cleansed entirely of XP and have RHEL 6.2 put on it, per authorization of my long-distance boss in upstate NY. The Vista laptop is Mrs. OFD’s and I have the pieces to upgrade the RAM and put Win7 on it but she has also mentioned just getting a new machine, so we will see. If she does that, I will confiscate that laptop and of course Borg it with Linux. We’d give it to Princess daughter but she will no doubt insist on a new machine. Which will be Win7, I guess, though if both of the latter machines get bought in the near future, they may come with Win8, which I only hear bad stuff about… I would then knock them back to Win7 accordingly.
One laptop here with another on the way. Also ordered an HP Microserver, which will fill all my storage needs, now fulfilled by an external drive box. Microserver will also be the experimental box for the Linux automation system at the radio project.
Only problem here is the desktop system I built for my son for his first year at uni. He is emotionally attached to that system, and it sits in another corner of Tiny House, even though I just gave him one of my 500gb hard drives to upgrade from his 60gb drive in his quad-core Lenovo Think Pad, which runs circles around the old abandoned desktop. It even has the original CRT monitor sitting there forlornly, not turned on in over a year. The motherboard in that computer is one of those with chipset problems—manufactured in 1999, before the Intel-Microsoft team got all the chipset bugs worked out in 2001, so it really is not a useful computer, considering. I cannot bring myself to throw it out behind his back, but it will never find serious use in this family again. It got him 2 undergraduate degrees in 5 years, so it has served its purpose.
Two laptops in the corner from other family members, are dead and not resurrectable. I would take them to the tox-away day, but when they had the last one, there was an hour wait to get in, all day long. May just dump them in the trash, as there is no ban on any item but certain chemicals for our trash pickups.
Couple things fell together this week, which should resolve some of the problems I have had in determining what to do to Tiny House in order to get it sold, but not lose everything I put into it in the process.
While in Germany, I really had no problem consigning myself to the German way. Over there, everyone renews everything in 15 year cycles. People get all new furniture for their various rooms, paint the rooms regularly, paint the outside of the house every 15 years, new cars every 5 to 7 years—nothing is sacred. They buy new clothes every year, instead of wearing worn-out dated styles. I am carrying on with that now that I am back over here, and just bought some summer clothes while over in Indy today, now that they are on sale to clear things out for back-to-school.
Only thing I need is to figure out how to share the old HP LJ1200 printer, so it is not attached to my computer for sharing.
brad wrote:
“Speaking of throwing things away, the greenies in Switzerland are campaigning for a ban on plastic bags, because they take so long to decompose. This makes just as much sense as greenie arguments always do, since Swiss garbage is incinerated and used to generate power.”
Here in Canberra we have the misfortune of a Labor territory government being propped up by the Greens. One of the prices the ALP had to pay for their support was a ban on free plastic bags given away at supermarkets, etc. Of course, they can sell light weight bags for 10-15 cents (or whatever they want) or heavy duty ones for around a dollar. The whole thing is a complete PITA. Elections are due here soon and I am definitely putting the Greens last. (We have preferential voting.)
I’ve never really seen it explained what was wrong with the old bags. I recycled the ones I didn’t need and used some as bin liners.
Chuck wrote:
“While in Germany, I really had no problem consigning myself to the German way. Over there, everyone renews everything in 15 year cycles. People get all new furniture for their various rooms, paint the rooms regularly, paint the outside of the house every 15 years, new cars every 5 to 7 years—nothing is sacred. They buy new clothes every year, instead of wearing worn-out dated styles. I am carrying on with that now that I am back over here, and just bought some summer clothes while over in Indy today, now that they are on sale to clear things out for back-to-school.”
I’ll never understand the idea of throwing away serviceable stuff just to get something new of the same. I bought my house in 1985 and a lot of the contents are of that vintage. Washing machine is 27 years old, more than enough to vote, so is the dining room table. The lounge suite is about 18 years old, so I guess I should visit the electoral office to get it enrolled, so it can vote against the Greenmailers. Yes, I still have clothes from the Seventies, as well of many university textbooks from the Seventies onwards. I don’t envy the family members who will have to finalise my estate.
brad says:
I know Chuck will disagree, but I really hope our host is right. Sometimes one doesn’t understand what political pressure can be brought to bear, but I hope Merkel/Germany do hold the course, and torpedo any attempts to create “Eurobond” and other means of subsidizing profligacy. As an example: Merkel was fighting a tax on financial transactions (which many economists have been touting as a quick way to raise money) – she caved just this week. Maybe not a bad thing, if it will serve to limit the kinds of rapid machine-trading that have nothing to do with economic productivity, but it is still an additional tax that will never go away.
Well, she is right on the financial transaction tax. To eliminate transaction costs is EXACTLY why the EU was created. To bring them back is insane. As things get desperate, it is pretty clear that the euro is so new, that everybody remembers what it was like before the euro. No business wants that, nor do the vast majority of EU citizens; they have seen both sides and know which has been better for them. If the euro had been created as far back as the US dollar, no one would remember the greenback or the separate currencies each state minted as money, so they might give dissolving an illiquid dollar a try. But everyone does remember before the euro. And no one wants a return to that—especially business.
When the euro was instituted, they took the debt to GDP ratio of all the EU countries joining, and averaged them. It was 60%. That is how that figure came into being, and those who were over that figure were to bring themselves down to that percentage. Any failure along those lines is as much the fault of EU oversight as it is the individual country’s.
I really marvel that you still call it “profligate”. If you take all the assets and debts of the EU and the US, and melt them down, the EU comes out considerably ahead—even now in the middle of their crisis. What you want is an economic impossibility: a country with no debt. And I am speaking of the whole union of Europe as a country, not the nation states that make it up. It is quite possible that individual nation states can have no debt, just as the state of Indiana has none, by mandate of its constitution. But there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that all of them will EVER have zero debt—just as there is no chance all states in the US union will ever have coincident zero debt. That is as impossible as having no rain anywhere on the planet tomorrow.
California, of course, is the American Greece and Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland combined. Jerry Brown has given the citizens of that state a choice—either raise taxes or he will cut expenditures at his discretion, starting with education, and there will be no sacred cows. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.
Meanwhile, Merkel now looks like a fish flopping around out of water. I think someone has finally convinced her just how bad it would be if Germany withdrew from the euro. First of all, German banks hold 40% of all the debt of the EU, denominated in euros. If Deutschland withdraws from the euro, just for starters, they can kiss that fortune completely goodbye.
Only a guarantee of the bonds of member states by the ECB will solve the problem. There is no other way out. If Merkel holds the course as you want, we will all watch with you as the female kamikaze brings it all down. Her holding the course is THE problem here. Every day is making that more and more evident. If you want the EU to survive, then you had better be hoping the ECB bond guarantee becomes fact. Whipping those “profligate” member states until they die is not a solution. It’s a useless and pitiful shame that can do no more good than closing the barn door after the horses have escaped.
Wars are always started over resources. Are broken bonds resources ? Can I send my troops to your country to grab stuff to pay for your bad bonds ?
I just realized that NATO may die over this debacle also. NATO has been dying for quite a while now but I would rather it not go quite yet.
Chuck wrote:
“First of all, German banks hold 40% of all the debt of the EU, denominated in euros. If Deutschland withdraws from the euro, just for starters, they can kiss that fortune completely goodbye.”
There’s a saying that your comments brought to mind, something about “throwing good money after bad. I think the money Germany has “invested” is gone. I don’t care if Greece and the others stay or leave, just so long as they stop living off the public tit.
California, of course, is the American Greece and Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland combined. Jerry Brown has given the citizens of that state a choice—either raise taxes or he will cut expenditures at his discretion, starting with education, and there will be no sacred cows. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.
Oh there are sacred cows here. Brown won’t buck the public sector unions. Try even a 5% pay cut (15% would be far more reasonable). Never happen. Schools will loose money but not teachers. Prisoners will be shoved back at the counties but no prison guard will have pay reduced.
We now have three tax referendums qualified for the ballot. I predict all will fail.
But yes, it will be interesting.
There are state problems everywhere. Governor Perry of the Great State of Texas has told all of the state employees to get ready for a 10% cut come Jan 1. We are facing massive unfunded Medicaid problems here in Texas with some saying that Medicaid spending will pass public school funding for the next biennium.
” It was 60%. That is how that figure came into being, and those who were over that figure were to bring themselves down to that percentage. Any failure along those lines is as much the fault of EU oversight as it is the individual country’s.”
I agree absolutely. The only thing I find disappointing is this: The people we are discussing, both in the individuals and in the EU, are not only all grown up, but were specifically elected to fulfull responsibilities just like this. Their failure, collectively and individually, is purest incompetence.
I don’t want a country with no debt. I do want a country that, on average, has a balanced budget. That means that its debt will, on average, decrease. In bad times, it may briefly increase. The current European governments add to their debts (just like the US) essentially every year, more in bad years and less in good years. This is the kind of irresponsibility that has led to debts far, far higher than the 60% limit. Again, purest incompetence.
Given this track record, jointly guaranteed bonds will *not* solve the problem. They will reduce the interest rates demanded of the countries in the worst trouble, which will remove the ultimate constraint on their borrowing. The result: the problems will be postposed only until they are so great that all of Europe goes under. In the current situation, politicians in a single country (like Estonia) can show restraint and their country will do well. With Euro-bonds, *all* countries must show restraint. To use your analogy: this is as likely has having no rain anywhere in Europe – it just isn’t going to happen.
The horses have escaped. They’ll have to fend for themselves until someone can go round them up. Meanwhile, on really ought to close the barn door before the cows, pigs and chickens also escape.
I don’t agree. I don’t believe that a country should ever spend more than it has available to spend. If it wants to undertake a major project, it should run a surplus until it has the funds necessary to complete that project.
I think all countries need someone like Mary Chervenak in charge of their finances. Mary didn’t buy her first car until she could pay cash for it. When she and Paul bought their house, she told me that signing the mortgage application was the hardest thing she ever did. She felt ill at the idea of going into debt. Mary is the kind of person who should be running things.
Well, Mary might be a good person to have running a country but not a company. Debt is perfectly normal, and can make sense. I didn’t blink when I borrowed $55,000 in 1985 to buy my house. I’d saved a fair stash already, had a perfectly adequate salary to make the payments. It made sense for me to borrow.
I agree that there was a problem. What I do not agree with, is flogging the transgressing countries with absolutely impossible demands—demands that will drown them—after the fact. The EU must put some real teeth into their oversight—not into their hindsight.
Guaranteeing the bonds WILL bring down borrowing costs to realistic levels. But you are right that the countries needing to sell these bonds, need a gun to their head to make sure they do not use that money to further expand their debt over the agreed Maastricht limit.
Still, on the whole, the EU is in better shape than the US, and as the Renminbi becomes one of the world alternative reserve currencies (thanks to US calls for China to revalue their currency upwards against the dollar, to which China has decided they want paid in yuan in the future, and screw the dollar and the people with the daring Chutzpah to tell them what to do),—with the yuan now held with significant reportable reserves by quite a few major economies,—the dollar is headed for a much worse disaster than the euro, when China begins unloading its massive holdings of the dollar, giving the US economists and politicians exactly what they want: a dollar worth much, much less on the world market than it is today. Again, like the housing bubble and derivative market collapse, mainstream economists do not see this coming. Electronic banking will make it easy for China to open up the Renminbi to international trade, and it will happen much more quickly than stupid American economists think it will.
Every American I know calls the US a god-fearing Christian nation. If that is so, why do they COMPLETELY ignore the Biblical example of Joseph’s accumulating reserves in the good years, to sustain things during the bad? Because it is in the Old Testament and isn’t Christian? Since I have been alive, we have yet to eliminate economic downturns, so the next one IS coming. But we are NEVER ready for it.
Well, I’m not a Yank so I’m allowed to say this: The US *is not* a God fearing country.
I used to play cards on the Internet, and played many Americans, including quite a few Christians. There was very little to distinguish the Christians from the others in terms of behaviour. One serious Christian woman I knew fairly well suggested that a lot of woman liked a bit of S&M and I’d be more successful with them if I indulged them in this.
A strange one was the Christian minister who also was a nudist (and a control freak.) I’d say less people as a percentage of total population in Australia are religious, but the ones who are tend to be more serious. In the US most religious people wear their religion as a facade.
Religion in the US – what I find odd is the huge growth in the “evangelical” churches over the past couple of decades. These seem to me to be the extremist churches.
My family in the US all belong to evangelical churches. Out of politeness, and because I figured it would be a good cultural experience for my teenagers, we went along to a Sunday service while visiting a couple of months ago.
The minister gave one of those sing-song, highly-emotional “gotta save your soul” kinds of sermons; the kind my grandmother used to watch on TV all the time. You know, soul-sucking hypocrites like Tammy Fay Bakker and Pat Robertson, sucking on grandma’s social security to build their mansions.
It was surreal, seeing a “Satan’s coming, we gotta save your soul” sermon given in a small church to an audience of maybe 30 people. I mean, he knows all of these people (ok, except us), and must assume they are all already “saved”. Really, it was weird…
I know some quite admirable people who are evangelical ministers and they aren’t *all* after your dough. Some of them have given up good, secure jobs to train for the ministry, which takes 2-4 years and lived in semi-poverty as a result. One chap I know (who I agree was nuts) gave up a job as a low level executive with our then largest automotive builder to go into ministry. He and his wife studied for 2-3 years at a small fundamentalist college in Missouri, where they had to get up at about 4 AM to do the only work their student visas allowed them to do: in the college kitchens.
One of my good friends – known him for 40 years – has now got a pastorate at one of the best Baptist churches in South Australia, but he’s the exception, not the rule. And he rebuild that church after a long period of decline.
I despise most of the tele-evangelists for various reasons, not least because Christianity is partly a social thing and people should go to a bricks and mortar church and meet others, not just sit at home watching on TV.
Greg, card players online may not be a reasonable choice for a sampling of American Culture, nor it’s God-Fearing hypocrisy.
It’s hard to compare which nation is more religious as censuses are taken at different times, but Wikipedia has USA with 78.4% self identified as Christian (2007 census and dropping) and Australia with 61.1% self identified as Christian (2006 census with no indication of decline or growth). Of course that doesn’t mean very much. I was baptized as a Protestant as an infant, and therefore are considered by my government as Christian, regardless of my repeated denials. We don’t ask any questions about religion on the Canadian short form census, but do on our long form census, which we aren’t legally obligated (no longer!) to fill out.
Brad, likely the Preacher was targeting you specifically. Did he say anything like “I can sense SATAN is AMONGST us, we must PRAY to drive the EVUL AWAY!” (emphasis mine) and then look in your general direction?
Bill the heathen wrote:
“Greg, card players online may not be a reasonable choice for a sampling of American Culture, nor it’s God-Fearing hypocrisy.”
Representative samples can be pretty hard to find, I admit. And I think this place is far less representative than most.
Representative of what?
Bill was saying that the people I was playing cards with online 10 years ago may not be representative of the North American population as a whole, and of course I agreed. I also suggested that the denizens of http://www.ttgnet.com/journal are not representative of North Americans as a whole, which is self evident.
Speaking solely for myself, I don’t think of myself so much as a denizen as a creepy stalker. YMMV.
Or of anywhere else, I’ll wager!