09:22 – I need to get some small purchase orders issued for stuff we’re running low on. Things like 2.5 kilos of salicylic acid, ten meters of MFF #43 fabric and 250 g of TIS #1 stain, 50 g or 100 g each of ammonium metavanadate, sulfanilic acid, and diphenylamine, and so on. Most of them are for forensics kits, but some are for biology or chemistry kits.
I also need to finish building another three dozen sets of chemical bags for chemistry kits, which are already in progress. After that, I need to do another two dozen sets each of chemical bags for biology kits and forensic kits, as well as small parts bags for both. Then, of course, I need to build the kits themselves.
Meanwhile, I’m still working on the manuals for the Earth & Space Science kit and the AP Chemistry kit. When I get tired of working on one, I switch to the other for a while.
Lots of minor annoyances in Linux. Its state pretty much reminds me of where Windows 2000 was when it was released. It’s not the equal of WinXP yet.
Audio is flaky, sometimes requiring restarts. This morning, Audacity stopped showing all of the available input possibilities. It does this about once a week. Rescanning does no good, because I think Audacity is operating correctly, but the OS loses some of the connections that are supposed to be available at all times. The player named Video stopped responding to keyboard controls. Only clicking on the GUI will activate anything. These are typical of the frustrations Linux presents, when Windows got this stuff fixed long ago. I pretty much never touched the OS or had to restart after XP SP3. I had months of uptime on the old computer. I am lucky to get a week out of Mint 17 without having to reboot.
That’s interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever had a Windows system that didn’t need to be rebooted at least weekly, if not daily. Conversely, my Linux boxes typically run for months or years between reboots. I think my experience is more the norm than yours.
My Windows 7 x64 systems at home and office need to be rebooted monthly or so. We do have a Windows 7×64 pc at the office that has to be rebooted frequently and it has a scanner with a feeder on it. It is my experience that hardware issues are the cause of many pc problems. Buying cheap knockoff hardware will usually give you grief.
That’s interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever had a Windows system that didn’t need to be rebooted at least weekly, if not daily.
We have multiple windows systems that have run for months without rebooting. We only reboot when a patch is installed that affects system files requiring a reboot. My personal system at work stays on 24×7 and has not been rebooted in over a month. And I indeed do a lot work on my system at work.
Okay, I’ll accept “over a month” as defining stability for Windows systems. But I was speaking literally when I said that my Linux boxes over the years have not needed to be rebooted for months to years on end. In fact, most of them needed to be rebooted only when I installed a new OS or when the power failed long enough that I had to shut down the systems before the UPS battery died.
I suspect that Chuck’s experience is because he’s doing intense audio work, which has always been a weak point in Linux. Same deal with scanners.
Are those Linux systems running a graphical user interface? The Linux / BSD systems just running a kernel are indeed very, very, very stable. My web server running FreeBSD has been up for 297 days as of today and was last rebooted for a kernel upgrade. Before that it had been up for two years or so.
My Windows systems often go for up to a month between reboots. When I do need to hit the button it’s often because a browser clogs up or the printer software conks out, as now. It’s a PITA, but I sometimes have to reboot just to make the printer work.
Yep, every one of them. For a short time back in the early 2000’s I ran a Linux server with a CLI, but everything since has run either Gnome or KDE other than test-bed systems I used to check out alternative GUIs.
Well, if an old operating system like Linux is not working, how about an older one:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/07/dos-boot-ars-spends-a-day-working-in-freedos/?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_campaign=hootsuite
A server without a GUI, running standard applications, can be very stable with both systems. My wife’s company has a Linux server running local network services, backups, and so forth. I only ever reboot it when I have to do some sort of major update. It also runs VMware, and the VM it hosts is a standard Windows-XP installation running SQL 2008. That machine only ever gets rebooted when the Linux machine reboots. Neither has ever had any sort of stability problem.
I think the problem with Windows is likely all the funky software that people install on it. It is still pretty normal for Windows software to install install privileged libraries and services that are, frankly, unnecessary – often crap associated with license restrictions. Or “features” that nobody in their right minds wants (like the GUI associated with non-corporate HP printer drivers).
On a totally different note: surge protectors apparently work. I have no idea what happened, but yesterday three pieces of electronic equipment in our combined house/office died: the DVD player, the projector attached to it, and our firewall. Two I might have accepted as a weird coincidence, but three is a bit much, so I started looking more closely.
We’ve been having a lot of thunderstorms the past two days. In the entire building, only seven pieces of electronic equipment (out of dozens) are not plugged into surge protectors – and those were three of them. So the conclusion is pretty obvious…
What I find weird is that all three still do something – they aren’t entirely dead, just useless. The DVD player displays its usual “Hello”; eventually this changes to “Goodbye” and it turns itself off. The projector beeps and turns on its fan; a few seconds later it turns off with a generic error signal. The firewall turns on and lights up all the same network lights that were on when it was hooked into the network – even though it now has nothing plugged into it.
I’ll have to contact our household insurance and see if there’s any chance of this being covered…
I’ll have to contact our household insurance and see if there’s any chance of this being covered
It probably is covered. But if the cost is close to your deductible I would not file a claim. Even contacting the insurance company about a claim will ding your insurance and may result in increased rates. A claim where the insurance company actually has to pay will most assuredly result in increased premiums.
On a totally different note: surge protectors apparently work.
All of the new home builders that I have been looking at lately install a whole home surge protector as a part of their standard features. I wonder if these can be retrofitted into an existing home?
I wonder if these can be retrofitted into an existing home?
Yes, they can. You need to hire an electrician to do the install. They get wired into your existing breaker panel. They are not cheap.
I wouldn’t depend on a whole-house surge protector. It’s basically a can of sand (literally) and is intended to stop most of the energy from a huge spike/surge from getting into your house wiring. It may or may not be sufficient to protect delicate electronics.
The phone company has been installing similar carbon-granule protectors on phone lines for probably 100 years. Again, the goal is to stop the vast majority of a spike/surge from getting into the house. It’ll prevent a lightning strike on the line from electrocuting someone who’s on the phone, but it’s not necessarily enough to protect electronics.
I suspect that Chuck’s experience is because he’s doing intense audio work, which has always been a weak point in Linux. Same deal with scanners.
And video. I agree that is the case. I really did have months of XP uptime — especially in Berlin, where we never had power interruptions due to all city cables being buried. Power failures have caused most of my down time since returning to Tiny House. Lightning taking out transformers and car accidents taking down wires are the main reasons I have failures at Tiny House.
However, once M$ brought out XP SP3, I just never had to reboot, only log off the current user and log back on. With Mint, that is not enough; problems persist after a log-out and log back on. The lockups in Libre Office are starting to drive me nuts. I am sure it is due to some software I installed. I put in a lot of stuff I needed all at once, so I have no idea which it might be, but I do not recall the lockups until I made the actual switch from Windows to Mint. Right before that, I installed WINE, VLC, VirtualBox, and quite a few others, all at once. Hopefully, updates will eventually take care of this. Speaking of updates, I never updated Windows after XP SP3. At all.
Oh — one thing I have found out, is that if you use the between LTS versions of Mint, many packages, like Libre Office and such, are never updated again, once they move on to the next version. That is one advantage of using the LTS versions, as those updates will continue for years, not just 6 months.
The main reason I never updated Windows is that I did not trust M$ not to disable or remove things in the updates, once Gates left. I do not have that same fear with Linux, so that increased trust, plus the fact that it is clear Mint 17 needs the updates for where it is right now, is the reason I am not avoiding updates to Linux.
We have 2 paths for lightning at the radio project — power and antenna. We have been hit with both.
When we had the old tube transmitter, only power hits did damage. But with the new solid state transmitter, we have been hit by antenna surges, too. In the early days, we once took a power hit that actually melted the insulation on one of the conductors from breaker box to the transmitter. That hit caused immediate failure of a transformer which had a lead melted off, and later failures of 2 of 3 rectifiers. That tube transmitter was built to jungle specifications. The solid state stuff is pretty fragile.
The building has that big power line strike protector, but it obviously did not catch that early hit. The breaker box was carbon black when we took off the cover, so there was an helluvan arc-over then.
We now have additional spike protectors on every single circuit, plus UPS on every item in the shack. Additionally, the solid state transmitter has a high price tag Eaton line conditioner with enough battery storage (about 300 pounds worth) to keep 3kw of power pumping for 40 minutes. Our power failures are seldom more than 10 minutes except for a recent car accident.
As for the antenna, we just discovered — after the recent transmitter failure — that the outside of the coax cable has not been properly grounded (it was grounded to the tower, which is actually insulated from true Earth ground). We have a tower crew coming out next week to fix that and double-check the integrity of the lightning arrestors, which we also suspect may be grounded to the tower.
Errands this AM… I have been meaning to chime in, but haven’t had the opportunity.
Whole house surge suppressors are a must in lightning country. Lightning is very serious business. They used to be quite affordable, but don’t know now. Here is Kalifornia, there still don’t seem to be any rules against owners doing electrical work, although unions in your area might object. Inspections here seem to be mainly confined to work that requires a permit. If you are confident you know what you are doing, go ahead. The main challenge to putting in a whole house suppressor is often finding room in the panel. Other than that, it is pretty hard to screw up. In addition to incoming surges, you also need to soak up internally generated spikes, usually caused by switching large motors OFF (not so much ON.) This is best accomplished with a simple MOV surge suppressor near the motor. Finally, use strong surge suppressors to protect electronics. I have some older ones that have lots of inductors and capacitors in addition to the MOVs, and seem to be well designed. Haven’t bought any in years, and wouldn’t know how to find them. Of course, a really good UPS is always a good idea. Robert has the best ones. I am working on an isolated UPS system for the whole house, but that, like many other things, is a work in process.
Oh, the above is just for a residence. Chuck W’s transmitter is an example of much more serious business, with an order of magnitude more stuff. Sorry for your lightning strike, Chuck. More repairs.
My experience with OS stability also has a lot to do with hardware. I really wish I knew what is good nowadays, especially since I need to buy a new notebook for the wife’s sewing machine. Lenovo used to be very good, but now also sells cheap stuff. Fortunately, I know someone in the business, and will seek up-to-date advice.
Most of my stability problems on Linux have had to do with network issues. Sometimes restarting Samba works, but usually I need to restart the whole system to get file sharing over the LAN to resume working. (Chuck W, thanks for the networking reference; I plan to dive in tomorrow…) That has kept me from really testing how long it can go without a restart. I did have two older MEPIS installs that could go for months without a restart, on the same hardware, so I know it is not the hardware. I REALLY liked MEPIS, but it seems to be fading from popularity. A shame. Mint IS better, but not as stable, at least in my experience. My other stability problem has been with Cinnamon. The GUI would suddenly just stop and restart a few seconds later, with all apps still running. It happened so fast that I never could figure it out. KDE has been solid over many distros, so I stick with it. Also like its configurability and most of its apps. I’ve used digiKam for years.
Also have had trouble with suspend to disk (Hibernate) and to RAM (Sleep,) again only with Linux. Several distros don’t seem to support one or both, which is a shame, especially since the hardware finally seems to have sorted out power management problems. On the hardware front, one system seems to drop its USB root hub upon resume from Hibernate, so no keyboard and mouse. Replugging does nothing. At that point, the only possible remedy is the big red switch, which then causes the OS to come up with a GRUB error. Arrgh. But, one of the boot options is to simply start normally, and this has always worked, so far. Does not instill confidence. I often work with multiple systems, and like to pick up where I left off, so do not like to ever restart. Power here is expensive, so I do like Sleep and Hibernate.
Windows, OTOH, has never failed me. That is, after I have all the new installation bugs swatted, especially in the old days. I started with version 2.1, but that was solid. Version 3 and variants were a little harder to get right, but I did. Every version since, up to and including 2000, has had its share of configuration problems. But once I got it right, they all were trouble free, even with the myriad of MS patches that accumulated. XP, although I don’t like its UI, has installed and run trouble free on several systems. I decided to quit while I was ahead, and have been slowly transitioning to Linux. One thing I don’t do is install a lot of apps, and maybe that is why Windows has been so good to me. I really think its vulnerabilities lie in its driver architecture, at least drivers have given me lots of trouble until I get a good one.
Now, I am considering Windows 7 for that new notebook. I really would like to go with 8, but it seems the sewing machine company claims to support only 7 and earlier. This, in spite of a compatibility mode in 8 that is supposed to run anything needing 7. My head is hurting already. The one consolation is that I can almost always find useful suggestions to solve Windows problems. When I look for Linux solutions, I frrequently find very old posted questions, often with no answers.
I wish was some kind of profit motive in Linux, at least maybe that would encourage the devs to be more responsive. As it is, they are an independent lot. Oh, I guess I do like that! I especially like the Mint crew. They are the nicest folks. Much better than XXX, where I always got yelled at. (Name masked to quench flames!) No OS is perfect: all have their quirks. Same with a lot of other things. Ask someone who works with tools, any kind.
We had the Bay Day festivities here last night; crowds started showing up during the afternoon and parking every which way all over the ‘hood; only two parked in front of the house with the right-hand wheels on the grass border but no big deal. No one attempted to park in or block the driveway. Most well-behaved except around dusk I heard a lot of cussing and violent threat language to find a couple of punk-ass kids about to go at it out front but it didn’t get to the physical level. Would have been entertaining but no such luck.
Crowds continued rolling in into the early evening, by the many hundreds; and I saw many of the grrls go by dressed in their summuh clothes but did not not turn my head as there was no darkness to go. There were at least two police boats out swanning around in the bay with blue lights flashing, presumably keeping dolt boaters and swimmers away from the fireworks platform on the pier. In the park behind us were several crappy bands and a bunch of people eating and drinking, I guess. Fireworks kicked off pretty good at 9:30 and went till 10:30 and by 11 everyone was gone and the place was dead again. Excellent!
We’re told 2,500-3,000 people show up for these capers here each year and it looked it. Nary a problem that I know of last year or this year. Pretty well-done pyrotechnics, too.
Mostly cloudy and drizzle today, though, with a good breeze. Still no pay check for us and Mrs. OFD is working right now down in lovely Manchester, NH.
Welcome to ‘Murka’s finest “gun free” zone also known as Shitcago the new murder capitol of ‘Murka:
It was just one of dozens of shooting scenes across Chicago over the long Fourth of July weekend. In all, at least 82 people were shot, 14 of them fatally, since Thursday afternoon when two woman were shot as they sat outside a two-flat within a block of Garfield Park.
The libturds are complaining this happened because of “weak” federal gun laws. Gun free zones are where crooks run rampant with guns. I wonder what the racial breakdown of the shootings/murders is. Calling Obummer! Your turf. Your mayor. ZzZzZzZzZz Send all those illegals to Shitcago. Problem solved.
Whole house surge suppressors are a must in lightning country
Is this the entire USA?
We saw a lot of lightning Friday night while we were getting two inches of rain. But our entire block went out Saturday at about noon so probably not lightning related. They got the block back up at 730pm but the transformer supplying our five houses blew up when they first replaced the fuse(s) at 2pm.
Our subdivision distribution lines are buried but our transmission lines are not. Distribution lines are 20 KV or less. Transmission lines are 69 KV, 138 KV or 345 KV.
“Gun free zones are where crooks run rampant with guns.”
Indeed. The cities and states that have the “toughest” gun control laws and ordinances. But the standard libtard response to how strict laws don’t work there is make up more strict laws; i.e., if something doesn’t work, why, we need much more of it. There’s a reason the late James Burnham titled his book “The Suicide of the West.”
One need not even bother wondering what the racial makeup is; but it is tres gauche to mention it, monsieur. The Party and the bureaucrats long ago agreed to wall off a bunch of people in the inner cities and the projects and thus sowed the whirlwind which we’ve seen erupt a few times since those halcyon days of yesteryear.
We get LOTS of lightning here in Indiana. Somehow the ocean moderated lightning and thunder in Boston, as it was a rare occurrence. Same with the lake in Chicago, as there was very little lightning there. Do not remember that much in Minneapolis, either. Rain was usually gentle and silent there and nights were cool and breezy. The drill was to open the house up at night, and let the cool breezes through, then close things up in the morning, and it would stay cool the whole day. We had a window air-conditioner in our bedroom but only needed it for a few days each summer.
Meanwhile, Indianapolis had a wild West shootout in one of my former and current neighborhoods over the 4th. Not sure this having more guns is going to work to reduce shootings. Apparently, some guy got bumped into while waiting to get into a restaurant. He pulled a gun on the guy who bumped him; the other guy also had a gun and he pulled it and both started shooting. When it was over, 7 bystanders had been shot, one critically.
http://www.wthr.com/story/25948221/2014/07/05/broad-ripple-shooting-prompts-public-outcry-to-stop-violence
As a friend who lives near the scene said this morning of that area where I have probably spent more time than in any other, “I’m going for coffee this morning in Broad Ripple. Somebody cover me.”
Broad Ripple was once typical of neighborhood business areas with movie theaters, a few food places, grocery stores, clothing shops, dry cleaners, watch makers, shoe repair, banks, optometrist, post office, etc. Over the past decade, it has turned into the outdoor version of a food court with dozens of eateries and bars of all sorts. A hundred times the foot traffic now, compared to when I was growing up.
Here in Lower Alabama, lightning strikes are all too common. A lot of houses burn when the roof ignites during a strike, and once the fire is in the roof structure the house is more or less a total loss. Years ago my family’s business lost about two days worth of revenue, in the middle of the high tourist season of mid July, when lightning strike on the transformer across the street did quite a bit of damage, some of which was hidden on our end until we got the power back. 🙁
A while back, a good buddy who is a lineman for one of the CATV companies here was telling me about setting some woman’s house on fire. It seems that some bozo had decided to use the cable company’s wiring as a ground, and when the CATV company started doing some maintenance all kinds of hilarity ensued.
And Chuck, is it possible that Mint & LibreOffice have some sort of conflict? I’m running LibreOffice on two Suse machines (a desktop, with 12.1, and a laptop running 13.1) and have never had a lockup. Mind you, I’m not doing all sorts of ‘crazy, power user’ stuff, and maybe all the audio software is having some conflict. Why not get a cheap machine to use as a test bed in order to find your hangups?
Yeah, within a couple months, I intend to get all the audio work moved off onto a desktop machine that will be part of a digital audio workstation. So eventually, I will find out. Meanwhile, my plate is too full to do anything but just consider the halt as an annoyance.
I am guessing that it is Winamp on WINE that is causing my problem with LO, but at the moment I am not going to go futzing around to find out. The lockups are about 15 seconds, and always happen when LO has been sitting idle and I start using it. I get one click, then it hangs. I always have at least 5 or 6 LO windows open — either Writer and/or Calc. Actually, it is seldom that I do not have at least 32 windows open — as I do right now with a dozen tabs in each of the Firefox windows. I think people in creative work have to have a lot of reference stuff open and be able to switch between them. At this moment, I also have the following audio programs open: Winamp; Video; VLC; Audacity; and the Rivendell automation player.
Unless it gets worse, I will just grin and bare it. (Which I can do because I live alone.)
Was that just a typo or should we be calling the sex crimes unit of the local police?
I am definitely not a fan of Rupert Murdoch or his empire that includes Fox — unfair and imbalanced, but just keep telling people the opposite. However, this article made it past my avoidance schemes (it seems to have been written for Fox):
http://watchdog.org/157880/supreme-court-takes-stand-limited-government/
I do not agree that Hobby Lobby should be able to deny paying for employees who do not have religious objections to contraceptives. Not pay for themselves or others who have religious objections, yeah. But not for people who do not share those objections. Nevertheless, we want limited government, and in the cases cited here, we seem to be getting it.
Was that just a typo or should we be calling the sex crimes unit of the local police?
I think I’m safe with this Supreme Court.
Some parts of the USA are more affected by lightning, as some have commented. IMO, there are two dimensions: frequency and strength. Tucson has a lot of very strong lightning. Where I live, we don’t have much, but it can be big strong bolts. Even a small strike can be devastating, but frequency seems to influence the likelihood of a strike. Lots of other factors enter, so it is wise to take precautions, even in areas that don’t seem to have quantity or strength.
Example, about a month ago, we had some distant lightning. Some bolts to the ground looked to be many miles long, and very strong. I wouldn’t want to be near where one hit.
We have a hill that starts about a hundred feet from our house. It is probably 250 feet tall, and there is a rock outcropping just about 150 feet from our house that seems to be occasionally struck during a rare storm. The time between the flash and the boom is extremely short, so that is my reasoning, although I have never seen it because we are seldom in that part of the house. I believe that provides a weak shielding effect, similar to living near a tall antenna tower. There is a cone of safety provided by the tower. I could look it up somewhere,, but have to get back to work before it gets late.
We had a DirecTV DVR fail a few days ago, and I am installing its replacement. I took the opportunity to do some rewiring, and it took a while. Then, I had forgotten just how many settings there are. Haven’t got to the programming yet. Sure wish there was a way to just copy all settings over.
Companies shouldn’t be buying health insurance for their employees. Just fold the value into salary.
Problem solved.
Just fold the value into salary.
People would spend the money rather than get insurance. Then these people would be going to the hospital and not paying. The problem would get worse, not better. Remember these are the same people who will not put away 5% each month into a savings account so they most assuredly would not be paying 10% for insurance.
FWIW surge, lighting et altri
Polyphaser
http://www.smithspower.com/
part of the radio´s bible
http://collinsradio.org/archives/manuals/ see 180S1 as example
enjoy
I think Linux “cheats” those numbers a little bit. Since the shell is separate from the GUI, there isn’t a need to reboot the entire system like with Windows (sort of like Pre-Win95 Windows). So, if your X Window System is giving you problems then you exit it, kill related processes if needed, and then relaunch it from the shell. Linux users (especially the more savvy ones) will do this frequently for hung processes and buggy programs and then pat themselves on the back because they haven’t had to restart the physical box in a really long time. Windows users frequently don’t have the option. So, you’re not exactly comparing apples to apples. Ask a Linux user when was the last time they had to relaunch an app because it was being a pain, or reload KDE/Gnome, or had to kill a process that was hung and the answer won’t be “years.” Also, there are a number of Linux users that do a lot of there work from the shell/console. So, remove the complications of running a X Win GUI and stability skyrockets.
So what you’re saying is that Windows is defective by design, which I agree with. The point is that a problem with a Linux app or whatever can often/usually be fixed by less drastic means than the nuclear option of rebooting, which is the only option with Windows.
Companies shouldn’t be buying health insurance for their employees. Just fold the value into salary.
Problem solved.
I wish. Health insurance and other benefits are not taxable for most employees. Salary is.
Health insurance is taxable for me since I own two percent or more of my business. But then I can deduct the cost of it since we are a Sub S corp which is treated as a partnership by the IRS. Stupid if you ask me.
People would spend the money rather than get insurance. Then these people would be going to the hospital and not paying. The problem would get worse, not better. Remember these are the same people who will not put away 5% each month into a savings account so they most assuredly would not be paying 10% for insurance.
No joke. I have a Simple IRA for my business. I will match dollar for dollar up to three percent of salary that people put into their IRAs. If Johann puts in $100, I put in $100. Very simple to manage and I do not vest the employee. I cannot even get all of my employees to do this!
Stupid if you ask me.
It’s the governments mantra.
When my aunt had a doctor bill Medicaid would reduce the amount I paid to the nursing home by the amount of the bill but would increase the amount that Medicaid paid to the nursing home to make up the difference in my reduced payment. I then paid the doctor. Would it not make more sense for Medicaid to simply pay the doctor bill? With the current method it required a different amount to be paid from her bank each month requiring me to log in and change the amount. The accounting hassle from the nursing home’s perspective must have been substantial.