07:24 – Happy birthday to me. I turn 3E today. Only two more years until I hit the Big Four-Oh.
Barbara has some yard stuff to do this weekend and we have the usual weekend chores, but we’ll spend most of the weekend on kit stuff and prepping.
16:08 – I didn’t mention it for obvious reasons, but our prepping work today included a trip up to West Jefferson. We left at 0821 and got back around 1510. The net mileage on Barbara’s trip odometer was about 240. That 85 miles up, 85 miles back, and about 70 miles of driving around looking at different areas. Driving time is about 100 minutes each way.
Colin rode with us and was a very good dog the whole time. He did throw up, but only after we got up to West Jefferson and let him out of the car. He rode along with us the whole time we were looking at different areas. The upshot is that it looks like we won’t have any problem finding a place we like and can afford. We both love the area, and in more than three hours of driving around it looking at neighborhoods we didn’t spot a single underclass person.
Chicken farms aren’t going to be a problem. Ashe County used to produce something like 800 trillion chickens a year, but last year the total was down to almost nothing. Like most mountain towns, or indeed most towns anywhere, the economy is not great, but neither is it even remotely moribund. Barbara found out that she can even continue getting the Winston-Salem paper delivered to our door every morning. Internet service is better there than it is here. Fiber is everywhere. Home prices seem pretty reasonable. There are many areas where nice 3,000 SF homes sell for $500,000 and up, but that usually because their property has magnificent mountain views. There are many other areas where equally nice homes sell for $200,000 and under. Neither Barbara nor I are willing to pay extra for the views.
Before we started driving around, Sherman (the agent/broker) told us not to be surprised when people waved at us. Indeed, there was a lot of that. We were driving Barbara’s car, so it couldn’t have been that people were recognizing Sherman’s. They’re just naturally friendly up there.
Some of the roads in areas we visited weren’t immediately obvious as roads. I thought a couple of them were someone’s driveway. There are a lot of very nice homes up in the hills surrounding the town itself, and many of them are on narrow, twisting roads, some of which are gravel. I mentioned to Sherman that when we spoke with Amy, his colleague, she mentioned that getting in and out could sometimes be problem, and that I’d told her that we wouldn’t need to get in or out when the weather was bad. We’d just stay home and since we’d have at least a year’s supply of food and other stuff in the basement we wouldn’t have any need of leaving home unless we wanted to. He didn’t even blink. I suspect he’s sold a lot of homes to preppers. He also said we’d fit in just fine. The culture in mountain towns is much more self-reliant.
After our first trip, I’d say that Barbara and I were about 95% sure we wanted to move to the West Jefferson area. I think today’s trip bumped that up to 100%. Now it’s just a question of getting it done.
And, to top off a good day, we got home early enough to process orders and get a couple of science kits ready to be picked up.
Happy Birthday!
2 More years to 40, too bad how some folks get prematurely gray
At last…eligible for social security–you too can be on the dole, if you wish. Happy Birthday.
Incidentally, the National Park Service considers us “senior citizens” when we turn 62 and we can get a lifetime pass to all the parks for ten bucks. I’ll be taking advantage of this when Mrs. OFD and I head down to Bucks County, PA on my birthday, and I visit Valley Forge and Brandywine.
A day of driving steady rain yesterday and it’s gorgeous here today. Yard and porch work!
An article on SEAL Team 6 that is worth reading in your spare time.
Thanks for the link @MrAtzo,
I get a bit of a chuckle when I see anything related to Navy Seals. I come from a time where Seals and those of us who supported them did not talk.
The boats (submarines to you landlubbers) I were on in the 70s supported many Seal missions. No we didn’t just sit around, we were their “taxi” service only they didn’t wait for us to stop to get out or get on. Seals have the biggest balls going for doing what they do, but many related to me that the worst part of a mission was leaving and re-entering the submarine while it was in motion (sorry folks, I cannot tell you the speed). Many of our runs were just training, but we never knew what was what ahead of time and often not even after pickup. The only obvious times were when wounded returned.
I only hope that these guys stay on our side. An indication that they are not is if the standards are lowered for women. If so, our end is near.
I never got to work with SEALs during my time in SEA; the spec ops guys I most often ran into were Marine LRRPs and Green Berets; they had us at one point actually providing security for the Berets at Bien Hoa as the war was “ending.” Most of them were professionals and acted accordingly; some were out-and-out psychos. But I was a just a stupid kid with a machine gun who somehow ended up in a spec ops wing. Junior enlisted scum.
Happy Birthday!
Happy LXIInd Bob !! Hope that you have many, many more.
Did Barbara make you a BD-cake using prepper ingredients ?
Happy Birthday Dr. Bob! West Jefferson sounds wonderful.
Just got back from Sam’s Club. About 150 dozen eggs in the cooler. I didn’t see a bunch of peeps trying to grab some, but they may be oblivious.
A late in the day Happy Birthday to RBT.
Found your trip report very interesting and it makes me a bit envious.
@OFD, when the Seals were “riding” with us our usual good food on the submarine got even better. There was a lot of rib-eye steaks (real ones, not Mil-Spec), whole Maine Lobster (we usually only got tails), and Blue Crabs. The Seals spent a lot of time prepping their gear back in the Engineering spaces so us Nukes got the best of the “war stories” and a real education on weaponry and self defense.
I guess it’s obvious in retrospect, but I wouldn’t have thought groupies following you around were such a problem.
Oh, my, yes. Women have been following me around ever since I can remember. They think I’m funny and for some reason that I’m gentle and harmless.
Oh, you just a big ol’ funny teddy bear. Ain’t nuthin’ to worry they pretty lil heads about.
I get the fish-eye. And then once they spot the wedding ring, absolutely total indifference. I’m usually crushed and go home weeping and wondering what’s wrong with me.
Sounds like you had a great day and not only that a future looking pretty darn good down there in the mountain tropics. Happy Birthday, Bob, and many healthy and prosperous ones to come.
“…our usual good food on the submarine got even better.”
We’d heard tales about the wonders of Navy grub. During my time in SEA I avoided the base chow halls and lived out in the sticks and ate local. Also made an effort to learn the lingo and them folks couldn’t do enough for me. Made out better off base than on. The jarheads and Berets thought I was OK for a dumbass Yankee kid “from Boston.” I might have been in the wrong branch or sumthin. Whatever. Too late now, haha!
We cleaned out the back porch RUTHLESSLY today and we’re now scrubbing the deck prior to painting it. Ol’ OFD’s back and knees are cryin’ now and I’m gonna just handle the grill operation and call it a night. Mrs. OFD likewise; two old farts still hauling ass up here.
I called it before the great Taki did:
“And to finish off on an even more depressing note, the inevitability of Hillary’s election reminds me of the Papandreou family in Greece: The more they stole, the bigger their margin of victory at election time. Hillary and Bill Clinton have become truly very, very rich by using their charity as a slush fund. They are grifters of the first order, people without shame, congenital liars who solicited funds even from a model—$500,000—to speak at Petra Nemcova’s charity that the model began after she survived the 2004 tsunami. The model paid, they collected. Squeezing donors is an art the Clintons have perfected, yet this Bonnie to his Clyde will be the next American president, take it from Taki. It’s too depressing to think of the Clintons back in the White House selling rooms for the night to rich donors, so I just might stay on board the cruise ship with Spectator readers for the next five years.”
http://takimag.com/article/a_vast_ornithology_taki/print
“The lunatics are running the asylum and they’re running it into the ground.”
Yes, they are, Gavin, indeed they are. And no one cares. Unless you mention it, like you just did. Bad boy.
http://takimag.com/article/trans_fixed_gavin_mcinnes/print
Feliz Cumpleanos, which is future voter for Happy Birthday.
Mountains are nice, and a view gives you good fields of fire, and the high ground. I’m led to believe those things are desirable.
Did some work with SEAL teams when I lived in San Diego. Nothing secret squirrel. They needed cash for the high speed sh!t that isn’t on their TOE, and so they would work for it. They were featured in several large events I worked on, once doing a really nice demo of deploying from helo into water, recovery by RHIB (zodiak to us), and then right up the ramp onto the Mark IV which was a really big boat or a really small ship, all while the boat simulated using a 40mm (grenade launcher? cannon?) to suppress the onshore crowd. Pretty impressive. Other times, I had the honor of using them as stagehands. They take direction well, as long as you are clear and direct, which is a trait real stagehands sometimes lack. Another time the jump exhibition team did a nice demo for our attendees.
Saw photos of their handiwork in some caves in the mountains somewhere. Our project morale officer brought them in. That was an eye opener. The caves looked like Luke Skywalker’s home on Tatooine, only stacked high with grenades. Not at all what most people would think of when they hear the word “cave.”
Hopefully they will always be on the side of righteousness. There is some evidence and speculation that they would be sent somewhere else to die if ever they might be faced with a moral choice here at home. Trying not to trigger s e a r c h words here….
Let’s hope and pray (and work at whatever we can) to avoid such a situation.
nick
“How Android Is Becoming the New Windows”
http://gizmodo.com/how-android-is-becoming-the-new-windows-1708608151#
I still do not see Android taking over the desktop though.
Happy B-day to our host.
One of my bosses was a supply officer on the attack sub Lapon a while back. They did a lot of Secret Squirrel stuff with SEALs and others. He mentioned that the wardroom had a row of small glass vials with sand or gravel in them, with beach names on them. Apparently, the SEALs grab a handful as they arrive or leave and some goes to the nukes that taxi them around.
A nephew was among the first Marines into Kabul – landed in a C-130 under fire, locked and loaded, and ready to go. The SpecOps guys and some locals had one end of the airbase under control, the Marines were to secure the entire field, then secure and reopen the embassy. One day his platoon was on rapid reaction duty and was sent out to help rescue some SpecOps types outside town. They arrived, did their thing, then went to the SpecOps base for their reward – hot showers, pizza, ice cream and beer. He had been eating MREs for weeks.
@Mr. Lynn; hey thanks for that tip about disabling hw acceleration in FF; seems to be working! Never woulda guess it; how did you know?
@Mr. Lynn; hey thanks for that tip about disabling hw acceleration in FF; seems to be working! Never woulda guess it; how did you know?
You are welcome, glad it worked. Because my home PC FF used to crash all the time and I reported it on the Mozilla FF support newsgroup. The consensus of the people there was a FF bug interacting with a bug in the AMD video driver. I used the hardware acceleration disablement for a while then I found an AMD video driver that works.
All software is crap!
“All software is crap!”
Surely not YOURS?!
Years ago my mother and sister moved to rural coastal mainland North Carolina, Pamlico County. It was universal that you waved when you passed anyone in any situation.
A nephew was among the first Marines into Kabul – landed in a C-130 under fire, locked and loaded, and ready to go.
Hey! Just like HILLARY!
I thought Hillary secured the landing area and then welcomed the first Marines into Kabul.
Now you’re just being ridiculous. Hillary Butch Clinton never welcomed anyone who wasn’t either a sweet young thing or the bearer of a large donation.
“All software is crap!”
Surely not YOURS?!
All software is crap!
I’ve written a fair amount of software in assembler, FORTRAN, and COBOL, and I thought it was pretty clean and elegant.
I’ve written a fair amount of software in assembler, FORTRAN, and COBOL, and I thought it was pretty clean and elegant.
I did not say that software is not useful. But, I have never seen a program that at least one out of one hundred users could not bring to its knees by submitting weird input to it. Therefore, crap. The really, really, really crappy stuff does not even survive the first user.
I’ve written software in Fortran, IBM Assembler, Pascal, C, C++, HTML, Actor, Java, PHP, Perl, and ??? (cannot remember).
Nothing is foolproof.
Nothing is foolproof.
Because fools are so damn ingenious.
Nothing is foolproof.
Oh, it is much worse than that. Cultural differences are some of the worst issues for software. Everyone uses periods for decimal marks, right? Wrong, Europeans use a comma. 123.456 in the USA is 123,456 in Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark
A company I worked for had their own GUI to control a piece of custom hardware. It was time to move it to a newer version of windows, so they worked and worked. Finally it was ready for gold master so they brought in the field guys to test it, but MOSTLY to learn the new interface.
I crashed it, and the whole machine, with my first click. I clicked on a graphical element that was just background image. They had never clicked anywhere but the buttons.
No training got done on that trip, and field guys were never allowed to test again. You can imagine how well that worked out.
nick
No training got done on that trip, and field guys were never allowed to test again. You can imagine how well that worked out.
Incompetent product manager. Crashes happen, it is just a matter of time. The field guys (the users!) are the perfect testers.
I am talking with a Fortune 500 company about replacing two of their inhouse software packages. They are getting eaten alive by maintenance, most of which we already do.
Fail early fail often.
I’m really good at breaking it, and I can/ will find the exact sequence that does it (if it’s repeatable.)
I did a LOT of control interface testing as part of our system commissioning. My favorite thing to do is run thru everything backwards. Right to left, bottom to top, press every button on every page. That will find most of the state dependent stuff. I was also good at finding a work around if we couldn’t find the base issue. Like if A doesn’t switch properly when coming from B but does when coming from C, you could just add a switch to C, then A, when you leave B. Kluge, and awful, but time onsite is precious so you do what you can.
We had a large customer, 2nd biggest in the world in their field, and the project manager on their side was notorious for ‘monkey punching’ the controls. He’d just hammer away at random, until something didn’t work right. I got even more creative when testing systems for them. We got to the point where our programmer would just come to site, and fix it as they broke it. By the time we were done it was solid and would run for years if the controlled hardware would stay up.
I’m glad I don’t do that anymore. Solving the puzzle was fun, but HAVING to solve it wasn’t.
nick
But, I have never seen a program that at least one out of one hundred users could not bring to its knees by submitting weird input to it.
I did work for a large commercial bank. The software package that we used was not very good at validating input. Numbers were particularly problematic as simply inputting two decimals would result in an error message. The vendor’s response was “train them not to do that.”.
Hrrmmpppph. I wrote a front end to the entire package that would take all the screen input and process it before passing to the actual processing programs. Inputting numbers could be in any format, commas or not, multiple decimal points, text inside of numbers, multiple minus signs, did not matter. If the number was invalid it was rejected back to the user. The advantage to the user was that numbers could be input in any format and if was recognized as valid it was accepted. Users loved it as they did not have to concern themselves about where in a field to place a number, decimal signs or decimals. It just worked.
When we showed it to the vendor of the software they were not impressed instead stating that training was the real solution, not some front end code that wasted CPU cycles (CPU time was cheap, people and errors were not). Thus the vendor rejected the code. The bank then sold the code to all of the customers of the vendor. Two major releases later the vendor had implemented their own version. It sucked but was better. Banks continued to use my code.
The code I wrote was bullet proof as any code I had ever written or seen. Nothing I input to the code or the users input phased the code and generated the proper response.
Today I don’t understand buffer overflows or other problems such as counter overflows. Code should check the data it is processing, provide exception handling (crashing is not good handling), and validate all returned values. It is simple to check buffer lengths especially with the speed of today’s CPU’s. No excuse for sloppy other than just sloppy and lazy programmers. Or managers that simply do not understand that errors outweigh any additional cost in development.
I learned to write very paranoid, very secure code because of some of the domains I worked in: embedded systems, factory automation controls, cryptography, and something that I’m not supposed to talk about. That’s on top of being the only guy developing on a lot of gigs, where problems *would* come back to me and it was a better use of my time to get it as bulletproof as possible the first time. (For the same reason, I learned to nail down the requirements as much as possible, up front. This usually worked well, except on government contracts. Those were and are a never-ending problem because the government “expert” “work”ers are lazy and/or incompetent.) I know how to write very robust, correct, nearly-foolproof code, and left to myself I do.
Lately, however, I produce crap on my day “job”. I’m given crap requirements which change by the day, or the project manager caves to customer wishes and promises delivery a month early and the developers have to take shortcuts, or I have to fit my code into an existing architecture which might as well have been deliberately designed to fail, or I’m supposed to make “just a few minor changes” to the existing code without touching anything else. Meh, whatever. I’m a contractor on a series of government projects which at best don’t make any difference whatsoever in terms of protecting the rights of the citizenry or of saving taxpayer dollars, or even making things easier for the citizenry. I’m paid to be there 8 hours a day and look like I’m working, not to give a damn.
(I do in fact work quite hard, when I’m not idled because of others’ incompetence. Most of my co”work”ers, by contrast, do an awful lot of sitting around talking, texting, and taking breaks. For some reason the managers can’t or won’t sack them, and they stopped pretending to work once they figured that out. I didn’t used to be prejudiced against Indian H-1B “work”ers, but by gum this crew has managed to inspire it in me.)
“I didn’t used to be prejudiced against Indian H-1B “work”ers, but by gum this crew has managed to inspire it in me.)”
Have you learned to love the smell (stink) of curry every time certain parties use the microwave or open up their lunches from home? It used to make me gag. I won’t eat any of that garbage and don’t understand why it’s so friggin’ popular in the U.K. It’s even a synonym there for any meal now, apparently.
I’m pretty sure by now that I’m done working for and with assholes. Zero interest anywhere in my experience, reliability, integrity and maturity. To hell with it. Back to the web dev drawing board and firearms.
I figured out a career in programming wasn’t for me when I couldn’t get my programs to compile because of an extra space, or a missing comma. Compilers weren’t very smart, or helpful in the early ’80s. I never had the obsessive focus to be good at it. Things don’t seem to have changed much, based on what I see in arduino programming.
You still need to have the whole main(void) thing, no matter what. If it needs to be there, and never changes, why not automatically append it at run or compile, or for that matter, get rid of it entirely, just assuming it’s there.
Python didn’t look much easier either.
Haven’t looked at wires or fritzing, which I have some vague idea are IDEs that hide the code from you.
Ehh, life’s short. There are people who like that kind of stuff. I’ll leave it to them.
nick
The smell of the food (usually) doesn’t bother me at all. The smell of the bodies, on the other hand… Not all, by any means, but maybe 20-30% of the current group seems not to have discovered the benefits of indoor plumbing and soap, or have a religious reason not to shower, or maybe are just assholes.
There are stinkbugs in almost every group of more than a dozen, or the total lazyass, or the bumbling incompetent, or the jerk who gets in your way when you’re trying to walk past*, or whatever. This group as a whole is much worse than any group I’ve every had to deal with for more than a few days. I’m trying very hard not to let it color my opinion of an entire chunk of the world’s population, but damn they’re not making it easy.
I’ve never ended a contract early, but I started looking for a new one a couple months ago. Alas, the pickings have been very slim, the slimmest I’ve seen in the five years since I came back to this area.
* Several tried that petit-ass nonsense with me. They stopped trying, heh.
Hey, don’t talk about firearms on here, they will ban @Bob from the intertubes, “It’s happening again— President Obama is using his imperial pen and telephone to curb your rights and bypass Congress through executive action.”
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20150605/stop-obamas-planned-gag-order-on-firearm-related-speech
I love curry. Curry shrimp, curry chicken, etc…
Ehh, life’s short. I’ve come to the point where I really don’t have any problem with letting something color my perception of a group of people. I still try to not let it color my perception of INDIVIDUALS.
I spent most of my adult life working consciously to overcome the casual racism I grew up with. I think I’ve succeeded with individuals. I’ve even managed to change the actual thoughts and words in my head. And now I find that for my personal safety, and the safety of my loved ones, a fact based assessment shows that I SHOULD be making assumptions about certain groups. Certain groups have shown themselves to be overwhelmingly hostile to my culture and lifestyle and my person. [no need for me to link, lots of previous discussion]
Other groups are completely contemptuous of my values, lifestyle, and personal achievements. They are openly contemptuous of the VERY THINGS that make it possible for them to live a life of contemptuousness. I have no problem lumping those people together and avoiding them the same way I avoid groups of people who would do me physical harm. To give them space in my head will surely do me harm, if only because ‘life is short’ and I’ve wasted some of mine on them.
And having said that, here is the type of insanity I’m talking about. I’ve spent the last hour reading these people. I think they are actually mentally ill. I’m not going back, but for some examples see these links. (this has bearing on the Sad Puppies campaign for the Hugo Awards, and Social Justice Warriors, and academic or casual lefties, in general.) I think of it as ‘opposition research’ or maybe I’m just confirming my confirmation bias.
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/5/8736591/liberal-professor-identity
http://whitehotharlots.tumblr.com/
I need a drink, a shower, and a soft bed.
nick
Here is the latest tempest in a teapot about the Sad Puppies, “Shout it from the rooftops”. Larry Correia has the same thing posted in his facebook.
http://accordingtohoyt.com/2015/06/07/shout-it-from-the-rooftops/
https://www.facebook.com/larry.correia
Basically, a TOR, a SF book publisher, editor called the Sad Puppies some fairly serious names in public forum. I had an opportunity to purchase a TOR book at B&N today. I passed. I might not pass next week but I passed for now. I seriously doubt that my little boycott will mean anything but, I am offended.
To give them space in my head will surely do me harm, if only because ‘life is short’ and I’ve wasted some of mine on them.
Yup.
Interesting discussion on programming. I do a bit of that myself (web sites now).
Always tried to put in “SAD” in my programming: “Stupid Answer Detection”. Takes a bit longer to program it (and test it), but worthwhile.
I don’t mind Indian food but can only eat it twice a week, at most.
I can eat Chinese, in particular Malaysian Chinese twice a day.
nick wrote:
“Ehh, life’s short. There are people who like that kind of stuff. I’ll leave it to them.”
Never wrote Pascal or Fortran then? You missed a great career.
I was never a professional programmer, just a minor in Uni. I did use BASIC to write some stuff that qualified me for the then “Microsoft Action Pack” which helped run our company. Now I’m going to learn Python and C to use with my electronics hobbying.
@miles,
started with Basic on a TRS80…
Studied Pascal at university on a VAX.
Fortran, COBOL, and assembly were all going concerns at the time and I had some very minimal exposure.
I was too easily frustrated, and didn’t get the big mental reward for finally figuring it out.
I’m pretty sure that I would never have been happy doing it, and wasn’t naturally suited to it. Like becoming a pilot, I could learn the lessons and apply them, but I don’t have the mental attitude necessary to do it safely and well. I’ve avoided traditional sales positions or anything that involves caring about people for similar reasons.
I don’t have many regrets, and wouldn’t change much of what I’ve done as all that made me what I am, and I’m pretty happy with where I ended up. (perhaps one or two fewer head injuries would be ok)
It is interesting to look back and see those points where my life branched in a new direction, often on a seemingly trivial event. Sometimes, it was a major event, but had unexpected changes down the road. I got a whole new career from ONE introduction and bit of charity work for example.
You can’t change the past, so there is not point regretting it.
nick
“…I’ve spent the last hour reading these people. I think they are actually mentally ill. I’m not going back, but for some examples see these links.”
“…I want us–liberal (leaning) instructors, grad students, and faculty members–to begin taking more ownership over the current fucked state of higher ed.”
He or she is full of chit. They’ve had ownership since the 1970s, at least; I was a personal witness to their shenanigans from the late 1980s into the ’90s. And now I get the straight bumf from two of my brothers whose daughters have been through the whole State publik skool system and are now “at university.” It’s much, much worse now than when I passed through. The Left’s Long March through our Western institutions of academia, media, government and the seminaries has been a huge success, and now two generations of human beings simply take what they’ve been fed for granted as the real world and the truth. In fact, we see examples of it here on this board daily. Don’t feel too bad; we’ve all been infected by it, through nooz media, entertainment and the innernet; hard to escape.
I was quite the young sap in my own teen years but had much of this drivel kicked out of me by the military and cop time, and then decades of studying on my own. But it’s a constant battle; spent yesterday afternoon with family friends, wife, daughter and MIL, and I can mainly just sit there in silence when they start yakking about Hillary versus Bernie Sanders and this pope versus earlier popes. Pointless to launch into an argument. They’re all Northeast librul Dems from way back and I’m the turd in the punch bowl. One ray of light is that Mrs. OFD has been showing signs of resistance to the dogma lately, probably through association with the likes of me over nearly twenty years. I’ve been a bad influence.