09:11 – Happy New Year!
I wasn’t really expecting to be relocated by the first of this year, but we made it. Sparta, NC is now home and getting to be more so every day. Winston-Salem is now just where we used to live. We’ll still be making day trips down there frequently to finish moving stuff and get the old house ready to go on the market, but now those trips are merely visits to the old home place. We’re settled in here.
Over the weekend, Barbara plans to take down and rebox Christmas decorations and do a thorough house cleaning. As of today, I’m back to regular work. I’ll be spending a lot more time in my office and workroom, although I’ll still be helping Barbara with move-related stuff.
We’re to have a week or ten days of chilly weather, but then things are supposed to warm up again. When that happens, I need to get the new woodstove burned in. It’s usable now, should the power fail, but for the first load or two of wood it’ll be emitting chemical fumes as the heat burns off residual chemicals in the paint.
None of us can know what 2016 will bring. Like everyone, I’m hoping for peace, prosperity, and a generally good year, but I’m afraid that the best we can expect is more of the same. In any event, I’m a lot happier watching things unfold from here than I would have been in the big city.
14:43 – I just helped Barbara replace all the boxed-up Christmas stuff in the closet where it’ll live until next Christmas. She’s doing the White Tornado thing upstairs as I write. We stuck Colin in the garage until she finishes vacuuming because he ferociously attacks the vacuum cleaner while Barbara is trying to use it.
I just flushed 3.4 ounces of Rid-X down each of our three toilets. I’m not sure how much good it does, but I suppose it can’t hurt and if it helps delay having the septic tank dug up and cleaned out it’ll be worth the small monthly cost.
!!!???
I don’t think you mentioned those before. Isn’t setting out christmas decorations and then shooting at Santa an awful lot like putting out a salt lick and then shooting the deer that come by? Not sporting, RBT, not sporting at all.
For those of us in the US, or at least those who contribute economically and value our freedoms, I’m confident in predicting things will be worse in 2016 than in 2015. Obuttsuck has just a year and three weeks remaining to do as much damage as possible to the nation and culture he hates.
You’re probably right, but “there’s battle lines being drawn”.
The progs have always tried to convince everyone that “American culture” and “American exceptionalism” are oxymorons, but both are very real, very robust, and the best things that ever happened to the planet. And white men are responsible for both, particularly white men of European heritage and more particularly white men of Anglo-Saxon heritage. I don’t see a bunch of pissant progs being able to change that, no matter how much they want to.
“Obuttsuck has just a year and three weeks remaining to do as much damage as possible to the nation and culture he hates.”
And he’s made it abundantly clear lately that he intends to do just that, mainly with his “executive orders, ” a kinda new wrinkle on what imperial Presidents have been doing for quite some time anyway. One of his depredations will apparently concern gun rights but he is a day late and a dollar short; I bet we’re moving close to a billion firearms in this country now, thanks largely to him and Cankles.
“I don’t see a bunch of pissant progs being able to change that, no matter how much they want to.”
They’ve been quite successful in that endeavor here since the 1930s and thoroughly infiltrated and corrupted our cultural institutions, basically winning the war between international socialism and us without firing a shot. Just think of all the wunnerful innovations and novelities that are now in place that no one thinks twice about, let alone questions: the concept of mandatory egalitarianism, a radical reinterpretation of individual “rights” that trumps any collective responsibility, and of course all the stuff about Diversity, affirmative action, homosexual “marriage” followed, no doubt, by legalized incest, bestiality and necrophilia, and putting our wives, sisters and daughters into front-line combat roles.
And it’s mainly “white men of Anglo-Saxon heritage” who’ve been “in charge” and have given away the store for the last eighty years. Betrayed by our own political, economic and cultural leadership/elites. But I agree that there are enough of us left here to put up a helluva fight if only more of us would get off our asses, which is what I intend to do this coming year in this AO.
“…the concept of mandatory egalitarianism, a radical reinterpretation of individual “rights” that trumps any collective responsibility, and of course all the stuff about Diversity, affirmative action, homosexual “marriage” followed, no doubt, by legalized incest, bestiality and necrophilia, and putting our wives, sisters and daughters into front-line combat roles.”
Macroagression…
“Doubleplusungood bordering crimethink” as Orwell would say.
Our good, better, and best days are now a fading vision behind us. The Doomsday Clock is at 2359:59 so now I am adding the slide into dystopia, down which we are at just before the level off at the bottom after which we fall off the end. At this time in 2017 we will either be falling into the bottomless pit at the base of the slide or just barely flying over it to begin the false recovery.
Gee, I am in a good mood this morning.
BTW, welcome to latest lurker to come out of the closet. Hello and welcome to @MrK of Australia and also a welcome to the “60+” club on here (FWIW, this is starting my 66th year).
My family’s roots are in ‘Europe”; actually Norse, Norman, Scotch (I’ll drink to that) and Irish roots. The smart (?) ones fled across the pond early in the Colony’s start and then the vocal ones’ that remained behind got a free trip to Australia courtesy of The Crown.
Trump 2016 “Hope and Chaos”
I prefer “creepy stalker” to “lurker”.
Interesting article that pictures ordinary people holding the firearms they got for Christmas.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3380575/The-gun-got-Christmas-Photographer-captures-everyday-Americans-showing-new-weapons-firing-range-day-Christmas-including-woman-s-custom-pink-anti-tank-rifle.html
Whoever wrote the text and captions is pretty clueless about firearms, as I’d expect in a UK newspaper, but it’s an interesting spread all the same.
I understand why the progs are so afraid of so many serious firearms in civilian hands. They surely must understand that many/most of those people would like nothing better than an open-season on progs. They must surely also understand that they’re hugely outnumbered by reasonable people who recognize them for the scum they are.
“They must surely also understand that they’re hugely outnumbered by reasonable people who recognize them for the scum they are.”
Oh, I think they do understand and are very nervous about it; which is why they’re desperate to control the military and police and take guns away from the rest of us, like they’ve done in the UK and Oz. Their only gigantic bogeyman Hitler and his minions set about gun control in blitzkrieg fashion in 1930s Germany; they never bring it up but Stalin did the same thing in the old Soviet Union. Peasants and kulaks and Jews aren’t allowed to own firearms or be able to defend themselves; again why Dear Leader’s main effort this year is gonna be to clamp down on us in that regard.
But I like that phrase: “open season on progs.” I’ll savor that thought on this first day of the new year. Thanks!
A quick anecdote about the moral development of the child.
So I’m in the truck, driving the kids to somewhere, and the idea of self driving cars comes up. 6yo says they are here, and soon everyone will have one. I say, sure there are some, but there are serious problems involved with them. Some discussion occurs about the difficult technical problems that a machine must solve to drive a car- how to avoid traffic, determine where to go and how to get there, watch for small animals and children etc.
In this context I mention the toughest problem, how to decide what to do if there are no good choices? What if you have no brakes, and are speeding toward a group of schoolkids? Do you steer toward a wall and kill everyone in the car? Or do you save the people in the car and steer into the schoolkids? Which choice would a self driving car make, and which is right?
After a short pause, 6yo daughter says “I’d drive into the wall. I’d rather die myself than kill a bunch of schoolkids.”
Very proud papa and daughter continue to discuss and consider if there are other options, what most people might do, and why some people would make sure that their car would never under any circumstances allow them to die.
Then we arrived and the kids ran to play with their friends.
My 6yo has a more developed moral compass than most of the criminal underclass scum that infest our cities.
maybe there is hope.
nick
“What if you have no brakes, and are speeding toward a group of schoolkids? Do you steer toward a wall and kill everyone in the car? Or do you save the people in the car and steer into the schoolkids?”
Sure, but you can tweak those questions six ways from Sunday and ask them again; what if you’re a mom going into labor and driving yourself to the hospital or being driven there to have twins? What if the group of school kids is a bunch of teenage gangbangers waving Glocks around? And are there no other directions in which you can steer that vehicle? That’s the choice? Buncha kids or the wall?
Another variation is the train speeding down the track and coming to a switch, etc., etc. And the old “who do you throw out first from the lifeboat?”
That’s right, if you change the parameters, you change the answers. That was a part of the discussion afterward about other options.
The big problem is, what programming choices does the developer of an autonomous vehicle make? Lots of stories of pilots riding all the way in to avoid crashing into populated areas. Not so many stories of selfless drones doing the same….
nick
(and I bet that most of the BLM protesters would answer “fukc those kids, I’m gonna get me mine…”)
“2016 smells clean and full of promise”
http://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge/2016/01/01
Well, that did not last long.
One of these days it’d be nice if our host started a “Guns” category…
Hardly any local fireworks this year in Vegas. The casinos did their usual big stuff.
But I don’t know anything about guns. Don’t own one. Never shot one.
Guns are dangerous, aren’t they? They just up and shoot their owners for no reason at all.
“They just up and shoot their owners for no reason at all.”
Especially assault rifles. And there are just gigantic mounds of dead bodies in this country slaughtered in the wave of gun violence instigated by reichwingnut fascist bastards.
Not to worry; Dear Leader is all over it. Coming up this year more executive orders. Let’s see how they get enforced. Lotsa cops and sheriffs saying ‘no can do.’ And millions of citizen-subjects saying ‘fuck you.’ Some of them using some kinda ancient Greek stuff like ‘molon labe’ or sumthin….
Hardly any local fireworks this year in Vegas. The casinos did their usual big stuff.
Huh, you should have been around here. We walked our two miles from 10pm to 11pm. The mortars were thumping so hard at one point that the wife made me move across the street.
“2 GOP Strategists Call for Trump’s Assassination – DOJ Silent”
http://freedomoutpost.com/2015/12/2-gop-strategists-call-for-trumps-assassination-doj-silent/
I remember when they killed Bobby Kennedy. There is no context whatsoever where that is funny.
“I remember when they killed Bobby Kennedy. There is no context whatsoever where that is funny.”
I remember that, too, plus the earlier murders. There are some very serious people in government and the corporate oligarchy, kinda not much different from the ones previously in Argentina, Guatemala, Chile, Paraguay, etc. They’ll kill your ass in a heartbeat if it suits them and/or you’re a credible threat to them.
@Lynn: “I remember when they killed Bobby Kennedy. There is no context whatsoever where that is funny.”
@OFD: “I remember that, too, plus…”
Trump did not get where he is at in the Big Apple and other areas across both ponds without developing some special “business” relationships (wink wink). I believe he has the “contacts” to keep him safe. I hope.
2016 will be a very interesting year. Sides will be drawn, some will chose wrong…
Trump has his own personal security detail and also owns a pistol himself; dunno if he does CC around the country or not.
Sides being drawn all the time. Mos def gonna be interesting. Keep yer powder dry and yer eyes and ears wide open.
Oh yeah, molon labe!
On an unrelated note,
using duckduckgo as a search engine, one point of comparison.
I had a problem with my camera, where suddenly it didn’t see the SD card. Google gave me pages of sales and review, with the correct answer on the second to last link, on the first page.
Decided to try duckduckgo, and got a whole bunch of different links, with some sales and reviews. Of the links that were not obvious sales or reviews, the correct answer to the problem was the second link, about halfway down page one.
So not quite a slam dunk for ddg. Searching with “-review” google puts the correct link first. DDG still has 4 sales links and one tech answer before the correct link.
I like DDG for technical questions, like the old altavista, but the google still pulls rabbits out of hats.
nick
(the answer was— the mode selector is set to ‘clipboard’ which uses internal memory, set it to another mode. LOTS of bad advice involving formating the card, and worn out SD cards, using USB cables, etc. ONE correct answer.)
Trump did not get where he is at in the Big Apple and other areas across both ponds without developing some special “business” relationships (wink wink). I believe he has the “contacts” to keep him safe. I hope.
All it takes is one crazy person. And there seems to be a plethora of those recently.
My point is, why are these people still employed? And why are they not cooling their heels in a secret service jail? There is not much difference between inciting to riot and inciting to murder.
“All it takes is one crazy person.”
Or patsies like Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan or a connected insider like Ruby.
BTW, I’ve been doing some reading of history and related novels and IMHO Barry S. is the perfect definition a Manchurian Candidate, however, so is most of Congress. The perfect storm, it’s going to be hard to stop because who/what is pulling the strings is so dark that a black hole is like sunlight.
“Guns are dangerous, aren’t they? They just up and shoot their owners for no reason at all.”
Glad to see you and the C-in-C are on the same wavelength… 🙂
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-02/gun-control-barack-obama-plans-to-bypass-senate/7064022
“The perfect storm, it’s going to be hard to stop because who/what is pulling the strings is so dark that a black hole is like sunlight.”
The shadow gummint, mostly. The Brits have their own version of it, too. And I don’t mean “shadow” ministers of this and that.
I also have a device/computer connection issue now; two Logitech webcams that worked perfectly before; Windows 8.1 box sees them in the Devices folder but no image appears on the screen anymore. Why would this function just up and disappear for no apparent reason? Checked for updated drivers, all OK. Just no pic anymore. Pisses me off.
Meanwhile got wife’s new Canon camera set up for her with battery and sim card and functions; nifty little bugger, a PowerShot.
Madrassian candidate. (Though I spelled it wrong nine years ago, derp.)
What’s really funny, but not really, actually, is that we also finance the madrassahs from whence come terrorist hadji scum to murder, rape and torture around the world in the name of the demonic pervert who got his marching orders from some voice in a fucking subterranean bat cave. How’s this, you ask? Well, simple arithmetic, Grasshopper; by sending them or selling them at massive discounts, our advanced weapons systems, including jet fighters, over the decades, that’s money they’ve been able to funnel into those same brainwashing cult skools. And by buying their fossil energy fuel for decades, too.
Your tax dollars at work.
Burning that Syrian air force pilot alive in the cage.
Letting a girls’ school burn to the ground with them in it to preserve their honor rather than have male firefighters put the blaze out.
Throwing homosexuals off building roofs and tumbling brick walls onto them.
Shooting women in soccer stadiums while crowds jeered.
Beheading Christian priests as mobs took pics with their cell phones and howled in glee.
And last, for now, but certainly not least, blowing up our soldiers and marines for years now in the Sandbox and the Suck.
Our tax dollars paid for all that shit. While Shrub walked hand in hand with some Soddy prince on his ranch and told us it was the religion of peace. And the current Dear Leader couldn’t make it any plainer his love for these barbarian savages and their cult of slavery and death.
They’re coming here, some already have, and we’ve seen their handiwork thus far. While Dear Leader works his narrow half-white ass off to disarm the rest of us.
There’s a fight coming; keep your powder dry and your eyes and ears wide open all the time, like the song says.
Oh, and Happy New Year!
Many thanks for the warm welcome..
@Miles_Teg
re Dockers or Eagles, I’m not fussed either way. Probably lean towards the Eagles if pushed. Too much hype in sport nowadays.. and too many prima donnas..
(Also notice that you have been getting most of our weather lately!)
Have driven the Melbourne/Adelaide/Perth route a few times and one thing is certain, 4 hours in and you think if we flew we would be there by now..!
Currently a pleasant 35C (95F) @2:47pm
I used to drive Canberra-Adelaide routinely for about 35 years. It gets old, even though it’s only 13-14 hours. Glad that’s behind me now.
_SEA – A Stranded Novel_ (Volume 2) by Theresa Shaver
http://www.amazon.com/SEA-Stranded-Novel-Theresa-Shaver/dp/1480251836/
Number two book of a four book series. Young adult apocalyptic series in trade paperback (Amazon POD book, 212 pages). I have also bought books number three and four.
Pretty cool story, a group of 26 Canadian teenagers and their chaperones get stranded in Disneyland after the USA is EMP’d. One of the teachers dies immediately due to his pacemaker failure. Five of the students decide to go home to the Alberta countryside over sea from California. This is their story.
Please note that the author follows the crowd that says that an EMP event in LEO over Kansas fries every computer chip in the USA. From PCs to all cars built since 1990 or so. Many of the experts that I read now do not follow this, most believe that an EMP in the USA will cause most computer chips to lock up and a subsequent power cycle will clear the fault. This would make an integral change in this story.
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (223 reviews)
Does it make sense for a woman (not an Amazon) to use a 12 gauge shotgun with light loads for defence, or should they always just get a 20?
It seems to me that a 20 gauge shotgun and quite a bit of practice (practice being imperative) would be a much better choice for many women. This could also apply to a lot of men who are older or slight of stature, and to adolescent children.
Yep, a 20-gauge is better suited to women, men of smaller stature, and young people. I keep some light 12-gauge buck/slug loads on hand for flexibility, but having 20-gauge shotguns for women is well worth the loss of ammunition commonality.
@SteveF – “Madrassian candidate”
I’ll drink to that, just the latest CIA Skunk Works.
@ofd, your mystery might be power saver related. Somewhere there is a setting “let windows put this device to sleep” Uncheck that, it might help. I used to have a lot of USB trouble when my lappy would sleep. Solved most of the weirdness.
worth a try anyway.
nick
@Mr. nick; solved the webcam mystery by going to Logitech’s very nice site and downloading the install sw all over again and reinstalling it from scratch, more or less. Works like the proverbial charm now.
Ah, back to the ‘reinstall the software’ days.
Remember when that was the default and primary troubleshooting technique? “Reinstall Windows” !!
Worked soooo well when I was trying to get os/2 warp installed on my lappy.
Never did get it to run well, despite direct contact with the guys in Boca Raton. Seems that they never considered anyone would try to run it on a lappy.
Ah, the good old days.
nick
Hey, just remember: THESE are the good old days!
Oh, and for a good laff? They’re still using OS/2 in at least one department at IBM in Essex Junction, VT.
For another good laff: The state of Vermont Health Department down in Burlap still runs, as far as I know, OpenVMS. I should get a job there? Yeah, that’d be great except the current small krew are state employee lifers and have many more years to run.
But what if, shall we say, a few utterly unanticipated vacancies were to open up?