09:44 – It was 51.9F (11C) when I took Colin out around 0715 this morning. We’re supposed to get rain pretty much all day today, and well above average temperatures for the next several days.
I’m about ready to bag Firefox. It’s slow, bloated, and has a lot of other issues. I’ve had Vivaldi installed for several months and have been using it from time to time. Barbara has also been having minor nagging issues with Firefox on her notebook, so yesterday I installed Vivaldi for her and imported all her Firefox data. We’ll see how she likes it.
I’ve been thinking about our medical preps and looking at various prepping sites for ideas. What strikes me immediately is that many preppers are going about things the wrong way. I try to apply systematized decision making, using a simplified type of n-dimensional multivariate analysis to decision making.
For prepping decisions, the n-dimensional part is 3-dimensional:
- How likely is an event?
- How easy or difficult is it to take measures against that event?
- How much will it cost in time/money to take those measures?
When you finish your analysis, you end up with each event ranked as likely/unlikely, easy/difficult, and cheap/expensive. Deal with the likely/easy/cheap ones first and the unlikely/difficult/expensive ones last, if at all.
With regard to medical preps, a lot of people have built what amount to trauma kits, which fall into the unlikely/difficult/expensive class, but have ignored the likely/easy/cheap ones. It’s all well and good to have what you need to deal with gunshot wounds, assuming you have the skills to do so, but gunshot wounds are definitely in the unlikely group. Sure, it might happen, but it’s not the first thing you should be preparing for medically. Unless you’re a physician or a trauma nurse, you’re as likely to kill the patient as help him.
GI problems on the other hand, are not just likely but almost certain. Between greatly elevated stress levels and less than ideal sanitation, you’re going to be dealing with diarrhea and constipation, not just occasionally but regularly. The former can kill the patient; the latter will just make them wish they were dead.
Fortunately, both problems are probably going to be pretty easy to deal with. Stock up on loperamide for minor diarrhea and oral rehydration salts for more severe cases. Both are cheap and effective. (By the way, unless you really know what you’re doing and have the resources to culture and identify STEC versus non-STEC bacteria, NEVER EVER treat even the most severe diarrhea with antibiotics; doing so may kill the patient.)
As to constipation, stock up on laxatives. The cheapest and one of the most reliable is the saline laxative Epson salts. One tablespoon in a glass of water normally works within a few hours. You can buy a large retort bag of the stuff at Costco or Sam’s for a few bucks. PEG laxatives are also safe and effective. Costco sells a 3-pack with 90 daily doses for about $20 in stores and on-line.
In med school, one of the first things they teach is that when you hear hoofbeats, don’t think about zebras. In other words, consider the most likely cause, horses, first and only after you’ve eliminated the likely causes should you consider the unlikely ones. The same is true for prepping, medical or otherwise.
* * * * *
23 degrees here this morning, but sunny w/blue skies and no wind. T-shirt weather now.
Excellent points on ranking events and preps for those events, particularly the first aid stuff; I note that Mr. nick carries the boo-boo items mainly when he’s out with the family. Our kids are grown up and mostly gone so our worries are likely to be those of adults in their sixties; wife has had the GI issues lately. I’ve just had the usual aches and pains with some elevated back and leg discomfort/pain. And then of course we have the ongoing stuff: her with thyroid and eye problems; me with borderline high BP and evidently low potassium levels (yeah, I know; eat more bananas). So we have meds for this stuff and need to somehow stock up on them or their equivalents.
Up here for that likelihood analysis, winter storms and power outages are at the top, but over the last five years even those have only caused very minor problems for a couple of hours at this location, more so further inland about 20 miles. Next down are the local gremlins committing B&E’s and vandalizing stuff, and we’ve seen several instances of that a couple of times each summer over those same five years. So I’m trying to get us prepped better for those things, and it’s relatively cheap and easy.
Next down would be really severe storms and lengthy power outages, and that happened here and in the Champlain Islands in 1998, with a major ice storm that crossed down from over Quebec. This AO was kaput for a couple of weeks with no power. And we could get a crime wave here in the village, I suppose. And one or both of us could be seriously sick or injured. We need to be better prepared for this stuff, again, rather cheaply and easily.
From there it’s down to possible train derailments three miles away, some kind of urban meltdown in Meglalopolis that has people fleeing up this way from the cities, and yet another nationwide/international financial disruption that makes the last couple look like nothing much. And of course Grid collapses.
We sincerely hope that we’ll have enough time to get set for any of those events, as one or more of them are likely sooner rather than later.
My planning basis is that I expect a slow slide further and further into dystopia with about a 0.03/year probability of a black-swan widespread SHTF event. Localized SHTF events around here are limited pretty much to blizzards and wildfires. In the former, we have everything we need to last months without leaving the house. In the latter, we’re far enough from large numbers of trees that our only problem is likely to be heavy smoke. I suppose grassfires are possible given that we’re surrounded by open fields, but even during the worst wildfires there aren’t any cases of them spreading to open fields. I think we just have too much water around here for that.
As to local threats, they don’t amount to much. Yeah, we have meth labs I’m sure, but they mind their own business if you mind yours. We probably even have a few stills, but again it’s MYOB. As Barbara says, back in the hollows (hollers) around here it’s real Deliverance country, but again they won’t bother us if we don’t bother them. If any revenoors or other feds show up, well as Earle said in Copperhead Road, they basically just won’t come back.
No problem with FireFox here. I run it almost full-time, with tabs open between notebook ‘sleeps’. Occasionally will exit and restart so that the latest update will install. Usually have at least 10 tabs open at the same time.
But when I exit and restart, the “Restore Last Session” works just fine, getting all of the tabs open just fine.
I’ve been running Firefox for more than a decade, and by that I mean I’ve had it open and minimized that whole time. Anything from 10 to 30 instances, each with anything from two or three to a dozen open tabs. And at times it gets up to using more than 5 GB of RAM, which is ridiculous. I haven’t tried loading Vivaldi heavily yet, but we’ll see what happens when I do.
I’ve had a couple of freezes with FF recently for unknown causes and had to reboot; other than that, no problems, and like Mr. RickH the Restore function also works A-OK so fah. I might have two or three instances open at any given time with one to six or seven tabs open in each. My practice, even with Linux Mint, is to reboot soon after any slew of updates, or just a couple of times a week anyway. Takes all of 30 seconds.
Mrs. OFD has been using Chrome, so far with only the late afternoon/early evening slowdown that some of us remember from the old AO-Hell days. She’s often on the net then and I am not, or if I am, it’s with one of the Kindles.
Weather hazard warning for tonight is freezing rain and sleet changing to rain by tomorrow morning; good deal, as I have some errands to run in the AO after that.
And wife continues to be “terrified” by having to appear on the Jeopardy taping but has been watching shows all this past week in between vomit activity for the last couple of days. DIL also experienced it but no one else in the house. I figure something the kids brought home but of course that’s very un-PC and unacceptable. Or something only the two of them ate. Let’s hope they’re both much better today and wife is in tip-top shape for the flight and taping.
Interesting timing w/medical preps comment; I was repacking various-sized gauze pads from original thin cardboard boxes to large Ziploc bags this morning. I don’t have a set quantity but just buy them often. My thinking for the kind of local emergencies to prepare for are similar – rain and wind with minor flooding = cuts and sprains from weather-related damage. Have varied local neighborhoods – mine is middle class brick houses with a trailer park and subsidized housing less than four miles away. Don’t expect much in GSW but still have stocked some supplies for the eventuality.
WRT firefox, I’ve been running it exclusively for a long time, letting it auto update, etc. In the last few weeks I’ve had times where it slowed to a crawl or became unusable. I have sorta noticed a correlation with videos, and the Daily Mail site. It got so bad that I no longer keep Daily Mail open in a tab, but open it to look, IN IE MIND YOU, then close it. This has reduced the slow downs to almost nothing.
I’ve not mentioned it because I’m also running my security DVR software and that uses 75% of resources, and sometimes as much as 90% of my ethernet capacity. There is a strong correlation with the FF problems and heavy activity on the DVR software.
I’ve got dozens of kindle models and NEVER have issues. I’ve not had issues with FFox in years until now. Just a data point.
I’ve got some things to say about the medical supply, but have to get ready to go to the Rodeo with the kids so more later.
Right now, I’ll just poke at 2 points.
Your risk matrix forgot or dropped the 4th factor, which I know you know because you’ve discussed it previously. How devastating is the risk? So your matrix cube should include one corner that has very low likelihood but absolutely devastating events that are cheap to prep against. GSW falls somewhere on an edge, depending on personal circumstances from one corner to another. IE. if you go to the range or hunting, a GSW ‘blow out’ kit is much more important than if you live alone, without firearms, out in the country. $20 blow out kit in a range bag is cheap in $ and time, and can be the difference between life and death.
Second- There must be something wrong with this statement “(By the way, unless you really know what you’re doing and have the resources to culture and identify STEC versus non-STEC bacteria, NEVER EVER treat even the most severe diarrhea with antibiotics; doing so may kill the patient.)” I say that because travel medicine Doctors wrote scrips for both Cipro and [a powerful semi-narcotic AD med] routinely while I was traveling overseas. They were specifically only to be used in cases of severe diarrhea.
Now I gotta head out,
n
Sure, there’s nothing wrong with doing that as long as you get the higher-priority stuff done first. In that regard, one of the things I keep meaning to add to our Costco list is a couple boxes each of sanitary napkins and tampons. I’m sure Barbara will think I’m kidding when I mention it, but they’re excellent bandages/plugs for severe bleeding, and they’re packed sterile.
“Your risk matrix forgot or dropped the 4th factor, which I know you know because you’ve discussed it previously. How devastating is the risk?”
I kind of incorporated that in my #2 to simplify and reduce how much I needed to write this morning. In reality, it’s far more than 4-dimensional, including exponential complications when you consider how the variables (food, water, power, etc.) you need to stick into that matrix depend on each other.
As to diarrhea and antibiotics, it really is a bad idea to take them for severe diarrhea, particularly if it’s bloody. With a STEC strain (O157:H7 is the most famous), what can happen is that the antibiotic kills the STEC bacteria, which proceed to dump their toxins as they die. Much better to shit them out still alive. Also, IIRC fluoroquinolones like Cipro can actually cause living STEC bacteria to increase toxin production.
“Barbara will think I’m kidding when I mention it, but they’re excellent bandages/plugs for severe bleeding, and they’re packed sterile.”
still not out of the house. I have some as dressing/sponges, but Aesop has some very harsh things to say about the idea, including that they are not sterile. I just plan on putting a sterile gauze pad down first if it comes to that. (search Raconteur Report blogspot …..)
Also, puppy training pads to go under the patient for any SHTF treatment with lots of fluids….
n
My version of Firefox is 52.0.1 (32-bit). My experience with FF updates is that they happen only during a FF startup.
So, RBT, is your version of FF current? Your statement (in the comments) seems to indicate that there hasn’t been a restart of FF for a long time. Doesn’t sound right, but if so, then perhaps you are behind in updates.
I have had someFF memory issues (FF showing over 1M usage in Task Manager), but those seem to be caused by some websites. Never have reliably identified which ones are causing the memory problems.
But if I get a slowdown in FF, a restart (with a “Restore Last Session”) will fix things. Since all my programs are installed on the SSD (data is on the spinning HD) a restart is pretty fast.
I’m at 52.0.1 (64-bit).
OTC pain pills, nitrile gloves, benadryl, hydrogen peroxide, rubbing alcohol, baby wipes, garbage bags, sani-soap are all things not expensive in themselves and of various shelf lives but plenty useful when / after SHTF. I was fairly amazed / appalled visiting an ICU or caretaking a hospice patient at the amount of disposable supplies expended.
Not so much medical rather more household: Somewhere on the net I read about a prepper lady who stored 1000 bars of soap for trade / charity distribution. Sounded a bit excessive to me, but not entirely unreasonable. Supplies of cheap shampoo, dish soap, zip lock bags, sponge scrubbers, oven cleaner are all things easy to obtain now, easy to store and multi-use. There is a phone booth sized closet here full of these types of things along with other cleaners, home chemicals. And, of course: TP.
Might be simpler to just build a house on Walmart’s roof though.
“…I keep meaning to add to our Costco list is a couple boxes each of sanitary napkins…”
They will be very very useful if you ever lose your mind and invite some nubile young wild wimminz around when Barbara’s down in Salem. Just in case she finds out and Bobbitts you. Get the extra thick variety… 🙂
“Might be simpler to just build a house on Walmart’s roof though.”
Indeed. Or park a really huge RV in one of their parking lots and just live there. Oh wait…
“…They will be very very useful if you ever lose your mind and invite some nubile young wild wimminz around…”
And that is losing one’s mind how, exactly?
Barnhardt on the gigantic public health insurance scam:
“Folks, even the most cursory research shows immediately that Trump is and always has been fully in favor of so-called “universal” or “single-payer” healthcare. These psychopathic fools have no intention of ever undoing Obamacare – only making it worse. The problem with healthcare in the U.S. is the fact that felony price-fixing and felony anti-competitive practices are not only overlooked, but fully supported by your kleptocratic oligarchy. The insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies, in particular, engage in price-fixing, price gauging and collusion so severe that it is literally a capital-level crime against humanity. The solution to the healthcare mess is to make non-catastrophic insurance ILLEGAL, and enforce US Code 15, Chapter 1. Quoting Denninger now:
“You need just one simple requirement to be enforced against every medical provider of any kind: Everyone must post a price and everyone pays the same price; any sort of hiding, collusion, cost-shifting or similar is met with indictments, prosecution and prison for consumer fraud and racketeering along with violations of the Sherman, Clayton and Robinson-Patman acts.”
Prices for all healthcare and healthcare commodities would immediately fall an average of 90%, maybe more, within a matter of months, and maybe weeks. Do you understand that this means that health insurance would be UNNECESSARY, just as it has been for the entire history of the world up until just a few short years ago? Has this thought never occurred to you? How could something go from being completely unnecessary and even illegal, to “necessary”, required by “law”, and being a larger cost than most people’s rent or mortgage payment? Doesn’t this seem very, very, very wrong? Of course. It is one of the biggest scams in monetary terms ever executed, and as you all have just witnessed, none of the psychopaths in your kleptocracy has any intention of doing anything about it except to grow it and protect it.
But, but, but… the quality and sophistication of care and technology justifies the increase in price, you say?
Three words:
LASIK Vision Correction.
Free market, not covered by insurance, all prices posted and advertised.
MASSIVE price deflation with simultaneous technological advancement.
It’s down to $250 per eye now, I see. 20 years ago it was $5000 per eye. I’m no math genius, but that appears to be a 95% reduction.
This would be exactly the case with heart bypass, cancer treatments, childbirth, and pretty much everything else. EVERYTHING. Except for the collusion, price fixing and price gauging that the current healthcare racket is built upon. Almost everyone could pay cash for their own healthcare expenses, and the indigent poor could be easily covered by, oh, I dunno… THE CHURCH (imagine that!!) and other secular charitable groups.
I’m sorry, but if you were dumb enough to think that Trump or the congress would ever, ever, ever unwind the biggest racketeering matrix in human history, you deserve what you get. Keep writin’ those quarterly tax checks! I’m sure if the Republicans can just pick up a few more seats… OH. WAIT.”
From the Burner Commo Kits Department:
https://dialtoneblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/08/burner-kits/#more-958
Y’all talking about various living arrangements – that’s something we’ve been dabbling with for a while, since we expect to build a new place in a couple of years.
Metal buildings, pole construction, whatever: consider the most likely scenario other than business-as-usual. I expect this is the slow slide downhill, with less reliable infrastructure, increasing crime, etc.. If you’re building a new structure, I would put the following two things at the top of any construction list:
– Solid construction. Exterior capable of withstanding a certain amount of abuse, more than clapboard or sheet metal over a frame. This specifically includes security-glass in your windows, and well-anchored solid exterior doors. Both of those are inexpensive to include in initial construction, but expensive to retrofit.
– Good insulation, and lots of it. Again, expensive (or impossible) to retrofit, but inexpensive to include initially. A well-insulated house will stay at a reasonable temperature in all but the coldest weather, just from the waste heat of living, cooking, etc.. Useful in case of those serious storms, or in case of other kinds of infrastructure disruption.
“Might be simpler to just build a house on Walmart’s roof though.”
Indeed. Or park a really huge RV in one of their parking lots and just live there. Oh wait…
Who knows. Your house may be on top of one of those secret FEMA/Walmart tunnels.
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Texans-blame-secret-military-drills-for-Walmart-cl-6214696.php
I’m about ready to bag Firefox. It’s slow, bloated, and has a lot of other issues.
Do a backup of the relevant files and try a refresh of your Firefox user profile if you haven’t done so already:
Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> “Refresh Firefox …”
The problem I see with going with one of the niche browsers is the lack of eyeballs on the code, both from a user and developer standpoint. Serious bugs and security issues could linger for years.
“…Exterior capable of withstanding a certain amount of abuse…”
Like bullets and shrapnel. Roger that. Brick here. With ballistic film on the windows to follow, at some point.
“A well-insulated house will stay at a reasonable temperature in all but the coldest weather, just from the waste heat of living, cooking, etc.”
Roger that. Brick, again. And new windows and shutters on 50% of the windows so far, the rest to follow this spring. With a wood stove and an oil burner/furnace. Backup generator also to follow at some point.
And don’t forget that the site should have a pure and independent source of fresh water.
“And that is losing one’s mind how, exactly?”
In the same way it’s losing one’s mind to twist a tiger’s tail or put your head into a crocodile’s mouth.
“And don’t forget that the site should have a pure and independent source of fresh water.”
Looks like someone’s hacked DH’s account. The hacker misspelt “wottah”.
Don’t laugh; entities from Ukraine, Pakistan and Mexico have apparently tried to access my rarely used Yahoo email account in the past few weeks. Repeatedly.
42h today – taking it easy for an old guy.
Began yesterday with several friends having lunch at Luigi’s.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxLWd_RKNPevVHByaUN4aHFfMW8
Then a bar crawl through several places ending at The Padre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padre_Hotel
Home by 7.
Well, well, Mr. dkreck; who’s the blonde?? Yikes! And wipe dat smirk off yer face this instant!
Been simply ages since OFD did a bah crawl, must have been the 1980s, down in beeyooteeful downtown Woostah, MA.
Then I got married.
She’s my daughter.
Ah, OK. She’s gorgeous. Takes after her dad, amirite?
What was for lunch? Wife and I are overdue to hit a decent Italian restaurant if we can find one in this AO.
86 F here in the Land of Sugar. Doing the Federal Tax Return thing and hope to finish it up today. We are getting money back again ! I know that we are giving a free loan to the government but owing money to these guys is like owing money to the Mafia, they send collectors around sooner or later. Better to be overpaid, especially if you make a goodly amount of money.
And the wife now has the cold that is going around, my daughter and my parents got it first (and still have it).
The class on converting muslims to Christians this morning at church was amazing. The speaker is a 20 year missionary to Bangladesh and Pakistan. A very brave man ! He converted six muslims to Christians in his first five years. They in turn converted 35,000 muslims to Christians and planted 25 new churches over the last 15 years. Since the conversions and churches are illegal, they are all hidden.
Yeah, that’ll get any of them the death penalty in the religion of pieces. They are all very brave people, hats off!
Wife and DIL had some kind of stomach issue over the last couple of days, no known cause, frequent vomiting but not the other end. Feverish at times, too. But nothing with the three toddlers or their dad. Curious and curiouser.
Any time I feel the slightest twinge of stuff like that, I OD myself on Vitamin C and drink gallons of fluids, eat like a pig and get out in the fresh air as often as I can. Usually stops it dead at whatever point I noticed it. Plus I’ve had my flu shot again anyway.
Mr. H. Combs:
“”Mr. Spook; I have been looking at “steel shop building homes” for a while. There’s a lot to like about the construction. There’s several in the central Oklahoma area from huge 8 bedroom monsters to more reasonable 40 X 60 ones with garage downstairs and living space upstairs. Cost per square foot is reasonable if you can do most of the interior work yourself.””
Thanks. That pretty much backs up my research. Some people think I’m nuts, of course. Note that there are some metal buildings that claim easy home-grown assembly, too. And, yeah, the interior construction should be pretty easy for me (even maybe at my age), especially with the rather nicely sheltered situation. Oh, I’m sure I’ll have some elevated storage, but living space needs to all be down on the main level… Stairs are not a challenge, yet, but good to plan ahead.
I’m at 52.0.1 (64-bit).
I thought that the 64 bit version of FireFox was still alpha ?
Might be simpler to just build a house on Walmart’s roof though.
Ah, the bugout place for a group of kids after a massive bioweapon release in Colorado, “Monument 14”:
https://www.amazon.com/Monument-14-Emmy-Laybourne/dp/1250027381/
Yeah, that’ll get any of them the death penalty in the religion of pieces. They are all very brave people, hats off!
No joke. He is taking applications of people to come work with him as Christian missionary trainees in Bangladesh. He joked that he has a 95% return rate. I am fairly sure that he is kidding, right ?
BTW, there is a mosque down the street from my church with over 5,000 members here in the Land of Sugar. Over 100 of the members are studying English at my church in this Friendspeak program. Who knew ?
The missionary is returning in September to teach classes on reaching out to Hindus. We have a large Hindu temple here in Fort Bend County made out of hand carved Indian imported marble on ten acres of land. I was taken on a tour of it about a decade ago. It is a beautiful structure but, very different. In fact, one of my employees is an elder in the Hindu church over in Pasadena. He even performs weddings.
Ah, it makes the haht glad to see this big beeyooteeful gorgeous mosaic in full swing! Give us your tired, your poor, your whatever masses struggling to breathe free, etc., etc., and get lots of stuff free, too. We’re all rich here, with bottomless pockets for the world’s billions. And if not, the gummint will simply print more money, like they’ve been doing for quite a while now.
And IIRC, Hindus and adherents of the religion of peaces don’t get along real well. But let’s have them all in anyway, they automatically become peaceful and prosperous and freedom-loving Murkans, amirite?
“The Week’s Most Frightening, Enlightening, and Whitening Headlines”
http://takimag.com/article/the_week_that_perished_takimag_march_26_2017?utm_source=Taki%27s+Magazine+List&utm_campaign=a70dc9c57e-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f7706afea2-a70dc9c57e-379417973#axzz4cTEms5y0
Is it just me or is there some kinda cognitive dissonance going on here?
O Kanaduh’s rulers seek to prevent apparently rampant “islamophobia” while a Jordanian imam in a Montreal mosque has been screaming “death to all Jews” repeatedly in recent days. So isn’t this sorta like if Europeans had been worried about offending the Nazis and engaging in Naziphobia back then and passing anti-Naziphobia laws, while said Nazis were actually murdering Jews?
Oh wait, guess not. See, the musloids aren’t in a position of POWER and thus are victims themselves and must be protected at all costs. Even when they advocate violent death for another previously protected victim group.
Maybe we’ll find out when the Canadian rulers get their wish and sharia is in place throughout the country and musloids finally DO have that power.
So there’s a guy trying to talk people into getting into a missionary position and a 95% satisfaction rate. There’s a joke in there somewhere but it’s just not coming.
@OFD -What was for lunch? Wife and I are overdue to hit a decent Italian restaurant if we can find one in this AO.
Luigi’s 100yrs+ being run by 3rd and 4th generation. Market deli and lunch. Party catering at night. My grandparents shopped at the market. The walls are covered in local sports and memorabilia going back to the 20s.
Now it’s expensive high end. An effin gold mine. Almost a victim of their own success. Expanded menu and definitely higher priced than when Louie used to run it. People line up outside to get in. I’ve been going for almost 50 years.
Saturday is the big day. Burgers on the menu. The best, sourdough french roll and some pastrami on top, cheese too. I had a Guinn special. Burger patty w/cheese served with pasta and beans, side of toasted sourdough roll and grilled onions. I was stuffed but so good.
I’ve been semi-amazed at the rate of gun sales for the last several years. Purchasing a gun is a purely discretionary expense IMO and considering the falling labor participation rate, I’m surprised and encouraged that sales have been so brisk. I also think it is a more than fair warning to TPTB. Sales are down somewhat after the election, but hardly falling off a cliff.
The NICS check numbers are published every month and easy to find online adjusted to approximate actual sales. It grates that the MSM is innumerate in this as they are in many other issues.
A couple of recent headlines noted that the gun accident rate continues to fall as well, which is certainly good news as some high percentage of all those sales must be to new shooters. One would assume around here that there is little replacement for those boating accidents, as old white f*rts like me have all the hardware needful.
Thanks Mr. Lynn! Monument 14 looks like a latter day Swiss Family Robinson.
Just getting ready to leave the rodeo. The staff stopped caring about trash an hour ago. There are a lot more people drinking. Crowd’s changing. Time to go. More later.
N
“The best, sourdough french roll and some pastrami on top, cheese too. I had a Guinn special. Burger patty w/cheese served with pasta and beans, side of toasted sourdough roll and grilled onions. I was stuffed but so good.”
Huh. Pastrami, eh? I may try that. I’ve put bacon and ham on top before but not that. Nice. Grilled onions, too. Oh my. Hell, I can do that right here on our PK grill and even make sourdough french rolls. For a bit less money, most likely. Mrs. OFD will also go for this in a big way.
WRT to the firearms industry; MSM and other sites keep reporting a slowdown and layoffs. Others predict another runup in sales next year leading to the elections. Prices are, in fact, dropping.
“…a lot more people drinking. Crowd’s changing. Time to go.”
Yup. That’s the kinda crowd I don’t care to be around, and I don’t like crowds, anyway. Must be getting near dusk, twilight, whatever, only an hour behind here, IIRC.
Reminds me of the old Patriots stadium games down in Foxborough, MA years ago; fans would be wicked ugly after awhile, tons of drinking going on. They had a bunch of state police on duty at those games and if you got their attention in a bad way, they’d put a jumbo can of whoopass on you and you’d join other drunks in one of their standby wagons, for a later ride to whichever local hoosegow. I saw a couple of those back in them days (from the outside of the bars, of course) and they were like unto medieval dungeons. They’d take the guy’s belt and shoes, shove him in there and slam the big heavy metal door shut. Like the crack of Doom. And if you’d given them a hard time on the way in, you were gonna get some serious whoopass. Over the years some guys went in vertically and came out horizontally at room temperature.
I haven’t been to a Pats game in many, many years but Mr. JLP probably has the current intel on that stuff as he lives right around the corner.
Now dealing with really pesky Winblows 8 update problem on that machine; had to set up a “clean boot” and try the updates again; 148 of them, taking many hours. Last time it got to 99% and then failed, with “reverting changes.” Another half-hour for that. Why is there always a PITA with what should be really simple chit? I do updates on the Linux machines all the time with nary a problem. With Winblows you know it’s gonna be an epic struggle.
I thought that the 64 bit version of FireFox was still alpha ?
I thought the same thing, but I don’t see anything that says it is alpha/beta on the download page for the latest release.
Firefox 52 disabled the NSAPI plugins for most users so there really isn’t any point to delaying the 64 bit version from going “gold”.
I’m going to stay on 32 bit because one of the faculty members I support needs the Java plugin. I make sure I “eat my own dog food”.
https://websetnet.com/temporarily-re-enable-npapi-plugin-support-firefox-52/
@OFD – and even make sourdough french rolls.
No need here. One block over from Luigi’s is this
http://pyreneesfrenchbakery.com/
Now dealing with really pesky Winblows 8 update problem on that machine; had to set up a “clean boot” and try the updates again; 148 of them, taking many hours. Last time it got to 99% and then failed, with “reverting changes.” Another half-hour for that. Why is there always a PITA with what should be really simple chit? I do updates on the Linux machines all the time with nary a problem. With Winblows you know it’s gonna be an epic struggle.
Try this:
http://download.wsusoffline.net/
The download speed could be faster, but the offline update will be more reliable than depending on Windows Update.
Windows 7 and 8 are nearly impossible to install clean without the offline update file package. And even with the files already downloaded for the installer, I’ve found that a certain sequence of updates/reboots is necessary for Windows 7 to get a stable system.
Gotta wonder if that is deliberate.
Bipolar Biden: “I should have run, I would have won the White House.” Sniff.
Grumpy McCain: “tRump’s a fukstik. Russia is a bunch of KGB thugs.” Jerk.
Capo Chelsea: “Horror, link between diabetes and CLIMATE EJACULATION.” Idiot.
The Past, Present and Future of American Politics, folks. We are fucking dead. The doosh is strong in these turds.
Did someone say that Chelsea is a moron?
Clinton is dumber than a stump. The future of the Dumbocrat Party. Please.
For the next president, we will see the election process further deteriorate…
Chelsea will mud-wrestle Evanka for the Presidency!
[snip] I’m about ready to bag Firefox. It’s slow, bloated, and has a lot of other issues. [snip]
I resemble that remark! But just for comparison’s sake, I closed and re-opened instances of Opera, Chromium, and Firefox on my main desktop. It’s a quad core Athlon, 8 gigs of ram, running OpenSuse 42.1 . FF reports ~ 245k of memory usage, Opera ~97k, and Chromium ~224k. All figures are for a single tab open to about:blank or its equivalent, and as are reported by Ksysguard. Most of the problems that Firefox (my usual browser) seems to have look to be related to my use of NoScript and Adblock.
Prices for all healthcare and healthcare commodities would immediately fall an average of 90%, maybe more, within a matter of months, and maybe weeks
Nope. Can’t happen. To do that, you would need to either lay off 90% of the people working in health care, or cut salaries by 90%. There isn’t that much slack in the system. Insurance companies don’t have high profit margins, nor do drug companies when you factor in R&D. Even Apple, which enjoys monopoly profits due to the continuing influence of the Steve Jobs reality distortion field, only makes about 25% profit.
What can happen is a decrease in costs due to substitution effects – replace visits to MDs or DOs with visits to nurse practicioners or physician assistants. (Already happening for routine stuff.) More surgery is moving to outpatient surgery, which is cheaper. As robots get better, they will do procedures with minimal physician monitoring. As AI gets better, they can do a lot of diagnosis – expect them to start moving in on dermatologists or anything that uses visual intelligence in the near term.
Cutting down on unnecessary tests would save a big chunk.
Cutting down on useless-but-mandatory paperwork would allow a small but substantial saving in clerks in the doctors’ offices and the expensive (and buggy) compliance software.
Not a big cut overall, but some.
“Windows 7 and 8 are nearly impossible to install clean without the offline update file package. “
I’ll try that link you have; the updates just failed again with the same error message after several hours of downloading and installing all over again to 99%. It’s now “Reverting changes,” again. Another half-hour, at least. This is good, though; it reinforces my hatred for Microslop and Winblows and my determination to avoid it as much as I possibly can.
“Did someone say that Chelsea is a moron?”
Jesus wept. My Gawd. And the comments, as usual, are priceless. Mucho boffo laffo.
“Chelsea will mud-wrestle Evanka for the Presidency!”
It’s all been just a very bad joke for a very long time now; a peanut farmer, a haberdasher, several raving drunks and murderers and serial rapists, a musloid homosexual doper from Indonesia (proven beyond any reasonable doubt), several crippled so bad they shouldn’t have been allowed to leave their own houses let alone live in the big white one, etc., etc. And that’s “Ivanka,” who would kick Princess Chelsea’s ass.
“…related to my use of NoScript and Adblock.”
Yeah, I hear ya. I quit using them on this Linux Mint machine anyway. Hell, I’m behind a VPN and firewall.
And now to try Mr. Greg’s suggestion…light a joss stick…whisper occult incantations to the living shades of Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Dave Cutler….
Ivanka, of course.
Need to get those Russian words into spell-check…
“…What can happen is a decrease in costs due to substitution effects…”
Agreed, already happening up here, too. And agreed also with Mr. SteveF; cut out a ton of paperwork.
What may or may not save us is now my VA disability rating can get some health insurance for my wife, and treatment for stuff. We’re waiting to hear, now that I’ve sent the paperwork in accordingly. They’re already treating me and have been for eight years straight now. I’ll make the point again that my treatment is very good mainly because this is a small state and the VA medicos are very tight with UVM med school and Dartmouth-Hitchcock down the other end of the state. (well, midway, actually). I doubt I’d get the same care if I lived in TX or FL, which have huge veteran populations. There are 53,000 up here. A million in Floriduh.
“WRT to the firearms industry; MSM and other sites keep reporting a slowdown and layoffs. Others predict another runup in sales next year leading to the elections. Prices are, in fact, dropping.
Re: prices falling and layoffs, gotta admit, true dat. The foot is off the accelerator. I’ve also noticed “out of stock” on many parts and assemblies at the smaller houses for quite awhile.
Still, at over a million NICS checks per month (most months a LOT over) for the entirety of the last administration adds a minimum 100 million more firearms to the national civilian stock. No one would claim Americans were lacking in firepower 8 years ago, and definitely not today. While the trend is down, the last few months were still at least 1.5 million guns per month sold.
If inventories do stack up, bargains will abound.
The political implications of a populace arming itself in increasing numbers during a recession, uh “recovery” depend on the demographics of the purchasers. If it comes mostly from folks like the denizens here, no big deal. If it is more the 100 million or so working stiffs just getting by, hmmmm.
“Need to get those Russian words into spell-check…”
No need, sir. I am cursed with having chit like that JUMP out at me all the time; several right-wing sites post stuff all the time and the typos and spelling errors JUMP out at me there, too; I’ve offered to read their stuff before they post it, gratis, glad to do it, but no takers yet. If not me, they could at least just get a second reader where they are, just another pair of eyes is all it takes, usually.
Sorry, Recovering English Major, with way too much reading over sixty years.
“Sorry, Recovering English Major, with way too much reading over sixty years.”
English Minor, and I usually have good spelling and grammar skills, especially on somebody else’s writing… making this all the more embarrassing.
“If inventories do stack up, bargains will abound.”
Indeed. I plan to keep a close eye on all that stuff over the next eighteen months.
“If it comes mostly from folks like the denizens here, no big deal. If it is more the 100 million or so working stiffs just getting by, hmmmm.”
I’m guessing it is still coming mostly from peeps like us, but the other category has been increasing, too. Part of it is the dumbasses in the MSM keep harping and screeching about guns and that attention alone, plus the last eight years of the Indonesian’s administration, have served to jack up sales better than the NRA and all the other gun organizations and dealers and manufacturers could have done by orders of magnitude. We’ve also seen a few intrepid warriors on the fah left supposedly tooling up, but I find that eminently laughable. Pajama Boy with an AR.
With regard to background checks, the last time they ran one on me, that one check was good for two tactical shotguns, two .22 rifles, and an AR-15. All of which I lost in a mishap on the way home.
A lot of progs have started buying guns, too. Which is fine with me. Newbie shooters tend to shift away from the left and those who don’t, well that’s just more for us after we take them away from them.
And now to try Mr. Greg’s suggestion…light a joss stick…whisper occult incantations to the living shades of Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Dave Cutler….
I just rebuilt my Windows 7 laptop from scratch, but it took a while to get the updates and drivers installed in the right order. I’ve worked out the following sequence:
1) Clean OS install. Format the disc.
2) Drivers.
3) Internet Exploiter -er- Explorer 10/11 from the offline install package. The browser isn’t as important as the .Net silliness.
4) All of the remaining updates downloaded via offline update.
I don’t really have a strong opinion about Windows either way. I spend most of my time working on Windows 10 with Classic Shell and Cygwin installed.
I saw a story today that the people who currently hold the OS/2 IP are about to release a new version with support for modern hardware.
https://www.arcanoae.com/blue-lion/
IIRC, a *lot* of ATMs run OS/2.
“A lot of progs have started buying guns, too.”
Speaking of which…
….http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/lemons-gun-totin-left-wingers-demonstrate-trump-rally-bloodshed-on-the-horizon-9192965
Yes, I’m still laughing.
WRT tens of thousands in “healthcare” losing their jobs, YES. That needs to happen. There are 10ks of mostly useless parasites who have inserted themselves into the system to either extract money, or make it possible for others to extract money. And I’m not talking about care givers. I’m talking about the hordes of ‘medical coders’ insurance CSRs, claims processors, and hundreds of others that are friction in the system, and provide NO positive benefit to the health of the patients. Any other industry would be leveling the org chart, cutting out dead wood, or whatever the current euphemism is but “healthcare” exists to GROW the number of those people because it’s a government funded bureaucracy.
My BIL employs a team of people that do nothing but submit, resubmit, track, and code the thousands of different variations and requirements for the dozens of different entities that are paying.
Those people NEED to lose their jobs before this will get better. Sucks to be them, but it sucks to be dependent on the .gov teat. Just cutting several of those layers will save billions of dollars.
nick
“I’m guessing it is still coming mostly from peeps like us, but the other category has been increasing, too.”
Oh,yes: Mr. Bam-Bam was the well deserved salesman of the century.
Can’t seem to make my arithmetic add up. 90 million underage, so discounted entirely. 20 million at the public trough, probably uninterested or dependent on their employer to provide. 60 million on SS, more than half ladies. ~100 million private sector workers, some percent mostly concerned w rent, gas, food to the exclusion of all else. I’m short 60 million to get to 330 million.
The male half of retirees and some percent of the productive class are the most likely to have the interest and the bucks to drive sales. Like I said, I’m amazed at the long term high pace that has been achieved. OTOH, 70 million private sector workers and 30 million retirees is only 1 gun apiece in the Ohorror years.
Retirement in slightly over a year. SSI should be around $2500, income from ATM business should be $2400+, and, if we don’t sell the storage facility, about $2200 from that. My health care is through the Muskogee Creek Nation and house and cars are paid for. My wife’s convinced we will be impoverished when I retire.
“Just cutting several of those layers will save billions of dollars.”
Agreed. We mostly seem to be in agreement here on what needs to happen. Too bad we’re not in charge and never likely to BE in charge, either. So we’ll watch the whole behemoth stumble and bumble along until it crashes. What a mess.
“Can’t seem to make my arithmetic add up.”
Don’t feel bad; the MSM can’t do it either, so they’ll just make chit up as they go along. I’m guessing that we can figure on, let’s just say, many tens of millions of Murkans of whatever ethnic, racial, economic status, or age, have between them somewhere in the neighborhood of half a billion to a billion firearms. This is unprecedented in human history. Among them many, many millions of trained veterans, and ten percent of them have seen the elephant. How many lefty dipshits and pajama boyz have done so? How many current LE and state security thugs have done so?
There’s a guy down there in West Virginia with sterling military and combat credentials for both UK and Murkan armed forces, and his SUT school is cranking them out by the dozens every week, in an increasing variety of available classes, and expanding to mobile training in other states now. That’s just one guy, and I know there are maybe two or three others just as good or almost as good and just as busy. Many, if not most, of the students are also former military. I’d go myself if I was in shape and had several other guys from my AO here to go with me. (they’ll tell me to get my ass in shape with PT and come on down and quit being a lazy-ass piece of useless shit, and rightfully so).
Anyway, there’s a lotta guns out there and a lotta peeps who know how to use them.
“Those people NEED to lose their jobs before this will get better. Sucks to be them, but it sucks to be dependent on the .gov teat. Just cutting several of those layers will save billions of dollars.”
I read somewhere but can’t provide a cite that there are 5 administrators per doctor. At a burden rate of $80k (gotta be low) that’s $400k unnecessary overhead BEFORE one adds up the clerks.
The official employee count for public workers doesn’t count the contractors which are legion. The amount of anti-productive “work” being done is staggering.
I have experience with HUD, a teeny tiny ~30 billion dollar line item. I was nominally the private sector employee of a management firm that had 600 section 8 apartments, but almost all the money came from HUD. They outsourced most inspectors and auditors for our operation to other contractor skim artists.
We gamed ’em to have rarely empty units subsidized at least 20% over market rate. Very profitable for the owners, not so much for me. Only lasted about 18 months then found work managing multi-family foreclosures for banks.
“My wife’s convinced we will be impoverished when I retire.”
By my reckoning you’re in great shape, sir. No, not the One Percent, but you’ll be doing swell. I hope that we’ll be close to those figures when my wife stops slaving all over the country. My 2,500/month from SS, her 3,200, and her jewelry biz and my various enterprises. Kid will be out of college by then, so that’s another $1,000-2,000/month we won’t have to spend. Cars will be all paid for.
All we need to do is fix our tax situation and pay off the back taxes and then accelerate the house payments. I figure we can be outta the woods by the time I hit 66-70, depending.
“I read somewhere but can’t provide a cite that there are 5 administrators per doctor.”
Same ratio of fat to lean in the publik education systems and colleges and universities. I recall the NYC skool system employing thousands of staff, while the parochial system, at the height of the Roman Catholic hegemony there, made do somehow with 24.
“Anyway, there’s a lotta guns out there and a lotta peeps who know how to use them.”
Indeed. Every blade of grass.
That general sure knew what he was talking about; blades of grass, waking up giants, etc. But we nailed his ass over the north Pacific for Pearl Harbor. Sayanora!
Optimist.
— Your friendly neighborhood mellow-harsher
“— Your friendly neighborhood mellow-harsher”
And buzz killer. Thanks.
Theoretically she’ll be done by Xmas. Not sure if summa skool is available. Allegedly had a job interview Friday but I’ve heard nothing more. Her rent will be due again on the 1st and I’m guessing we’ll pick up the tab again, too.
I dunno; maybe she’ll make big bucks as a harpist and singer and also translating somewhere. I sure hope so.
“The download speed could be faster, but the offline update will be more reliable than depending on Windows Update.”
BINGO!
Thanks much, Mr. Greg; that worked like a charm, and it ran in a terminal window throughout so I could see, just like for Linux updates, everything it was doing. Excellent. One less worry now.
“My wife’s convinced we will be impoverished when I retire.”
By my reckoning you’re in great shape, sir. No, not the One Percent, but you’ll be doing swell.
Being in the top 50% of the USA is like being in the top ten percent of any other nation.
That is so right, Mr. Lynn; yours truly has been in some other nations and the contrast is remarkable. We live like princes here, most of us, but it’s been a half-century anomaly, I fear.
Wife and I are perfectly happy in this house, though it needs a bunch more work, but it’s ours and we can see the differences we’re making with it. We don’t care about luxuries or sailing around the world on a yacht or living it up like big dawgs. We can get by OK on our SS and VA and retirement $, while also working as long as we can on other stuff to jack up the monthly revenue. The only fly in the ointment, of course, is the tax situation.
Quite frankly, of all the houses on this street, this is the best.
Thanks much, Mr. Greg; that worked like a charm, and it ran in a terminal window throughout so I could see, just like for Linux updates, everything it was doing. Excellent. One less worry now.
I learned something in grad school. 🙂
If you’re running Windows 8, install Classic Shell. I’m surprised that Microsoft hasn’t bought that guy out and buried him in a basement in Redmond like they did with Winternals.
Quite frankly, of all the houses on this street, this is the best.
You need to put up a sign out front, “The Hobbit House”. And convert the front door to a round door.
“If you’re running Windows 8, install Classic Shell. I’m surprised that Microsoft hasn’t bought that guy out and buried him in a basement in Redmond like they did with Winternals.”
Ah yes, Classic Shell; I’d completely forgotten about it. Thanks for the reminder, too. And Winternals, yes.
“You need to put up a sign out front, “The Hobbit House”. And convert the front door to a round door.”
No chit. Peeps back in 1830 were small. And wife and I are larger than average Murkan peeps NOW. Back then we’d be giants. She’s 5’10”, which is larger than the average Murkan male. Princess is six feet. Son is my height and outweighs me now by about forty pounds. All soft flab, though, like his dad’s family out there in NWT.
I wanna replace the front door but wife is not on board with that yet. I will at least upgrade the security hardware on both front and back doors this next month when it warms up a bit here. And put a storm door on the back.
Meanwhile I continue to crack my head on ceilings, doorways and beams occasionally, not paying attention, sleepwalking, etc. Wife has done the same.
DH and Spook wrote:
““Sorry, Recovering English Major, with way too much reading over sixty years.”
English Minor, and I usually have good spelling and grammar skills, especially on somebody else’s writing… making this all the more embarrassing.”
Failed Year 11 English in high school. Was so delighted by the subject that I fell asleep, literally, in my last English lesson in October 1974.
DH wrote:
“Kid will be out of college by then…”
hohohohohohohohohohoho!!!
“…so that’s another $1,000-2,000/month we won’t have to spend.”
LOLZ hahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
@greg, is Classic Shell the same as Classic Start Menu?
I’ve got Classic start menu on my win8 but some things still bring up the wretched square blox o color finger paint interface. And all those freaking apps how the hell can I just get rid of that?
n
(I’ve been hesitant to just delete stuff, and have no interest in spending my life time on researching what might break. I no longer have much interest in computers or software for their own sake….)
ADDED- never mind about Classic Shell, I took a second and actually looked at my start menu and it is Classic Shell….
@OFD, from a thousand miles away (or a bit more) I have to agree that your statements about the princess and you spending money do seem slightly optimistic, based on past performance…….
n
“(I’ve been hesitant to just delete stuff…”
Right-click on them and you have choices on what to do with them; if I’m unsure about deleting them permanently, I simply “unpin” them from the desktop or taskbar or whatever, and the clutter is reduced. (they’re still available via a couple of other methods, however). “Right-click” is your buddy with Winblows.
“… your statements about the princess and you spending money do seem slightly optimistic, based on past performance…….”
She’ll be 25 in June, and once that BA is done, we’re done. Enough is enough. OTOH, wife goes out to the kids/grandkids in Kalifornia and sometimes buys their groceries (she cooks for them because they don’t cook), even though son makes a quarter-mil per year. But we’ll have this discussion again, too, after she gets back.
Perhaps Princess could sponge off her well heeled brother rather than you, Mrs OFD and grannie?
“…once that BA is done…”
Once.
With apologies to the ephors of Spata…
One prominent example involves Philip II of Macedon, who after invading southern Greece and receiving the submission of other key city-states, sent a message to Sparta:
You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city.
The Spartan ephors replied with a single word:
If.
Her well-heeled brother lives in the East Bay just east of Sodom-on-the-Bay, and has three kids of his own and a non-employed wife. They have their hands full already and he is well aware of his sister’s grifting and mooching. He gave her his Matrix free of charge and all she did was crab about it. And we put $4,000 into it for repairs and maintenance and the inspection and sticker and registration. The world owes her a living and everything is always all about her, period.
Her brother was/is not like that, so my hypothesis, besides the obvious one, is that she brought home these attitudes from her publik skool attendance over the years and her friends, and then her mom and grandma supported it all, or at least did not contravene it. And when I attempted to contravene it, I was sandbagged and sabotaged. Let this be a lesson for any other parents out there, particularly evil dad tyrants, with their chillunz, particularly teenage grrls.
I have a grand niece like her, always trying to manipulate and sponge money from my brother and me, although she seems to have improved in the last few months.
I’m about ready to bag Firefox. It’s slow, bloated, and has a lot of other issues.
BTW, on Firefox, I restart it several times a day. I have uBlock installed and turned on. I am running the 32 bit version of FireFox version 52.0.1 on Windows 7 x64 with 16 GB of ram and a 480 GB Intel SSD.
https://www.ublock.org/
I also have Shockwave Flash set to “ask to activate” on both of my office and home PCs. This is the number one item that has helped to stabilize FireFox as it seems to have some interaction with the video device drivers on both PCs.
Yes, I’m still laughing.
As soon as they put on a mask (bandana), you know you have a bunch of pussies. The kind that sneak up behind police officers and shoot them in the head. Fukstik commie pinko bastards all.
“As soon as they put on a mask (bandana), you know you have a bunch of pussies.”
vom Teufel sprechen:
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2017/03/27/bash-the-fash/
And look! Real brown shirts, too!