Holy cow, time is flying by. Coming up on halfway thru the semester. Gonna be summer in an eyeblink.
68F, overcast, and very humid here today. All day yesterday I had moisture condensing on anything cool. Every can and bottle in the garage had wetness on it. Floors got slick with moisture. NOT ideal food storage conditions, or car storage conditions for that matter.
Another school shooting. As the details come out, we are seeing the same things. Troubled ‘youth’ (in this case an adult), made threats, made obvious comments, F’d up home life (why is he an orphan?)
I was heartened to see the EMS response which looked like the new doctrine of “scoop and scoot”. It looked like they were not waiting for the scene to be declared “secure” either. Good news for the victims. I hope there are some lessons to be learned from this that can help in the future.
nick
66f and overcast in Memphis this AM.
We now know the FBI was warned about the shooter months in advance. But I guess spending all available resources trying to bring down the president takes priority. Bitter? Sure.
52º and pleasant here. All of the frozen slush is melting away. Good riddance.
Preparing for a trip to another place for the kids to play & have fun. Yes, crowds. Yes, I’ll be as prepared as I am permitted to be.
I am looking forward to 4.5 days of NOT work. I need the break.
More lefty attempts to control speech and thought.
“Miller (right), who is the most decorated skier in US Olympic history, replied: ‘The knee was an issue. I want to point out that she also just got married and it’s historically very challenging to race in the World Cup while trying to raise a family or after being married.’ “
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/winterolympics/article-5394817/Bode-Miller-forced-apologise-sexist-remarks.html
So just another example of someone stating the truth as they understand it, and the guy is certainly a subject matter expert on what olympic performance entails, and because it doesn’t fit the “you go grrrl!” delusional thinking (that you CAN have it all) he’s forced to recant or lose his livelihood.
NO thinking person with any experience of either marriage or childrearing would ever consider that they DON’T change your priorities or time available for training. And if you are married or a parent and your needs come first, that’s just sad…
n
Apparently the shooters mom died some time last yer of the Flu. There were PLENTY of warnings, but they weren’t or couldn’t be acted on.
Questions still remaining:
1. Was the firearm legally purchased? It has been reported that it was.
2. Did the shooter have a criminal record?
3. Had the shooter been referred for mental health treatment or evaluation? Obviously he should have been, but I doubt there is a legal requirement to report him.
There was a congressman (Senator from North Dakota?) on NPR this morning that clearly corrected the ‘Assault Rifle’ definition. I doubt people will believe it. He also pointed out that are schools are generally less protected than our businesses.
I truly do understand peoples desire to ‘DO SOMETHING’. Society’s prime purpose is to protect and raise children and the slaughter of them shows we have failed. I don’t know what can be done that would reduce the risk. Well, one thing, but I doubt TPTB would like it. Screened armed volunteers, like crossing guards. Lots of retired cops, military, and others would likely volunteer half a day a week to do it, I bet.
We are also leaving Friday for a short getaway with the grandkids.
Heading for a resort in the Great Smoky Mountains. One thst didn’t burn last year.
Have heard good things of it and the area but never been there.
Desperatly need a few days away from the grind to clear my aging head.
@clayton, the parent who died was an adoptive parent. He was an orphan before that. The reporting is unclear, and my understanding may change.
The school clearly thought him a threat, esp. if they banned him from campus “while carrying a backpack.”
HUGE school. No way to police that, in any sense of the word. There are towns smaller than that school.
He’s 19, an adult. NOT legal to own a pistol, but old enough to own long guns. If not at nineteen, do we also raise the voting age? age for military service? signing legally binding documents? termination of parental rights and emancipation?
There seem to be a lot of missed indicators here, but what can you actually do before any acts are committed? In the old days the family would have policed him, (or not), but that’s not happening anymore for a lot of kids.
Some hard questions are “Given all the money spent on ‘hardening’ schools, what failed here that he was allowed access to the campus?” I can’t get into my kids school without being buzzed in, outside of dropoff and pickup times. Where is the video of his arrival? Gas mask, long gun, something to carry everything in…. someone should have triggered the lockdown or physically kept him out. What failed? What was never put in place and why?
n
Some day somebody is going to look back on our era and wonder how we could be such idiots.
For the past 20 years, we have been training our children to kill others without feeling shame or remorse. We reward them for killing more people than anyone else. It’s the same conditioning that we use on soldiers in basic training when we teach them to kill people.
And nobody says a word because the First Amendment protects the rights of the people creating the FPS games.
Yep. I’m a crackpot.
I was heartened to see the EMS response which looked like the new doctrine of “scoop and scoot”. It looked like they were not waiting for the scene to be declared “secure” either. Good news for the victims. I hope there are some lessons to be learned from this that can help in the future.
Even if it wasn’t a different mindset in FL than CO or RI, the Sheriff and EMS have the recent experience of the airport shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
The MSM is already working up a lot of sympathy for the scumbag shooter; he’s an orphan, his mother just died, and on and on.
How much you wanabet that he is a DACA baby?
I heard on the Glenn Beck Radio Show this morning that the MSM is also claiming that there has been 18 mass school shootings this year. His co-hosts (Glenn is out with the Flu) went down the list. Only 2 of the incidents were really mass shootings. The others ranged from a 3-year old pulling the trigger on a cops gun (WTF) to windows shot out and gang shootings involving only 1 victim.
I just want to be left alone.
Call me:
Locked, Loaded, Intolerant, Vigilant, Enlightened
I quit playing Grand Theft Auto when it came out after only a couple of hours. It definitely was changing my emotions and mental state. Post-Columbine everyone was quick to blame FPS games, and like everything, there are people who are more susceptible than others. I’ll say from my own experience, they def condition behaviour.
That’s my biggest issue with cops training on ‘shoot/no shoot’ simulators- there’s no third or fourth option.
n
“How much you wanabet that he is a DACA baby?”
That was my first thought when seeing the name coupled with the parental situation. Either that, or the child of drug abusers/criminals/general losers.
n
Oh, and I don’t care what the guy’s circumstances were, my only concern is “Did he do it?” “When can we schedule his execution?”
If we have video, and he confesses, it doesn’t matter about anything else. ANY ONE of the murders is a life sentence. 17 of them is execution, preferably soon, and after torture.
n
@Nick – you forgot the word “public”. “Public Execution”. In full view, required viewing for all students aged 14 & up. Punishment should deter as well as punish. I want people to KNOW that punishment follows crime.
Yep, they (bleeding heart libs) claim that executions don’t have deterrent value. I say that’s because they are neither swift, nor public. Fight against it for 20 plus years, it’s not exactly an immanent threat. Do it in private, in the middle of the night, not exactly top of mind.
Yes, I know there are issues with both. Yes, state execution is thought to be murder.
But seriously, what else are you going to do with someone like this, or the guy that killed and ate young girls? They are never going to be rehabilitated. They are CLEARLY guilty, which removes the objection that you can’t release a man who’s been unfairly convicted if he’s dead. Technology has changed. It is possible to know beyond a shadow of doubt. And with publicity, it’s much harder to railroad someone unfairly.
How is it fair to society to spend the resources to just keep someone like that alive?
And how is it fair to the victims that he’ll live longer than they did, or die painlessly?
n
@nick, I saw this and thought of you.
“UK super rat INVASION: Mutant rodents resistant to toxins will plague British households”
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/682042/super-rat-invasion-resistant-toxins-UK-plague
“The mutant rodents are resistant to poison after developing a genetic mutation called L120Q, which renders many toxins useless.”
I’m guessing that the poison resistant rats will be here in the USA in a few years with all of the ships running around. Shoot, maybe even planes. They will be joining our fire ants and other such lovely creatures from other countries.
Hat tip to:
http://drudgereport.com/
OMG! Mutant rats!!!
Yeah, and they are smarter too. I’ve got one eating my powdered butter a tablespoon at a time. I’ve got the electronic trap, two snap traps and 2 glue traps all around the gnawed hole in the jar, and I still can’t catch him.
He’ll flip the snap trap, and jump over the glue….
n
@Nick: since your ‘pet rat’ likes that powdered butter so much – and it is already ruined – mix up a bit of D-Con with the powdered butter.
Not a bad idea.
Anyone got a good little utility to run locally that tests your internet uptime and speed?
Speed is ideal, but mainly my wife wants to document the constant dropouts of her work internet access…
n
“[murderer] had a vast arsenal of weapons according to his Instagram photos, such as this which shows multiple rifles and assault weapons laid out on his bed ”
Note that pix shows ONE AR pattern rifle, ONE bolt action hunting rifle, two full length shotguns, an AIR PISTOL, and what might be the barrel of another AR. I also note that the widely shown pic of him holding a pistol has an ORANGE TIP. IE. it’s not a real gun.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5393601/Instagram-school-shooters-guns-violence-hurting-animals.html
To track the downtime, I’d put a RPi on the network and write a little Perl or Python script to ping the local router, the ISP’s service, and a couple sites out on the internet, ideally by both IP address and human-readable URL. Log the success and response times. Set cron to run it regularly, maybe every ten minutes.
This won’t get you the up/down speed.
Reasoning:
Hit the local router so you can make sure your script and cron setup are working, and so you have a “paper trail” that you’ve been running the job.
Hit the ISP to confirm whether connectivity is present going out of your building.
Hit sites by IP address in case the ISP is having DNS problems — both of the high-speed services available to us have regular problems with that.
If you go this route and need help with the program, let me know.
DSLreports has several tools including one called Smokeping that runs a 24hr check.
@Nick, I have no idea, but my router seems to do the same damn thing. One trick helped, though: some setting in both my smartphone and tablet which turned off constant scanning for WiFi. Still bothersome, but not as much. I bet if you took the time and trouble to set fixed IP addresses for everything, that would also help. I haven’t…
Also, look for a utility called Inssider and pick a clear channel range.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InSSIDer
Mutant RATS reminded me of a ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ movie starring none other than Joan Collins! _Empire of the Ants_.
Anyone heard from Barbara about disposing of Bob’s chemical stash? I got thinking I could take a few more things off her hands. No, not cyanide (I’d use that on the neighbors, not RATS), but stuff like iodine crystals, etc.
EDIT
@dwreck
Ohhh, Smokeping sounds good!
@jim~
dwreck???? Hey! I resemble that.
@Jim – Barbara says she is working with a possible buyer of the HomeScientist business.
She seems like a smart lady that is doing what needs to be done.
Rick, thanks for that news. I would like to see the HomeScientist business continue, and I am glad to hear someone is interested in buying it. I thought about the possibility of buying it, but I concluded I wasn’t the guy to do it.
Mutant RATS reminded me of a ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ movie starring none other than Joan Collins! _Empire of the Ants_.
Svengoolie has tried to get “Empire of the Ants” repeatedly, but he settled for “Ants!’ with an “all star (70s) cast” as the lead off movie for this sweeps period.
Excellent! Thanks for the news, Rick.
I’d wanted to buy one of the chemistry kits a couple months ago, but the timing turned out to be atrocious. Then I looked at RBT’s chem book to see if I could put together the components myself for my daughter to do the labs, but quickly realized that I was clueless. Buying from someone who can put them together is by far my best option.
Have heard good things of it and the area but never been there.
Some good shows I highly recommend. There is a magician in the Wonder Works building who does a show called “Wonders of Magic”. His name is Terry Evanswood. Excellent show and quite reasonable price. Kid friendly.
There is also the Wonder Works building itself. Made for kids and they can easily spend a couple of hours.
For dinner I recommend The Hatfields and McCoy dinner show. Excellent food, excellent entertainment. Get a combo ticket that also gets you to the Smokey Mountain Opry right next door. Two hours of good variety entertainment that is well produced.
The island has a lot of shops that you can easily walk around after parking. Some interesting stores and there are a few things the kids will enjoy. The massive wheel is actually a good ride and provides a good view of Pigeon Forge. Do that after dark as the lights on the wheel and that fountain are well done.
Lots of stuff to do in Pigeon Forge typical of a resort town.
“The House That Spied on Me”
https://gizmodo.com/the-house-that-spied-on-me-1822429852
“In December, I converted my one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco into a “smart home.” I connected as many of my appliances and belongings as I could to the internet: an Amazon Echo, my lights, my coffee maker, my baby monitor, my kid’s toys, my vacuum, my TV, my toothbrush, a photo frame, a sex toy, and even my bed.”
No.
I used to think that all of the SF stories about talking with your house about things would be cool. The harsh reality is the invasion of privacy and the maintenance are just too much to bear.
Release School Control
“And yeah, I know, people will say other countries don’t have school shootings. What they can’t and won’t say is that other countries don’t have school violence, which trust me, they do. They also won’t tell you that our school system is unique in a bunch of ways that might contribute to school shootings, things like the warm body policy, in which people aren’t really expelled except things are incredibly serious, etc. Also the expectation that everyone will go to school and graduate. In some places it’s more expectation than reality, but it’s still an expectation. We also don’t stratify into college and other tracks. This causes the school population to be rather different than in other countries.
“Leaving all that aside, and knowing bloody zero about this particular shooting, has anyone ever considered that the reason for so much school violence and maladaptation (and not just shooting violence) is that school is not adapting to the new millennium?”
“Can teachers carry guns now? How ‘bout now?”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/15/nikolas-cruz-arrested-can-teachers-carry-guns-now/
“The left likes to use these tragedies to sing a song of gun control. But they’re making the wrong case.”
“What’s needed are more guns in the hands of the right people.”
“What’s needed is a concerted and widespread push for teachers, staffers, administrators to be given the rubber-stamp approval to conceal-carry firearms on school grounds.”
How many of you had a gun/rifle range in your high school’s basement?
I did.
How many of you were in your high school’s shooting club?
I was.
How many of you carried your rifle to school on Tuesdays and Thursdays?
I did.
Big difference in morals and values way back in the 60s.
Oh hell, I fired a rifle (with a starters blank) in school. Got into minor trouble, basically a chewing out by the principal. Carried the rifle to and from school on the bus. No one batted an eye.
I heard Lt David Grossman speak at UAA 6 or 8 years ago. Powerful speaker.
He is also an excellent writer.
He has a lot to say on the topic of school shootings.
https://www.amazon.com/Stop-Teaching-Our-Kids-Kill/dp/0804139350
TrueCrypt – I think that somebody mentioned recently that he was using TrueCrypt containers.
Last year I lost 2 USB thumbdrives and have been looking into at least protecting the information I may continue to disseminate unwillingly.
In researching encryption tools I found out that TrueCrypt development was terminated in May 2014. There were 2 forks that are currently still being developed.
I am now using VeraCrypt that is based –and can deal with- TrueCrypt containers. They claim to address leftover vulnerabilities from the last released version of TrueCrypt.
If you are still using TrueCrypt it may be worthwhile at least looking into the forked developments and seeing if migration is a good idea.
I’m willing to wager at least $1 that the shithead murderer in Florida was a devotee of both violent video games and psychoactive drugs. A bad, bad combination, that.
Well, there’s your problem!
“Deeper even than the gun problem is this: boys are broken.”
Read the comments.
I’ll add the celebriturds are screeching “Fuk the NRA”. Which makes no sense at all.
he was apparently seeing a Dr and on drugs and STOPPED when he hit 18.
Ask anyone saying “we have to do something” -ok, what would they do?
He was a legal adult. He didn’t commit any crimes or have any disqualifying behaviours.
The laws against murder, trespass, assault and battery, attempted murder, etc did NOTHING to stop this.
Rule that out and they are forced to jump right to the end game, gun bans and confiscation. Ask them how they see that going…. How many cops are they willing to sacrifice? How many Waco attacks? How many babies killed by .gov snipers like Ruby Ridge? How many babies maimed by flash bangs like little BooBoo?
For extra credit, ask them how they’ll get back the 300 million guns, and keep any new ones from either being imported or built locally. Do they think we could keep guns out if we can’t keep BALES of dope out? Hey, FINALLY they’ll have to support a wall! How many machinists are in the US? Point them at the gun builders of the Philippines (lots of youtube) or afgan mountain men, or maybe the youtube AK from a shovel build.
For extra extra credit, ask them to be silent online because some OTHER guy used the internet to talk sh!t about muzzies. OR to give up their cars (for $150 each) because some people have used them to commit murder and a car isn’t even MENTIONED in the Bill of Rights. Ask them about all the starving kids put in the street by their car ban- mechanics, car dealers, used car salesmen, driving teachers, aftermarket parts and accessory makers, repair places. After all, watching the professionals race in sanctioned events every so often should satisfy them…
Then look them straight in the eye and say NO. You will not deny me my natural right to self defense because of what someone else did. NO. end of story.
nick
added- iirc there are more concealed handgun liscensees in TX alone than there are cops and feds in the whole country. Add FL and I’m certain of it. Then do the math on how many combat vets, who took the same oath, there are vs LEOs.
Rule that out and they are forced to jump right to the end game, gun bans and confiscation. Ask them how they see that going…. How many cops are they willing to sacrifice?
There are not enough cops or guard troops to implement a gun seizure. Many of them will desert rather than walk door to door at their neighbors houses. And then the civil war will start (cue OFD…).
Speaking of Waco, I’ve DVR’d the Waco miniseries and am going to try to watch it. I am not sure that I can, Koresh was definitely a wacko but that did not mean that the feddies had to murder him and his 80 ??? followers.
Speaking of cryptography, a Chinese hacker is trying to crack the security on version 15.11a of our software today. They go by the moniker of “primes@are.good”. I have no idea how well he is doing but I doubt very well.
The MSM is already working up a lot of sympathy for the scumbag shooter; he’s an orphan, his mother just died, and on and on.
Why does any of the MSM give him even ‘five seconds of fame’? Why show his picture, mention his name, ramble on about his history, possible motives, yada, yada? If you really want to know, go to his trial (if he’s alive) or his funeral, and keep what you find to yourself.
Desperatly need a few days away from the grind to clear my aging head.
Th problem with that, at least in a lot of corporate America, is that the grind continues full-speed ahead while you’re away and you’re that much further behind when you get back. Corporate email has become a black hole of a person’s time.
“Corporate email has become a black hole of a person’s time.”
I left that world 7 or 8 years ago. Even back then, it was starting to be that if you didn’t respond to email from your phone within a few minutes, you were gonna be in real trouble or at minimum social trouble at work. I refused. I made the argument that while I (or any of us) was on the customer site, our obligation was to complete the work as quickly and well as possible, and the customer wasn’t paying us to answer our email, but to address their problem. I was senior, and one of the top guys in my area of specialization in the US and possibly the world, so I could and did ‘write the book’ on a lot of what we did. I could see that this was a losing battle though, and it was one of the reasons I left. The differences between the ‘field guys’ and the ‘office guys’ was too great, and the field guys were the only reason we were getting paid.
n
BTW, I used to track ALL my time. Travel, meetings, email, design reviews, phone calls (if more than half hour or more than one on a subject in a day) and the amount of time spent on overhead tasks was astounding. It took more of my expensive time to do my multipage expense reports than the value of the reimbursment on more than one occasion. Report writing was another big time suck, but that’s how you document lessons learned. I was working two full time jobs for the company, taking care of business on site 40+ hours a week, and then another 40 hrs/ week of travel and paperwork.
@alan, victimhood is the lens through which they see the world, so that’s how they frame him. That and the suicidal left loves criminals and killers who do what they can only fantasize about.
n
Hey RickH– posted here, because I’m probably not the only one….
Do you know what is happening over at Jerry’s site? I was a patron member, and normal member, so my annual “dues” just processed thru paypal. $136. If it’s being used to good effect, I’m ok with it, but I don’t want it just building up in an account no one is using anymore…..
n
added- I also don’t know if it was a ‘pull’ transaction or if I have something set somewhere to push him the money once a year.
edit- found where it was set on paypal, don’t think I can get it back, don’t want to this one last time if it’s going to a good cause…..
@Nick: I have no control or access to payments or dues that were (or are) being collected by Jerry’s family. I have forwarded any ‘complaints’ or comments that I receive via the comment form to Jerry’s son Alex.
Alex asked me last year (Dec?) to re-do the payment process, so I wrote some code to do that (donation pages and contributor tracking), but the code needs access to the back-end of Jerry’s PayPal account (just an ID number, basically) to complete and record the transaction. I have not been given that access or code, so the project has been ‘on hold’ for several months. Any recurring or future payments to the site via PayPal ‘annual subscriptions’ are still in force, I guess.
As for the site itself, the domain and hosting is paid for through at least mid-2019, so the site is still visible and available.
Visitor count, however, has been steadily decreasing. Unique visitors (daily users) hovered around 600-800 before Jerry passed, but has dropped to under 200 daily lately.
A few comments (well-wishing) are still being posted, but much less now – maybe one-two per day.
I tried to ‘engage’ visitors with some reposts Nov/Dec, adding ability to comment on the posts (as is done here). Not much action on that; perhaps 20-30 people overall commented on the posts. So have not done any more reposts.
I have been in contact with Alex (Jerry’s son) a bit since Jerry’s passing, but not much interaction there – or any indication of the future direction of the site.
I don’t know what is happening to the donations/subscriptions to the site. I don’t even know how much revenue is there. I’d only guess that it is going to Jerry’s estate; whoever controls that.
All I do now to the site is to make sure it is working, and to apply any updates to the site as needed. Other than that effort, I have not received any instructions or direction as to the future of the site.
The site content doesn’t belong to me, so it is up to Jerry’s family as to the long-term. I don’t know what that will be.
I hope that the Pournelles’ reading program sees the light of day again, and I hope that the Home Scientist continues.
Ditto.
n
@Dave / @Nick I have actually re-done the Reading program to be web-based last April-ish. It had text-to-speech capabilities, and would work on any web-connected device.
The only thing left to do was a contract to allow me to distribute the content (copyright of the program would still be Jerry’s, I was only the sole authorized distributor).
Sent the contract to Jerry then. Never signed. Doesn’t seem to be much interest in doing anything with it from the family.
It’s a shame, I think it would be a wonderful thing if the program were available to help kids learn to read, and it would provide extra income for Jerry’s heirs.
@Dave: I spent a lot of time on that Reading program – easily 200 hours. I thought it turned out OK.
I didn’t do it for free, but as a potential revenue source for both of us (Jerry and me). I’d manage the whole thing (program and distribution and the web site); Jerry would get 45% royalty rates, paid quarterly – which I thought was quite generous, and would have provided some good revenue to him. (And to me, of course, but it would have required some work on my part to run things, plus the development time.)
But, no interest from the family (after Jerry’s passing) on implementing the project.
And, I fear, no interest in enhancing or distributing Chaos Manor content . I suspect the site will just fade away until the domain expires. Nothing I can do about that; I don’t own the content.
It’s my experience, both going to estate sales and personally with family, that it takes a year for most of the stuff to work its way thru after the death.
I don’t think it’s been a year since JEP’s death has it?
Give them some time. Even if they are getting stuff done, and doing some business, there is a real inertia there..
n
I tried to see what the probate status of his will is. Alas, California charges for court searches. Don’t know if California is an easy probate state (like Texas is) or a complicated one (like New York).