50F when I got up this am, with the smell of moisture in the air. I could see my breath when I put the kids in the car. Sunny and bright, scattered clouds. NOAA had us in the middle of a T-storm area for today. Hope that isn’t coming as I’ve still got a bunch to do.
Still riding the update, rinse, repeat cycle to get OFD’s lappy going. Lenovo’s updater is a full on POS. Oh, it will check and get you all the drivers, etc it thinks you need, but you still have to click Accept on each license. The worst bit is that on SOME, but only some, the license page is a ‘pop under’ so you just see the stalled progress bar on the Updater. So much fail. If each bit really needs a license acceptance, why not allow checkboxing the whole list when it’s assembled and before starting the update? And POP UNDER? WTF.
More Grumpy old man syndrome. I try not to be a grammar nazi online. Even on written posts, sometimes the fingers just type and you get a there, they’re, their error, or some other common error. Its and it’s get me about half the time too. One that catches my eye though is fewer vs. less. I see this more and more often including in printed and copy-edited material where someone should have known better. There is a rule folks. Fewer when talking about numbers of stuff you can count, less when talking about the amount of something. Last night we were playing a game with the kids, needed to check the rules, and our 8yo read something with a fewer/less error. I corrected her, but she said that’s how it’s written. Sure enough. Layers of editors my hind end….
More work on the gate, more work on the fence, more work on the garden, more work……
Get to it then!!!
nick
30º and cloudy here. Looking forward to skiing tomorrow. Yay!
Speaking of skiing, with recent conditions, we have had fewer skiers and less snow. Amirite?
Really – is that correct? Because now that you’ve pointed it out, I’m going to see that everywhere I look. I’ll want to be correct.
Two burned-out headlights yesterday. Wife texted me when she got to work that her passenger side was out, so I picked up Dora (the Explorer) and took it to Autozone to pick up the lights. I replace both every time, simply because I expect the 2nd to fail soon. When I dropped her car off and jumped in Gandalf (the Gray truck), I turned on the headlights and noted they were dim. I wasn’t going to jump out and clean the snow off – It’ll clear in a minute on its own. I pulled up behind a car and noted my driver’s side was burned out. Off to another Autozone (different one) and swapped out another pair. The truck access was a lot more difficult as the battery was in the way on the passenger side. But I got it done.
Apparently I’ll be skiing on Sunday. First time for everything….
I just don’t want to end up hospitalized. Forget embarrassing myself, just no blood or breaks!
n
My first time skiing was in Norway on x-country skis. It was a disaster, spent a lot of time on my butt, but had a good time. Don’t let the fails get to you, just enjoy it.
Headlights on my truck are $1,500.00 for both. HID, dimming is done by moving the lights. Entire assembly must be replaced, both at the same time by the dealer.
Need new tires for the boat trailer. Over 10 years old. One is already bad. Need trailer tires, not vehicle tires. About $250 each and I need four. Will have to do one at a time as I cannot jack up the entire trailer.
I need to start some project or other. It’s really strange – I’ve been working on the house here for 17-18 years, because there was so much to do. As of last summer, it’s pretty much all done. It’s weird, not having some major project going.
Some of the early bits do need re-painted, but that’s not really a project, that’s just work. Still, I suppose that’s what I’ll start in on this Spring and Summer…
Hush! Don’t tempt the universe like that!
JUST DON”T!!!!!111!!!!
n
@Nick,
With regard to the grammar Nazi thing, I think I understand what you are saying. I occasionally make mistakes, so I realize that everyone does it. I try not to be a grammar Nazi, but when someone makes multiple simple mistakes in a single post, it’s hard not to jump to conclusions about their intelligence or level of education.
It’s especially vexing in promotional materials, formal writing, or other more “thought out” writing. A dashed off comment is one thing, but anything released by a business for public consumption should be held to a higher standard.
Given the ease of spell checking, simple misspellings are really a sign of laziness or haste.
n
I have taken to using Grammarly for most things. I’ll go ahead and dash off an entry or a note, then look at the red squiggles Grammarly gives me. Often, it suggests I add or remove punctuation, or corrects word usage. I make fewer (not less!) mistakes that way. In fact, I originally had “less” in that last sentence to see if it would catch the error. It does.
@Dave is right – I do judge the intelligence of writers by their writings. If they cannot take the time to fix the most obvious errors, I think less of them.
Well I do jump to conclusions about a person’s intelligence level and level of education.
It is sad reflection on our times that many people today cannot understand the Constitution and the King James Version of the Holy Bible.
This would be a great place for OFD to chime in.
Mild and windy today. Our fallen community mailbox is sitting on a new regulation pad, well braced 4-ways as the concrete cures. It turned out the brother of the neighbor kitty corner across the street is a General Contractor and has put in a lot of these pads for all the new subdivisions around here. Getting the work done for just the cost of the concrete and a little something for the brother’s helper. I found the USPS specs for these pads and it meets the specs so we should be back to regular mail delivery soon. Knock on wood.
In local news:
-Drive-by shooting in Pasco, I am sure gang related.
-A Benton County Judge arrested for DUI after he crashed his Cadillac ATS close to his home, was found asleep behind the wheel when the police arrived.
-A Kennewick man admitted he wanted to have some “family fun” with two underage siblings when he answered an online ad last summer. William J. Barrett was hoping to expand his experience by having sex with 11- and 13-year-old kids while their mother watched, police said. Hours after his first email, Barrett was arrested when he arrived at the designated apartment with methamphetamine and a glass smoking device.
-Three men flipped a Honda Accord on a gravel road (photo shows a straight as an arrow road). Police are investigating if speed and/or “substances” involved.
Got all the family taxes filed. Our tax rate was 0.63% and that was only due to the fact that my wife’s accrued benefits from her job were paid in January. Put us over the amount that Social Security allows. A lot of money was withheld so we got all but a few hundred dollars back.
Sure I could have filed earlier, but I always wait until March because all the tax rules/forms/tables are still very fluid in January and February and even later. I have used TurboTax forever and keep on eye on the updates to the forms and rules. I was very pleased how easy it was to do all the Social Security and Medicare stuff in TurboTax, no flipping through a hundred pages of forms and instructions. But as a check I did all the forms manually too just to double check this new situation for us. Believe me, never again, TurboTax is so logical and easy.
Edited for several misspellings and wrong words. Yes, I am not perfect, but 99.9% is okay.
After a number of years writing technical specifications in accordance with MIL-STD-490, I probably tilt towards being a grammar NAZI.
http://everyspec.com/MIL-STD/MIL-STD-0300-0499/MIL-STD-490A_10378/
Still riding the update, rinse, repeat cycle to get OFD’s lappy going. Lenovo’s updater is a full on POS. Oh, it will check and get you all the drivers, etc it thinks you need, but you still have to click Accept on each license.
I should have warned you about the T420. I eventually gave up on Lenovo’s tools and installed Slimware Slim Drivers on top of a clean Windows 7/10 install, updating afterwards using WSUS Offline Update.
The mousepad is the hardest to get right.
I still believe SLS will fly no more than once, but now I’m skeptical about even once.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/president-trump-amazed-by-the-falcon-heavy-landing-and-its-low-cost/
NASA got to the moon before the Iron Law took effect. Now, private enterprise, building on what was learned in the 60s & 70s, is going to take us back to the moon.
This is as it should be.
Ah, that smoky smell outside this morning came from Oklahoma. Nice.
https://spacecityweather.com/quiet-spring-break-appears-ahead-for-houston-030918/
I gave RBT shit about using ‘that’ instead of ‘which’ when editing his BTPPC.
I still have a website on the back-burner devoted to English/Hinglish (Hindi/English).
http://www.alwaysthecritic.com
Some day, one of these days, I’m going to hit up the top 100 Indian companies and offer to update their annual reports into the Queen’s English.
Mostly blue sky here across from Mutiny Bay, WA. Some puffy cumulus clouds out east towards Arlington against the Cascades – the usual “Puget Sound Convergence Zone” weather. Temps at noon are about 52F, visibility about 50 miles, slight breezes.
Weather dweebs forecasting an unusual ‘warm’ spell for March – around here that means temps may approach 70F (possibly record-setting) this weekend into Mon-Tues.
No prep work, other than replacing some batteries in FLASHLIGHTS. Daylight Savings time starts this weekend, so the news stories about doing away with that will start arriving in full force, along with people complaining about lost sleep.
Note that Florida passed a state law to move them into a different time zone….which won’t happen, because that (time zones) is a Federal function. “Political theatre” at best.
Working on changes to a web site that stores pictures. Picture files are random 32-character names; there is a ‘collision’ possibility on the names that seems to appear over time (several years), so added code to check for a randomly-generated file name that already exists. I suppose I could add a timestamp to the random name, but a collision check is good enough for now.
@Jim – your web site link just shows a directory of files.
And apparently, “Jim is bonkers” ….
Rick, that’s all she wrote. Ron Morse wouldn’t like his name mentioned, of course.
For all you folks interested in the weather, I recently found this site:
https://www.windy.com/
Creating a log-in so that you can setup and save all the features you want has not resulted in a bunch of unsolicited emails coming back at me. The only problem I have experienced is that the temperature keeps reverting to Celcius (°C).
I like how it clearly shows the pressure lines and winds. The ocean data is also great.
@DadCooks wrt to ‘Windy’
Nice site. And they have a pretty simple API that lest you embed their maps in your site (at least, that’s how it appears from a quick look at their docs on their forum).
This might be interesting to play around with….and a possible (probable) time sink.
Thanks for the find!
Working on changes to a web site that stores pictures. Picture files are random 32-character names; there is a ‘collision’ possibility on the names that seems to appear over time (several years), so added code to check for a randomly-generated file name that already exists. I suppose I could add a timestamp to the random name, but a collision check is good enough for now.
Hash the image files with “openssl md5 [image file]”. The hash is 16 bytes, 32 hex characters.
In cryptographic terms, MD5 is “broken”, but performance is good and the chances of collision between hashes of two separate images is extremely low.
Microsoft rand()/srand() have a MAX_RAND of 0x7fff. If you’re running PHP on a Windows server, simply using random numbers will be a problem.
The legend is that BillG wrote the PRNG code himself, cookbooked out of Knuth. Nobody dares touch it, even in the 64 bit era.
At the very least, call out to OpenSSL to generate the random number:
$ openssl rand -hex 16
@RickH, I figured you would like it.
Note that Florida passed a state law to move them into a different time zone….which won’t happen, because that (time zones) is a Federal function. “Political theatre” at best.
Later sunset would be great for beach bars and theme parks. The tradeoff is that sunrise would be really late during the school year.
I don’t see it happening. Florida passed the bill which asks for permission from the Feds knowing the request will be denied for public safety reasons. Election year.
Arizona and Hawaii do not do Daylight Savings Time. I wish that Texas would join that crowd.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/us/daylight-saving-time-florida.html
This would be a great place for OFD to chime in
@Nick: Will the device you’re working on enable OFD to send/receive emails?
He undoubtedly has some thoughts on recent events that he’d like to share!
@medium wave- yes, it should be fully capable of anything controllable in windows. I don’t know how much effort it would take though.
I was listening to AM radio today while driving, one of the conservative guys, and he had a caller who’s sister has ALS and only has control of her eyes. She has a computer set up with eye tracking, reads a book a week, and then types a review, posts it on her website, and her SUBSCRIBERS pay her to do so. I can’t imagine the work/time involved in doing that one letter at a time with an eye tracker. But she stays mentally active and [dark humor] doesn’t have a bunch of other stuff on her dance card.
Did some errands, finished the driveway gate – for now, and spent a couple hours in meatspace at the fun store with my buddy.
One of the things I picked up was a case of expired MREs for <$20. They are "menu B" so I'll have to look that up.... and a couple of weird gun parts came with it. More looking up to do there, and the ostensible reason for the stop at the fun store. n
“How Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ Saw Into the Future”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-kubricks-2001-a-space-odyssey-saw-into-the-future-1520609361
“Fifty years later, “2001: A Space Odyssey” is widely recognized as ranking among the most influential movies ever made. The most respected poll of such things, conducted every decade by the British Film Institute’s Sight & Sound magazine, asks the world’s leading directors and critics to name the 100 greatest films of all time. The last BFI decadal survey, conducted in 2012, placed it at No. 2 among directors and No. 6 among critics. Not bad for a film that critic Pauline Kael had waited a contemptuous 10 months before dismissing as “trash masquerading as art” in the pages of Harper’s.”
One of the things I picked up was a case of expired MREs for <$20. They are "menu B" so I'll have to look that up…. and a couple of weird gun parts came with it.
I think that all three cases of MRE’s that I bought on Ebay expired in 2014. My former USMC son was issued a case of MREs by the Marine Corps in 2007 or so that expired in the 1990s. He would eat those rather than eating out while hanging around the beach in LA.
If you were going off-base for a weekend, you could request a case of MREs as a part of your food package that each Marine was charged $120/month for out of his minuscule paycheck.
MRE Menus: Menu B is menus 13..24.
I keep a case of a dozen MREs as part of my hurricane prep. According to the manufacturer, the meals will last indefinitely but lose most or all of their nutritional value after five years.
In January I used up the MREs I bought back in 2013. The main courses and sides were quite edible, but the congealed Skittles, not so much!
“I gave RBT shit about using ‘that’ instead of ‘which’ when editing his BTPPC.”
Yuuup, sitting in the vet’s office this AM with my dog and the attendant answered the phone with: “How can I help you?”
Oh, well…….
Also jim~, I recall reviewing a draft of a subsequent tome when the phrase “dual channel memory” was quite prevalent. My comment to him was that the greater speed was not due to any characteristic in the memory chips. The increase was due to the functionality enhancements in the motherboard which allowed faster processing when the pair of RAM chips were identical twins. If so, there was no such thing as “dual channel memory”. He agreed and my comment was implemented in the revised, published draft.
“How Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ Saw Into the Future”
Don’t forget Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhikers Guide” which had its debut on BBC radio 40 years ago yesterday. Essentially, every smart phone is an implementation of Adams’ concept for the Guide hardware.
For the uninitiated, the old BBC TV series holds up remarkably well. Start there. The DVD came from new prints of the (filmed) shows made … Good God … almost 40 years ago.
Don’t Panic!
“Feels a bit like being drunk. Oh, that doesn’t sound so bad. Ask the glass of water.”
AWESOME show.
n
Well, as Dr. Pournelle would say … Soooprise!
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-train-cost-increase-20180309-story.html
Sadly, unlike SLS, the politicians are determined to see that boondoggle run across rural California no matter what the cost.
I’m not a big fan of the sitting Governor of Florida, but turning down that train money and enduring the ensuing political sh*t storm took guts. Thank you, Rick Scott.
Argggh. I forgot about the need to constantly update Windows Update, before you could check for more updates…………….
It’s been a while since I built one from bare metal. I think I’m gonna be done after a reboot, come back in a few hours and find it’s still waiting for me to click on reboot.
Curse you Bill Gates.
n
Argggh. I forgot about the need to constantly update Windows Update, before you could check for more updates…………….
If you are going for Windows 7 instead of 10, the WSUS Offline Update is the only way to get through a bare metal install with your sanity intact.
Grammar Nazis: Way back when, my elementary school teacher told us that she wanted FEWER of us to sound LESS educated. It seems to have stuck in my case.
Time zones: The panhandle of Florida (a/k/a Lower Alabama, or the part west of the Apalachicola River) is in Central Time, and there are semi-regular attempts to get us switched over to Eastern. They always flop.
Boondoggles: Ditto the praise of Rick Scott’s refusal to buy in. All in all, I think he (& Jeb before him) have been pretty good Governors. Not perfect, but such a thing is Utopian.
Anniversaries: Wikipedia says that March 9 is the 400th anniversary of Kepler’s having come up with his third law. When I took Astronomy back in college, understanding how to use P^2 = A^3 was good for at least 50% of the total grade. Sadly, a big % of the students in a dammed large lecture hall couldn’t deal with it. 🙁
NOW he tells me….
n
”Curse you Bill Gates.”
I can’t profess to be able to channel OFD,
but ain’t their [sic] a Linux option ?
Edit: Sorry. Windows users just need to
consider they’re [sic] options.
”There is a rule folks. Fewer when talking about numbers of stuff you can count, less when talking about the amount of something.”
As in the ” < " math symbol that means "less than" ??
Fewer haters, less hate…..
170 “critical updates” now that the updater is updated.
and I’m off to bed. SO MUCH to do tomorrow before heading out.
n
No hate from here.
Just tryin’ to have some fun wit’ it.
Fewer:Less = Count Nouns:Mass Nouns
Man, Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies should be outlawed. Yes, I have been eating them all week.
Cue the Adams Family, “Are they made from real Girl scouts?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zCO4j4MrxE
Little-known sci-fi fact: Why HAL 9000 sang ‘Daisy’ in 2001
One of my enduring high school memories is from my sophomore year, 1962-63, when our math teacher, Bro. Virgil, invited a friend of his who worked at Bell Labs to give a talk about the future of computers to the class. The audio portion of the video clip in the link above was part of the talk.
lynn, your sense of humor cracks me up. I think we must share a common wavelength, because it’s oh-dark-thirty and I’m chuckling away because that line is embedded in my memory. Your other jokes tend to hit my funny bone, too.
I don’t do the Grammar Nazi thing unless it’s part of my job. When I’m called upon to do extensive tutoring, I always get the kid _Grammar Rules_ from
http://grammar-monster.com. Finest, most concise explication of English grammar ever written.
For shits and giggles, if you truly love English, get yourself a 1st ed. of Fowler’s _Modern English Usage_. A bit old-fashioned, but spot on, and the guy has a really dry wit which will leave you laughing.
Edit: Sorry. Windows users just need to
consider they’re [sic] options.
And except [sic] the consequences of you’re [sic] actions.
Ew, you guys are bad. Must be do to a pare of big ones…
n
Must be do to a pare of big ones…
Their, their, know kneed two get upset.