65F and damp. Yesterday was beautiful all day. I’m hoping for more of the same. These last few days of spring are precious.
Quick scan of the headlines shows things continuing to slide. Venezuela isn’t getting better. Trade isn’t getting better. Shipping, trucking, and retail sales all slumping.
Canned goods are cheap! HEB was blowing out hams. $1.59/pound. Yum. Holiday sales are coming up. Ammo and toys are still reasonably priced compared to highs…
Go forth and shop…
n
Off to the urologist today for my followup. Bloody urine (as in bright red) has subsided and is almost normal. Getting cramps in my side where the stent is located which is normal. Will have to leave that in for another 10 days to make certain all the fragments pass.
The urologist was able to extract one stone which he exhibited to my spousal unit while I was in recovery. The other stone was busted up into small fragments using a laser. Those are the fragments that are going to have to pass.
Amazing the surgeon can get a device with a camera, light (probably a fiber), a claw, and a laser through an opening that, in my opinion, is not that large. Must have been some stretching involved that would be painful to watch and even more so if one were to be conscious. Biomedical engineering has done some amazing things and built some amazing devices.
Wife had stones last year and basically the same procedure. Her symptoms were urinary tract infections the kept returning. She did not have the pain that I had experienced. So I get a lot of comments of “now you know how I felt”, no sympathy.
Anyway the lesson still stands. If something is not right, get it checked out. At many of our ages little changes can morph into big issues if not dealt with quickly. Macho is not a good choice.
western medicine is very good at ‘structural’ medicine. if it can be fixed by banging on it, sawing it, stitching it, or cutting it out, you have a good chance at a good outcome.
n
Glad to hear you are feeling better Ray.
This is a little disturbing given that many of the FLASHLIGHTS we buy have a bluish tint.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/19/05/15/1947255/led-light-can-damage-eyes-health-authority-warns
48º and clear now, should be 59º by noon, when my (70+ yo) friend will show up for our “5 with Fred” run. Even at 70, the man will outrun me. He was a beast when younger, and is a beast now.
The 5-gallon-pail thing makes good sense to me. My wife never looks in the buckets, but I do. Some of the canned things that we use will be replaced by buckets, that I’ll naturally rotate out anyway as I make bread, biscuits, and other things.
Why peanut oil? I like corn & canola oil. Is Peanut oil better in some way?
My dad used peanut oil, and I prefer the taste. With added vitamin E it seems to last a long time, which was the only downside before the addition. It’s smoke temp is different from veg, lard, etc, but I find it sufficient.
I have it in bulk storage as an alternative to butter in recipes, and as a cooking oil.
I also like the avocado oil from costco subbing for olive oil in uncooked recipes.
(I’m mildly allergic to olives so I avoid it unless the taste is important to a recipe.)
(also I’m suspicious of the ‘new’ oils. we never ate rapeseed, or its oil, so I’m gonna avoid it if possible.)
n
FWIW rapeseed oil is fine stuff – it’s pretty normal here, along with sunflower and olive oils. It’s just another vegetable oil, reasonably healthy (as compared to palm oil, etc.).
I’ve been surprised: my wife has now twice said how reassuring she finds it to have a freezer full of food. In our soon-to-be-new house, we are planning a reasonably large storage room for kitchen machines and food storage. I hope we will fill it up!
That’s going to be a process, but we are well and truly on the way. We’ve found a buyer for our current house, at a reasonable price, and hope to sign the sales contract in about a month. After that, we give the go-ahead to begin construction on the new house. We should be in by next May, if all goes as planned.
@brad, great news on all fronts!
n
Gentlemen
Vzla is going to be irrelevant (oil related) for US in 5 years, alongside with fracking
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-48185246
and the oil quality should be similar
Vzla is going to be irrelevant (oil related) for US in 5 years, alongside with fracking
Fracking is already toast as soon as interest rates renormalize.
Of course, renormalization is a long ways off. Treasuries at even 6% would be a huge problem so the Fed keeps the presses rolling.
Interesting how the Guyana stories keep flowing lately. The Jonestown 40th anniversary passed with nary a peep from the press, but the news organizations obviously had background material in the works.
“Tesla Responds to Model S Fires With Battery Software Update”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/368399/tesla-responds-to-model-s-fires-with-battery-software-update
“Out of ‘an abundance of caution’ the charge and thermal management settings are being adjusted on the Model S and Model X using an over-the-air software update.”
Where there is smoke, there is fire ?
Still, the incidence of battery fires to the half million ??? cars produced is not statistically important. And several of the battery fires were reputedly after the cars were in an accident. Which means, after an accident in an electric vehicle, check that bad boy carefully. Keeping the battery system cool is not going to help a direct short.
western medicine is very good at ‘structural’ medicine. if it can be fixed by banging on it, sawing it, stitching it, or cutting it out, you have a good chance at a good outcome.
True dat. We are getting better on the chemical stuff and the reproduction of cells in a normal manner. Still, amputation is your best option unless you have clear signs of spreading.
Vzla is going to be irrelevant (oil related) for US in 5 years, alongside with fracking
Fracking is already toast as soon as interest rates renormalize.
Everything is interdependent on pricing. If the WTI price of crude oil goes back to $100/bbl then the frackers will be driving Cadillacs. If the WTI price of crude oil goes back to $10/bbl, the frackers will be driving 1985 Chevy pickups.
And a long war in the middle east between Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel will drive the world crude oil prices through the roof.
Doc! I have a nosebleed. Help!
Nurse Cranston, we need a tourniquet.
Still, the incidence of battery fires to the half million ??? cars produced is not statistically important.
Neither were the Ford Pinto fires.
My father, the Ford exec, drove his until the engine gave out. 100,000 miles — it was still a 70s American car.
Post-economic apocalypse campfire stories 🙂
“It’s time to pay attention to Intel’s Clear Linux OS project”
https://www.osnews.com/story/130011/its-time-to-pay-attention-to-intels-clear-linux-os-project/
For only the brave ?
Useful/less for those of you who have atomic time based devices. I have a Citizens A-T Blue Angels chronograph. I could never get enough signal from the Colorado transmitter for the watch to set. I found the below app for iOS (I believe there is something similar for Android). It works perfect and many people report they’ve set different A-T devices (Casio, weather stations, clocks) using it.
Clock Wave
“A.F. Branco Cartoon – War On Sex”
https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-war-on-sex/
“Leftist Activist/Actrist Alyssa Milano is calling for women to join her in a “sex strike” to protest new abortion laws. Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2019.”
Oh my.
An advance notice, from the Dreamhost guys (they host this place):
So, on that afternoon (or time-zone-appropriate time, for those in the US), go outside and have a good time, remembering those that served .
Still, the incidence of battery fires to the half million ??? cars produced is not statistically important.
Neither were the Ford Pinto fires.
My father, the Ford exec, drove his until the engine gave out. 100,000 miles — it was still a 70s American car.
Ford Pintos were a cheap car driven by young families. The image of children burning to death played out horribly in courtrooms. Teslas are driven mostly by rich older people with not many young kids. And most of the Tesla fires are when they are parked being charged ???
Most 70s and previous vehicles had the engine and transmission die at 100K miles, or before. Remember the first 1990s Hyundais dying at 50K miles since the cast iron blocks were not sleeved ? My 2005 Expedition is at 206K miles and the engine is still going strong, she just drinks a quart of oil every 1500 miles or so. Materials technology has radically improved in the last 30 years.
For only the brave ?
I couldn’t get Clear Linux to boot on my fairly current T470. Intel has a lot of people working on Linux outside Portland, not far from where the Benevolent Dictator himself lives in Beaverton (IIRC).
If you’re just getting started, Ubuntu is the least painful way to experiment with Linux.
If you want to try the future of C++ compilers, Fedora is tricker to install, but the latest release has GCC 9.1 with (hopefully) the kinks worked out of link time optimization.
Useful/less for those of you who have atomic time based devices. I have a Citizens A-T Blue Angels chronograph. I could never get enough signal from the Colorado transmitter for the watch to set. I found the below app for iOS (I believe there is something similar for Android). It works perfect and many people report they’ve set different A-T devices (Casio, weather stations, clocks) using it.
Kinda scary that the audio can go into ultrasonics. That opens up all kinds of entertaining possibilities for surveilance.
I have a Casio EQS-500 for a daily wear watch. It doesn’t have the atomic time receiver, but, syncing every spring forward/fall back, I’ve never seen it more than 10 seconds behind the NIST clocks.
Even cheap quartz watches are amazingly accurate anymore.
I agree, I installed it, or the K-version, a number of years ago (15 perhaps) on a parallel hard drive in order to maintain Windows XP as backup. (Needed to retain XP for working at home.) Learning it was not painful; however, I did realize that it was putting me in the terminal phase of the industrial revolution. That is, I realized that I was now working for the machine instead of the machine working for me.
Gave it up shortly and Windows ever since.
If you want to try the future of C++ compilers, Fedora is tricker to install, but the latest release has GCC 9.1 with (hopefully) the kinks worked out of link time optimization.
No more bleeding edge development software for me !
“Just Kidding, Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez”
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-climate-change-inequality-just-kidding/
“Ocasio-Cortez got roasted over the weekend after saying her tax-the-rich scheme would only apply to “like ten people.” Sunday she checked in to say that it was just a joke, and moreover her previous remark about the world ending in 12 years was also a joke. Moreover, anyone who didn’t get that these were jokes is an idiot.”
What ! I was planning an end of the world party !
“If you want to try the future of C++ compilers, Fedora is tricker to install, but the latest release has GCC 9.1 with (hopefully) the kinks worked out of link time optimization.”
No more bleeding edge development software for me !
Microsoft’s C++ compiler isn’t terrible right now, but they’ve lagged the standards bodies at times in the last decade, and it is still proprietary, with a limited pool of developers who leave as soon as the options vest.
At GTE in the 90s, Sun bought management enough hookers and steaks that we had to standardize on their C++ compiler for the Solaris version of the product even though GCC kicked its a** both in terms of performance and binary size.
In an interview in Portland once, I had a former Sun engineer tell me that we probably paid a 60% performance penalty with our binaries *on SPARC* for that decision. I responded with the rhetorical question, “Hookers and steaks?”, and he replied, “Pros.”
Microsoft’s C++ compiler isn’t terrible right now, but they’ve lagged the standards bodies at times in the last decade, and it is still proprietary, with a limited pool of developers who leave as soon as the options vest.
We use Visual Stud 2015. It does a good job and still generates EXEs and DLLs for Windows XP if you hold your face in a certain odd angle.
And yes, we still have customers running Windows XP.
Our real problem is that we are tied to a 1995 Fortran compiler. Now that is a travesty since it does not generate code to use the Intel cpu floating point array calculations. But it does generate good code and not overflow internal buffers like Intel Visual Fortran does on our code.
“Blurred lines: A pregnant man’s tragedy tests gender notions”
https://apnews.com/b5e7bb73c6134d58a0df9e1cee2fb8ad
“When the man arrived at the hospital with severe abdominal pains, a nurse didn’t consider it an emergency, noting that he was obese and had stopped taking blood pressure medicines. In reality, he was pregnant — a transgender man in labor that was about to end in a stillbirth.”
Sad. I wonder if the nurse thought it was a man with mental issues.
Hat tip to:
https://drudgereport.com/
I think I have fixed my water softener. The tank was full to the overflow port. Well, there’s a venturi in a pod in the control head. That was gunked. If gunked, it can’t draw the brine. Ha! Like when the push mower won’t start… clogged jet.
The brine valve was stuck open. Yikes, be careful with that…. $150 for new. I looked at a few pictures and adjusted the weight and the rubber thing so the valve can’t open all the way, eighth inch shy of full open now.
Siphoned the tank out. Dumped in more water. Siphoned that out. A couple of times. Just to clean out a few years of sand stone colored sediment. It seemed like the thing to do.
Ran a re-charge cycle. Tank filled to about 1/3 from 3 inches with water. Er, foot and a half deep, guessing. So I think the venturi is sucking brine and the float is not stuck open.
Dumped in a bag of salt, bailed out perhaps seven gallons of water, and set it to re-charge tonight.
I’ll see what it looks like tomorrow.
$1.59/pound hams? I hope the local store still has a few.
I have room in the freezers.
I think I have fixed my water softener. The tank was full to the overflow port. Well, there’s a venturi in a pod in the control head. That was gunked. If gunked, it can’t draw the brine. Ha! Like when the push mower won’t start… clogged jet.
An all in one unit or separate salt reservoir and rosin tanks?
Hams?
I thought Nick was talking about canned hams.
DAK is of course quite good.
Aldi has good canned ham quite a bit cheaper,
a good buy with even some more juice and gelatin.
Expiration dates are pretty amazing, even though it’s pull-top.
(Whatever happened to Plumrose ham, canned or sliced?)
Our real problem is that we are tied to a 1995 Fortran compiler. Now that is a travesty since it does not generate code to use the Intel cpu floating point array calculations. But it does generate good code and not overflow internal buffers like Intel Visual Fortran does on our code.
MinGW’s GNU compiler suite will generate DLLs from Fortran code, but all I know about MinGW is enough to compile Tcl for work in order to avoid ActiveState’s license restrictions.
All in one. It’s a GE. Rosin tank is in the brine tank.
DAK hams are ok. To me. A small step up from Spam. But I do have a dozen cans….
MinGW will generate DLLs from Fortran code, but all I know about MinGW is enough to compile Tcl.
IIRC, the Open Watcom C/C++/F77 compiler generates about 30% faster code than MinGW.
http://www.openwatcom.org/
ID used to use the Watcom C compiler to compile Doom back when they really cared about unrolling loops.
IIRC, the Open Watcom C/C++/F77 compiler generates about 30% faster code than MinGW.
The last time I installed MinGW, I saw that they moved up to GCC 8.2.
Fedora 30 with everything recompiled under GCC 9.1 is noticeably better than the previous releases. That compiler will eventually filter down to Cygwin and MinGW.
I do more Python than anything else right now at work. I just wrote Tcl code, however, because nothing else touches the reliability of the event driven network library and the tool is supposed to be a stopgap until a real solution gets delivered by the customer.
” I wonder if the nurse thought it was a man with mental issues.”
–certainly was a person with mental issues.
n
” I wonder if the nurse thought it was a man with mental issues.”
–certainly was a person with mental issues.
We had two transmen in the department during my time at WA State University. It didn’t phase me, but they constantly made a fuss in the local media about getting a special bathroom in the building for their “needs”.
The building did’t lack for plumbing. I practically had a private bathroom on the top floor, where my lab was located, and the ground floor featured a “family” restroom with a locking door just off the lobby. No one said they weren’t welcome in either facility, but I guess making a scene was more fun.
IIRC, the Open Watcom C/C++/F77 compiler generates about 30% faster code than MinGW.
The last time I installed MinGW, I saw that they moved up to GCC 8.2.
Fedora 30 with everything recompiled under GCC 9.1 is noticeably better than the previous releases. That compiler will eventually filter down to Cygwin and MinGW.
I have not tried MinGW in 15 or 16 years. Back then it was GCC 2.x and the F77 compiler ported from Unix that used F2C to produce C code. It was ok but horrible to debug so we stayed with Watcom. Visual source code debuggers rule for 800,000 lines of F77 code !
As soon as I get some time, we are going to try Simply Fortran again. It uses version 8.2 of GCC and gFortran with an IDE.
http://simplyfortran.com/
I still want to convert our F77 code to C++ but the initial index difference from one to zero is just a disaster. I have yet to try the Fable F77 to C++ tool though.
http://cci.lbl.gov/fable/
“Alleged serial killer charged in deaths of 11 elderly women”
https://apnews.com/876d4dd4ce9e44eea0fb0588d7ec684f
“Kim Leach, a spokeswoman for the Dallas County district attorney’s office, said 46-year-old Billy Chemirmir was indicted Tuesday on six more counts of capital murder in the deaths of women ranging in age from 76 to 94.”
“Chemirmir, a Kenyan citizen who was living in the U.S. illegally, also is charged in nearby Collin County with two counts of attempted capital murder for similar attacks there, according to county court records.”
Could this be Obama’s brother ?
Hat tip to:
https://drudgereport.com/
ID used to use the Watcom C compiler to compile Doom back when they really cared about unrolling loops.
With x86_64, beating the compiler is tough. Playing with link-time optimization is on my list of “to dos”.
ARM is really counter intuitive. At iPhone “Boot Camp” they told us to keep the code small so program and data fit in the cache. There was quite a lively debate since one student had an app with an intense amount of signal processing.
SJW virus is everywhere now.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-16/american-except-ionalism-secret-adversity-score-bias-college-admissions-nationwide
n
Hmm, the new FEMA hurricane materials are out, and the poster says to ‘gather needed supplies for at least 10 days.’ All the linked content I can find still has the old 3 day advice on it. That’s more than triple, BTW and less than I think you need.
After the Cascadia Rising mass exercise in the Pac Northwest, they recommended THREE WEEKS of food and water.
Everyone here should have at least a couple of weeks worth by now and if you don’t, what are you waiting for?
n
Ha ha! President tRump is cancelling funding to Kalifornia’s high speed rail to the tune of almost $1 billion. Nuisance says it is illegal and will go to court. tRump will win that one, too. Waste some more money Kali.
when you can’t afford something, you must stop trying to buy it….
in the real world anyway.
n
Interest rates concern me. We are getting mortgages on the new house we are about to build. Rates are under 1%, which is just nuts. Granted, Switzerland is a bit of a special case: trying to keep big investors and countries from hoarding CHF, the national bank offers an interest rate of -0.75%. In other words, please put your money somewhere else.
Still, this is in line with the low-rate policies of all national banks since the 2008 crash. But the economies have recovered – economically speaking there is no reason for this. If/when the next crisis comes, the national banks have no leverage left.
Personally, I suspect is has to do with the massive indebtedness of governments. If governments are writing whopping deficits in good times, at low interest rates (and most of them are)…just imagine what kind of deficits they would have if the national banks raised interest rates back to something sensible!
The next crisis will come, sooner or later. Over-indebted governments will have only one choice: print money like crazy to survive it. Which will lead to massive inflation, with all of the well-known effects that will have on the populace. It’s not going to be pretty…
Ha ha! President tRump is cancelling funding to Kalifornia’s high speed rail to the tune of almost $1 billion. Nuisance says it is illegal and will go to court. tRump will win that one, too. Waste some more money Kali.
Kalifornia’s problem is that Brightline seems to be accomplishing the same goal in Florida without as much public money at risk.
Waste? The Kali Democratic Cartel needs that money to buy power and influence.