Thur. Oct. 8, 2020 – out and about

Nice day, warm, but with a breeze.  Or so I hope…

That pretty much describes yesterday.  Another beautiful fall day.  Got some of my auction stuff sorted out.   Helped the daughter with classwork and discovered just how bad it is.  Made lunch.

Then I started getting some of my Halloween decorations out.  I don’t want to get everything set, because we have a hurricane that could hit us, and then I’ve got roofers coming.  I have to move everything to a safe distance from the house and get out of their way, so I’m only setting up stuff that’s either easy to move, or out of the way.  I like to do a big scene for Halloween.

Today my wife is home working, so she’ll have oversight of the kids while I run errands.   I’ve got pickups (stuff for HER) and hopefully some cleanup at my secondary location.  I’m also hoping to take 3 or 4 big bins to my local auction.  That will help at home.


I watched about half of the VP debate.  While it was less rancorous, the two realities that the candidates (and by extension their supporters) live in are very far apart.  That is the most I’ve seen of Pence, well, ever.  Seems nice enough.   The other one, not so much.

I’m also seeing so many articles about how Trump is cooked, done, over, crashing and burning, definitely gonna lose big, etc.  Where do those people live?  What are they watching? *  A commentor here brought up some good points, but I don’t see it.  Trump’s supporters from last time are out in force this time.  Tentative supporters from last time are feeling freer to support him this time.  I don’t see supporters leaving him in droves.  And he seems to be attracting new supporters as well.    Further, nobody “loves” Joe Biden.   No one that I can see is psyched that he’s running, or excited by the idea.  His slogan is that he’s a “uniter”.   No one would ever believe that.  I just don’t see it.    I really hope I’m not wrong, but the ‘two different worlds’ problem is getting bigger and I’m just as likely (ok, not quite as likely) to be stuck in mine as they are stuck in theirs.

Either way, things are not going to ‘get better’ any time soon.  Keep stacking.

 

nick

 

*or it’s pure spin and gaslighting.

 

 

70 Comments and discussion on "Thur. Oct. 8, 2020 – out and about"

  1. SteveF says:

    Jenny, one thing you might be missing regarding a long commute: soon enough you’re going to have a teenage daughter. You might be looking forward to two hours a day, all by yourself, no children who think they’re adults, no cell phone coverage, just you and the quiet.

  2. Greg Norton says:

    I can hear their voices through the wall because they are already elevated. Apparently the “Ted” on her team had checked in a C header file which was incompatible with everyone else’s header file. And this is not just any header file but the main header file at the top of every source code file. “Ted” could not check in his more than a year old version of his file routinely because it was so out of date. So, he logged in as our source code manager (how did he get the password ?) and forced his way out of date main header file into the repository.

    We had a problem which persisted for years at the Death Star in our VPN client where a user could not initiate a new connection for several minutes after terminating the previous one. Management always thought it was a performance issue with 95/98/ME/NT, but then 2000 hit and the problem continued. Finally, late one night, debugging something else in the client, I noticed in our “Main.h” that, several years previous, our Ted had inserted “#define closesocket(x) close(x)”, a huge no-no in socket programming on Windows.

    As the man says in “Inglorious Bastards”, “That’s a Bingo!”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5s3Oj2cPgc

    Of course, even after I made the change and proved that the reconnection issue went away, “Ted’s” two patents meant that he could pontificate on the potential instability *of closing sockets properly* and I never got appropriate credit.

    The definitive “throw them out of a window” scene IMHO, from “Sherlock: Scandal in Belgravia”. If there is a better 90 minutes of TV made in the last decade, I haven’t seen it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8_YQ7_Jo8k

  3. Greg Norton says:

    “Inglorious Bastards”. That reminds me — my chewing out was rescheduled for 8:30 this morning, Catbert’s boss no longer on the invite list.

    I’ve been chewed out before.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCSW761CuWk

  4. Ray Thompson says:

    smartphone camera can “see” infrared

    Interesting. There is visible light coming out of the fiber which means the TV is producing something. Whether that is modulated is an entirely different matter. I have no way to check that except hook up a Mini-Disc recorder (yes, I still have one) that has optical input and look at the level meters. Checking analog is just using the little scope.

    https://www.amazon.com/Kuman-Oscilloscope-Source-15001K-pre-soldered/dp/B01N6PUX70/ref=sr_1_8?dchild=1&keywords=oscilloscope+kit&qid=1602160316&sr=8-8&tag=ttgnet-20

    It works well for audio signals and tells me I have a video signal in the studio at church. All that I really need as anything beyond that is beyond my skill set.

  5. Nick Flandrey says:

    WTF is wrong with Firefox?

    How is it possible on modern hardware for FF to lock up windows so tight that ctrl-alt-del doesn’t work? I got an error popup eventually that windows couldn’t start something part of taskmanager, and to restart the machine if it continued. FINALLY got FF to quit, watched Resource monitor as FF spent 5 minutes messing with swapfile, then finally exited. Hard memory faults dropped from max to min shortly thereafter.

    Restarted FF, and it spent several minutes with spinning waits on each tab, while NO network activity took place, and FF was reading a bunch of FF subdirectories ending in sqlite. I’ve been a FF user for years but I’m getting tired of this.

    For that matter, why on a machine with 16GB of ram is ANYTHING using pagefile? Whenever FF locks up, it’s hammering pagefile. Or has maxed out Hard Memory Faults in Resource Monitor.

    n

  6. JimB says:

    Just one reason I only use FF when absolutely necessary. I have similar problems on Linux. Come and go with versions; I went.

    I am happiest with Brave on Android lately. Not perfect, but good enough. Put Chrome on my new W10 setup. Seems OK, but haven’t had much experience yet.

    Why are browsers so difficult? I have much more trouble with them than anything else. Oh, I know: it’s the crummy web site designs.

  7. Nick Flandrey says:

    This looks like state condoned theft to me.

    Artists will receive $6.7 MILLION payout from developers who painted over ‘graffiti mecca’ in Queens as Supreme Court ends seven-year legal battle

    The graffiti site in Queens, known as 5Pointz, attracted thousands of spectators
    But the spray-paintings were destroyed in 2013 to make way for luxury condos
    A federal court awarded the artists damages under the Visual Artists Rights Act

    The Supreme Court yesterday refused to hear the case, ending the legal battle

    Block found that 45 of the 49 paintings were recognized works of art in what became the ‘world’s largest collection of quality outdoor aerosol art‘.

    FFS.

    n

  8. JimB says:

    My new W10 system seems good. Very “quiet” when running: low resource use, settles nicely after cold start, all power management works well. Resumes from suspend to RAM and disk dependably. Networking seems fine. I haven’t installed much software, but am trying to keep it simple for now.

    I have a lot to relearn, having not had a Windows system of my own for five years. My volunteer job Windows guru retired, and is no longer available. Great guy, although we both admitted neither of us was very good because we never had to solve any real problems with Windows.

    I never tried to hook much oddball hardware to a Windows system. Left that for the guys with targets on their backs.

  9. JimB says:

    …‘world’s largest collection of quality outdoor aerosol art‘.

    If you don’t own the canvas…

    Also, seems a bit of an oxymoron.

  10. Greg Norton says:

    How is it possible on modern hardware for FF to lock up windows so tight that ctrl-alt-del doesn’t work? I got an error popup eventually that windows couldn’t start something part of taskmanager, and to restart the machine if it continued. FINALLY got FF to quit, watched Resource monitor as FF spent 5 minutes messing with swapfile, then finally exited. Hard memory faults dropped from max to min shortly thereafter.

    Firefox uses hardware acceleration to speed up certain processes, hooking into your graphics card at a very low level. There is a way to turn it off deep in the hidden settings, but I’m not convinced that it works 100% to disable the hooks.

    If your graphics card driver hasn’t been updated and run through WHQL in a while, that is most likely the problem.

  11. dkreck says:

    Why are browsers so difficult? I have much more trouble with them than anything else. Oh, I know: it’s the crummy web site designs.

    ADS! Look at what your ad blocker is blocking. Just the total number. That’s part of the reason I won’t look at DM anymore. They insist you turn off the add blocker. One story 150 to 200 blocks if ABP is on for the site. Painfully slow if you allow.
    Some site that require you turn ad block off are not too bad but I’ve abandoned many others. Mostly I use chrome on either a chrome book or Win10. Win10 sometimes get overloaded and you get ‘Close or Wait’ messages. OK maybe 30 tabs are too many.

  12. Greg Norton says:

    Fired. In the end, I didn’t want to eat a sh*t sandwich served up on a plate by management who hasn’t liked me from the first phone call in the interview process. I made it clear yesterday that I wasn’t accepting any more yelling, and I wanted an apology from Catbert for the botched investigation into my f-bombs. Termination was the response.

    Ironically, I was just asked for dates I’m available for a phone interview with another place next week.

  13. Nick Flandrey says:

    @greg, well, that sucks. you had a pretty good idea it was coming though, and you’ve done some interviews recently right? However, that doesn’t make it suck any less.

    Go to the Texas Workforce Commission website and see if you can sign up right away. They were waiving the 2 week waiting period. It would be helpful if you were fired as a result of the current disaster…

    n

  14. Nick Flandrey says:

    Um, wasn’t IBM’s managed services supposed to be the new hotness that would save the company, just a short while ago?

    https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/ibm-spins-19-billion-managed-infrastructure-business-shares-surge-premarket

    n

  15. SteveF says:

    Sympathies, Greg, though I don’t think “sympathies” is quite right. Somewhere between that and “congratulations”.

  16. Mark W says:

    Sorry to hear that, Greg. I was let go last year, as I’ve mentioned, and it took a long time to land a new job.

    I’ve used the F word in every job except the current one. This is my first corporate job and it’s a different world compared to working for small businesses.

    Edit: Actually I’m glad I got laid off from that job. The company got bought, my new manager was set in his ways, and they didn’t like to spend money. Other than the income loss, I was better off.

  17. Greg Norton says:

    Um, wasn’t IBM’s managed services supposed to be the new hotness that would save the company, just a short while ago?

    They gave up on that last year and decided to simply become a Linux vendor. Red Hat with a few bits of hardware, mostly mainframes. Everything else went to Lenovo, including the Z Series servers.

    Global Services is a lowest bid vendor anymore so they will have to “monetize” the RHEL development chain to try and restore revenue growth. That could suck for the Linux community. Linus himself is reputed to use stock Fedora.

  18. mediumwave says:

    Sympathies, Greg, though I don’t think “sympathies” is quite right. Somewhere between that and “congratulations”.

    What SteveF said, cubed and cubed again.

    Why would anyone want a “career” in IT nowadays?

  19. Greg Norton says:

    I’ve used the F word in every job except the current one. This is my first corporate job and it’s a different world compared to working for small businesses.

    It wasn’t just the F-bombs in the meeting.

    I worked there 2 1/2 years, and management hated my presence in the room from the first minutes of the site visit interview. I have no clue as to why I was hired.

    2
    1
  20. Greg Norton says:

    @greg, well, that sucks. you had a pretty good idea it was coming though, and you’ve done some interviews recently right? However, that doesn’t make it suck any less.

    Go to the Texas Workforce Commission website and see if you can sign up right away. They were waiving the 2 week waiting period. It would be helpful if you were fired as a result of the current disaster…

    I have no clue as to where I stand on unemployment since I mass emailed my pre-staged resignation the moment management said the words “move to terminate”, Outlook open to drafts expecting simply to get yelled at again. I’ll take my lumps on that since I wanted the story going to the product managers and other people who are now screwed because of the decision.

    There will be lots of yelling today albeit companded via Teams chat.

    I hate the unemployment hoops. I’ll still file to ding their numbers with the state. When I was fired from my last job, management did it very carefully to avoid my being able to collect, and I never saw a dime. I registered at a temp agency right after leaving the unemployment office.

    OTOH, the company made a severance offer as part of the termination, probably worried about legal issues. I’ll see what the severance agreement language looks like today.

  21. mediumwave says:

    BREAKING: Rioters in Wisconsin Smashing Businesses — BRANDISHING GUNS AND ATTACKING HOMES (VIDEO)

    Looks like the lefty .provocations are being ratcheted up to the next level.

  22. SteveF says:

    Actually I’m glad I got laid off from that job.

    I’ve been fired or laid off a number of times, from companies which shortly went out of business or from branch offices which closed, and left a couple others because I was repeatedly screwed over. It took years before I put together a pattern: The kind of manager who favors meek yes-men and fires people who tell an unpleasant truth, or who promotes employees who join the company softball team over employees who deliver a product that the paying customer wants, is the kind of manager who will run a business into the ground.

  23. mediumwave says:

    … is the kind of manager who will run a business into the ground.

    It would be instructive to learn how well Greg’s now-former employer does with him out of the picture. No one is irreplaceable, of course, so the company will likely be able to limp along without him, at least for a while.

  24. Nick Flandrey says:

    Some people are damned hard to replace. And sometimes it takes more than one person to replace the missing one.

    After I left BigCorp, they lost their biggest client, and abandoned that line of business in the US. This was directly related to me not being there anymore. There might have been a dozen people in the world with my particular combination of skills and experience, but all of them already had jobs, and none of them had any history with my clients.

    n

  25. Mark W says:

    I’ll see what the severance agreement language looks like today.

    Remember that everything is negotiable.

  26. Mark W says:

    Some people are damned hard to replace.

    After I was let go, my manager and another employee took over my work. I’ve heard from others that my new manager had no idea what I did. Together they worked on a project to fix the network of a problem customer (the network was the problem, due to the carrier), and from what I’ve heard made it much worse and with new 3 year carrier contracts. Oh well.

  27. Greg Norton says:

    It would be instructive to learn how well Greg’s now-former employer does with him out of the picture. No one is irreplaceable, of course, so the company will likely be able to limp along without him, at least for a while.

    It will be painful. As I said before, management hated me the entire time I worked there, but I delivered, including, most recently, if any of you are familiar with DC, the toll lanes located between the Pentagon and Crystal City, home of Amazon’s new HQ 2.0. Any hiccup there is going to get the company punished.

    On the Friday before Labor Day Weekend, *on a day off*, I logged in to do time sheets and noticed that our maintenance group had bounced for the day, knowingly leaving the road not generating revenue for the entire weekend due to an unmounted NFS drive they had not a clue about remounting — mount [drive name]. The next time that happens, heads will roll in a figurative sense … but the customer will have fantasies of it being in a literal sense.

    I’m not kidding when I say that my “Member Manager” at CGI (last employer) is currently stocking shelves at Buc-ee’s in Temple, TX, my exit interview contributing to them encouraging him to “spend more time with family”.

    At the professional job before that in Seattle, the recruiter was fired immediately after I quit, and the investors showed the CEO the door within a couple of months.

    The Death Star is more complicated. No one was fired per se, but I know rank and file within IBM don’t trust the Mac VPN client developed after I departed, and searching iTunes for “Uverse” can give you a history of what happened with that app, my other assignment, since I left in July 2010. In 2012, management even tried to get me back via contract and, at one point, the offer of an Apple employee badge in return for indefinite assignment to them, engineered with Apple around the time of that big “IBM going 100% to Mac” announcement that Summer.

    Last time I checked, IBM still had a lot of ThinkPads.

    My direct manager at The Death Star left ~ 2015, going back to IBM for a while before they canned him within a year. My weed-head former partner served his 20 years sentence, probably retired on the pension, and currently does JavaScript at Comcast, posting at one point to the AT&T message board on TheLayoff.com that he was miserable.

  28. MrAtoz says:

    Mr. Greg maybe it’s time to do what Mr. SteveF does and contract your services. It sounds like you have a quality resume of skills small companies will want.

    Good luck finding income. OTH, when MrsAtoz tapped into the sweet, sweet goobermint bucks, I had no problem being a stay home Dad and working tech, finances, etc for her company for free. Jacked her salary up to compensate and save taxes.

  29. Nick Flandrey says:

    @greg, the traditional way to leave it to move to your CLIENT’s company and do what you were doing before, or even better, MANAGE the contract for your client.

    If your employer won’t let you anywhere near the management on the client side, they are usually afraid you’ll jump ship. (or you’re such and a-hole they can’t have you near outsiders) But usually it’s because they’re worried about poaching.

    n

  30. Nick Flandrey says:

    Scanner has the PD trying to find a shooter. Staged a ‘hit’ and got away. Since there is a distinct lack of urgency, it’s probably BoB crime, gang related. They’re waiting for a gunshot victim to show up at a hospital, so maybe the vic got a shot off…..

    n

    added– GSW just showed up at Kingwood hospital, hospital reports to the command center, command lets the officers know, and now they are headed there….

  31. Greg Norton says:

    @greg, the traditional way to leave it to move to your CLIENT’s company and do what you were doing before, or even better, MANAGE the contract for your client.

    I put in an application to a posting on the client’s site two weeks ago. They’re in disarray right now because management related to my project just jumped ship to consulting gigs.

  32. Nick Flandrey says:

    Scanner says the ‘suspect’ or ‘subject’ – couldn’t tell- is in surgery. Someone got hit all right.

    n

  33. CowboySlim says:

    California Governor’s Office: When You Go Out To Eat, Wear A Mask ‘In Between Bites’

    Chomp, mask, chomp, mask. FFS give me a break.

    To the contrary, when G. Nuisance initially discussed mask usage, he said put it and don’t touch it. Now, says touch it every spoonful.

  34. Greg Norton says:

    I watched about half of the VP debate. While it was less rancorous, the two realities that the candidates (and by extension their supporters) live in are very far apart. That is the most I’ve seen of Pence, well, ever. Seems nice enough. The other one, not so much.

    Pence is liked and respected by people on both sides of the political aisle where he frequently vacations down in Florida, on Sanibel and Captiva off the coast of Fort Myers.

    Trump gave Pence the Payola Supreme Court seat favor so I’m predicting Pence at the top of the ticket in four years. DeSantis or Cruz in the VP nomination, depending on which state the Republicans need more and who has less damage from the primary skirmishes.

    Little Marco? You might as well skip the middleman and nominate Jeb! for VP.

  35. JLP says:

    @Greg. Sorry to here about your situation. No one wants to lose a job but it seemed from your posts here that you were very unhappy there. One door closes, another opens, blah, blah. You have intelligence and skills so you will do fine in the long run.

    Offering you money to go is nice, but read the wording carefully. When I was laid off many years ago the money put on the table was to agree not pursue any legal action. I was OK with that. It also had some “non-compete” stuff worded in such a way that I wouldn’t be able to get a job in my field for years. I was not OK with that. It was probably unenforceable, but I made enough noise that they removed it.

    I think you know, you owe them nothing. Look out for yourself.

  36. Greg Norton says:

    Offering you money to go is nice, but read the wording carefully. When I was laid off many years ago the money put on the table was to agree not pursue any legal action. I was OK with that. It also had some “non-compete” stuff worded in such a way that I wouldn’t be able to get a job in my field for years. I was not OK with that. It was probably unenforceable, but I made enough noise that they removed it.

    The severance is only tied to “amicably” resolving outstanding disputes outside of court. One page. I won’t make any decision until I see if they are going to fight the unemployment insurance filing.

  37. brad says:

    @Jenny: Turns out that the problem is, they don’t want any weird foreigners looking at their data. I opened a VPN connection to the US, and it worked just fine.

    That’s a really funky piece of land. They defined a bunch of long, narrow rectangular plots touching the main road. Somebody got “all the rest” down by the river, and that was this plot. Heck, some of it is on the *other* side of the river – maybe the river shifted at some point. It also contains not-insignificant stretches of the river itself. What does it mean, in Alaska, to own part of a river?

    If you had local work, it might be a cool piece of land to own. Commuting? Not so much. Hope you’ll find something closer…

    – – – – –

    I’m spending Thur-Sat in my micro-apartment in the city, near work. There is an advantage to a city, no question: I got a lot of errands run, all within walking distance. Still don’t want to live in a city any more – too many people. Noisy neighbors. Teens hanging around at all hours. Traffic. Bleah.

    Younger son – whom I share the apartment with – managed to fail a bunch of courses last semester, thus dragging out his degree another semester. There’s just no excuse – he’s a bright kid, and shouldn’t fail any courses at all. I didn’t react much to the news, because I’m not sure how to react in a productive way. Yelling at him would be easy, but I’ve long since discovered that yelling at him is counterproductive.

    Dunno quite how to approach this, in a way that helps get him off his duff. The underlying problem is all too common: way too much online gaming. But gaming doesn’t put food on your table, so eventually he’s going to have a problem. Maybe I need to make that more excruciatingly clear to him? Parental support ending soon – do your friends have couches?

    – – – – –

    @Greg: Best of luck in finding a new (and better!) job. Shouldn’t be hard in Austin, I wouldn’t think. How do you see the job market there?

  38. Jenny says:

    @Greg
    I don’t have much to say that hasn’t already been uttered with more articulation.
    Glad you’ve made an escape, however unwelcome the way out may have been.

  39. lynn says:

    Dilbert: No Mask For Zoom Call
    https://dilbert.com/strip/2020-10-08

    I see people driving around in their cars with the windows up and a mask on. Some of them are wearing two masks. What gives ?

  40. dkreck says:

    Some of them are wearing two masks. What gives ?

    Double stupid.

  41. lynn says:

    _Marque of Caine (5) (Caine Riordan)_ by Charles E. Gannon
    https://www.amazon.com/Marque-Caine-5-Riordan/dp/1982124679/?tag=ttgnet-20

    Book number five of a five book space opera series. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Baen in 2019. The book ends on a cliffhanger but there is no book in sight as the English Literature Professor author is collaborating with John Ringo in his Black Tide Rising zombieverse. Oh well.

    Caine Riordan is looking for the mother of his son who was mortally wounded at the battle of Jakarta with the KTor and taken by the Dornaani back to their space of many planets. But when the custodian Dornaani takes Caine to go find her, they find out that her lifepod has been stolen and taken to the border planets between the KTor and the Dornaani. And the Dornaani are not acting like a custodial protector of Terra, in fact they do not care about much other than their impressive virtual reality.

    Please note that the author has a web site at:
    https://www.charlesegannon.com/

    My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    Amazon rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (73 reviews)

  42. lynn says:

    We have been keeping the house at 71 F lately

    Technically the heat is on in the house but I don’t think it’s come on at all. Thermostat is 64F during the day and 60F at night.

    A few mornings ago, before I turned the heat on and some windows were still cracked open before the cold front rolled in, the dining room was 57F at 06:30. My daughter was chilly while getting breakfast so I plugged in an electric heater for her to huddle over. It was chilly enough that I pulled a flannel shirt on over my t-shirt. Didn’t bother with socks or long pants.

    My office gets up to 100F in the peak of summer, even with the insulated curtains drawn. (Large, west-facing windows and the room sits over the large, uninsulated garage.) (And it’s at the far reach of the HVAC system, with the air pipes passing over the ceiling of that same garage. Air coming out of the registers is cool but not cold.) I’ve repeatedly declined suggestions by my wife to put in a window AC unit. It’s uncomfortable but I deal with it.

    Check out Range by David Epstein. Aside from the purpose suggested by the subtitle, he advocates for trying as many possible experiences. In an interview he strongly pushed for exposing yourself to, among other things, wide temperature ranges in order to maintain your body’s ability to deal with different circumstances. If you spend all of your time in a controlled environment, such that you can feel a one-degree temperature change, you’re damaging systems and handicapping yourself. I was inspired to look into medical research on the topic and it seems that he’s right. Think of it as never exposing yourself to germs: your immune system will be crippled and you’ll likely develop problems not obviously related to infection. (That’s my comparison, not his. If it’s wrong, don’t blame him.)
    https://davidepstein.com/the-range/

    At 60 years of age, I like my comfort. 70 F to 73 F.

  43. lynn says:

    If you spend all of your time in a controlled environment, such that you can feel a one-degree temperature change, you’re damaging systems and handicapping yourself.

    The Navigation Center on the submarine was crazy climate controlled. 70 for days on end. We would put on jackets at 69 and roll sleeves up at 71. The rest of the sub was not so controlled.

    The other weirdness was waking up in the middle of the night when they cleaned the filters. Turns out that lack of noise can wake some people, like me, from a deep sleep.

    The accuracy / tuning of some instrumentation can be changed by ambient temperature. I am reminded of “The Hunt For Red October” where the sub was running 30+ knots on the ocean floor.

    I have an air compressor running on the other side of the bedroom wall from my bed for my septic system. It runs 24×7. I love it when the A/C comes on and drones it out.

  44. lynn says:

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pelosi-trump-talking-25th-amendment
    Is there no end to the madness?

    Pelosi is delusional. She has visions of being president so much that, well I don’t want to go there about her private fantasies.

    2
    2
  45. lynn says:

    BREAKING: Rioters in Wisconsin Smashing Businesses — BRANDISHING GUNS AND ATTACKING HOMES (VIDEO)

    Looks like the lefty .provocations are being ratcheted up to the next level.

    I like this comment: “Those militant Amish at it again. #bighatsmatter”

  46. dkreck says:

    Pelosi – just plain nuts. Not born here but a true Californian.
    Can you comprehend California? I can’t anymore.
    https://reason.com/2020/10/02/california-is-a-cautionary-tale-for-america/

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/californias-illogical-reparations-bill/

  47. mediumwave says:

    She has visions of being president so much that, well I don’t want to go there about her private fantasies.

    Someone pass me the bottle of brain sanitizer! 🙂

  48. lynn says:

    “Rush Limbaugh: Trump to Hold Virtual Rally on His Show Friday”
    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/10/rush-limbaugh-trump-hold-virtual-rally-show-friday/

    Rush had his biweekly cancer treatment on Tuesday and has had guest hosts all week. I wonder if Trump is going to do his entire three hour radio show ?

  49. Greg Norton says:

    @Greg. I don’t have much to say that hasn’t already been uttered with more articulation.
    Glad you’ve made an escape, however unwelcome the way out may have been.

    Thanks. Karma always seems to balance things eventually.

    Just this afternoon, I think the IT guy committed a serious legal faux pas opening my desk drawers and dumping the contents into a box “for convenience”. We’ll see in about an hour when I drop off my laptop.

    For future reference, thanks to precedence, *especially in CA 9th circuit*: If an employee fails to clean out their closed desk drawers before departing, only the direct report manager can do the work afterwards. If that didn’t change, I think the company’s legal woes have already started.

  50. SteveF says:

    Some of them are wearing two masks. What gives ?

    It’s so they can take one off and feel like a wild man.

  51. Ray Thompson says:

    Some of them are wearing two masks

    Come on Mr. Lynn. I am certain you have heard the saying that someone is so ugly if you take them on a date you need two bags. One over their head, one over your head in case their bag breaks.

  52. lynn says:

    “Hurricane Delta update: No major changes to our forecast”
    https://spacecityweather.com/hurricane-delta-update-no-major-changes-to-our-forecast/

    “1:45pm CT Update: Good afternoon folks. We promised an update on Hurricane Delta today, but to be honest there are no significant forecast changes to report. As expected, the storm’s wind field is expanding, and its maximum sustained winds have increased slightly, to 105 mph today. Confidence in the forecast track bringing Delta to southwestern Louisiana late Friday afternoon or evening remains high—all of the 12z model guidance today supports this. The National Hurricane Center’s track is on point.”

    Sucks to be in western Louisiana this year.

  53. lynn says:

    “New Hack Turns ‘Smart’ Male Chastity Device Permanent”
    https://www.extremetech.com/internet/315978-new-hack-turns-smart-male-chastity-device-permanent

    I wonder if Nancy Pelosi wears one of these ?

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  54. paul says:

    We’ll see in about an hour when I drop off my laptop.

    Would telling Windows to re-install or re-set or whatever the current term is for “wipe down to fresh install of OS” be kosher?

  55. lynn says:

    “Texas Democrat Mayoral Candidate Charged With Fraud in Absentee Ballot Scam”
    https://townhall.com/tipsheet/elliebufkin/2020/10/08/texas-democrat-mayoral-candidate-charged-with-fraud-in-absentee-ballot-scam-n2577740

    “A candidate for mayor in Carrollton, Texas, just north of Dallas, has been charged with election fraud after allegedly requesting absentee ballots in other people’s names.”

    “Zul Mirza Mohamed was arrested and charged on Thursday after an investigation revealed dozens of ballot requests originated from the same Post Office box which was linked to a nursing home.”

    My father-in-law lived in Carrollton. I wonder if he was going to be voting in this election?

    We had extensive problems over the years with people trying to steal his identity while he was in the nursing home.

  56. Greg Norton says:

    “Zul Mirza Mohamed was arrested and charged on Thursday after an investigation revealed dozens of ballot requests originated from the same Post Office box which was linked to a nursing home.”

    A fine Irish name.

    Well, if a 4th generation pure Irish heritage lad like Robert Francis can be “The Mexican Bobby Kennedy” just by pronouncing his nickname with a hint of a Latin accent, why cant Mohamed be “The Irish Thomas D’Alesandro Jr.” by saying his name fast as if speaking Gaelic.

    (Pelosi’s racist Baltimore political machine Mayor father for the uninitiated. Who do you think built all those monuments to the Confederacy with which Nancy seemed so familiar?)

    “Lets all raise a glass of Guiness to the candidate. Zulmizramohamed”

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  57. Greg Norton says:

    “1:45pm CT Update: Good afternoon folks. We promised an update on Hurricane Delta today, but to be honest there are no significant forecast changes to report. As expected, the storm’s wind field is expanding, and its maximum sustained winds have increased slightly, to 105 mph today. Confidence in the forecast track bringing Delta to southwestern Louisiana late Friday afternoon or evening remains high—all of the 12z model guidance today supports this. The National Hurricane Center’s track is on point.”

    Sucks to be in western Louisiana this year.

    Anywhere along the Gulf from Western Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle. Panama City Beach looked rough in July even before the season got serious, and we didn’t even venture further into the areas still conducting serious rebuilding.

    Water got warm all of a sudden along the storm’s path. Cat 3 projected at landfall. Above Cat 2 makes me nervous.

  58. lynn says:

    @nick, here is another large 5/4/5 house with a detached 3 car “toys building” for your stuff on 2.0 acres for $558K:
    https://www.har.com/homedetail/1426-fm-2855-rd-katy-tx-77493/7242268

    But there is an HOA. And an attached 2 car garage for the wife.

  59. ayjblog says:

    Greg

    Have fun, and surely you are coming back soon to the trenches

  60. Marcelo says:

    @nick, here is another large 5/4/5 house with a detached 3 car “toys building” for your stuff on 2.0 acres for $558K:

    I think that you missed out on your career choice. It seems you would have been happier if you would have dedicated yourself to real estate…
    Considering your future work avenues?

  61. Greg Norton says:

    Have fun, and surely you are coming back soon to the trenches

    I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be out in my yard more instead of ignoring work for a while though.

    In Austin, I went: moving (rental), moving (permanent), grad school, CGI, last employer non-stop. We still have boxes with stickers from the Florida->WA State move.

  62. Marcelo says:

    https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/android/242465/android-sound-notifications-can-help-those-with-hearing-loss
    Google announced an interesting Android accessibility feature that provides push notifications when it detects sounds around you that might need attention.

    These important and critical sounds can include such things as baby sounds, smoke and fire alarms, appliances beeping, water running, door knocking, dogs barking, and more, Google notes.

    water running – I wonder what happens every time you take a leak? 🙂

  63. Nick Flandrey says:

    “I see people driving around in their cars with the windows up and a mask on.”

    –I don’t know about the two masks but I will leave my mask on between errands if the time is shorter than 20 minutes. Cuts down on the touching, and the elastic straps last longer. Plus, my mask is comfortable, so I don’t need to whip it off at every opportunity.

    n

  64. Greg Norton says:

    “I see people driving around in their cars with the windows up and a mask on.”

    –I don’t know about the two masks but I will leave my mask on between errands if the time is shorter than 20 minutes. Cuts down on the touching, and the elastic straps last longer. Plus, my mask is comfortable, so I don’t need to whip it off at every opportunity.

    The elastic straps on the 3M N95 masks are pathetic. The last of my painting stash broke, but since it is kabuki anyway, I now use the Chinese knockoffs from HEB.

    I make a point of not wearing the mask in my car inside the Austin limits.

    The OFD laptop came home today from the office, a sad reminder.

    I was going to let the laptop be the company’s problem, but then I remembered that the CPU is registered with a valid Windows 10 Pro license and has a Windows 7 Pro serial under the battery. That capability may come in handy.

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  65. lynn says:

    @nick, here is another large 5/4/5 house with a detached 3 car “toys building” for your stuff on 2.0 acres for $558K:

    I think that you missed out on your career choice. It seems you would have been happier if you would have dedicated yourself to real estate…
    Considering your future work avenues?

    Having fun in life !

  66. nick flandrey says:

    Lots of activity on the scanner tonight. They followed a guy thru my neighborhood and now have him staked out at an apartment complex waiting for him to do a drug deal.

    They have a big group watching him, rotating in and out. Classic spy tradecraft. No aerial support tonight.

    I think I’m going to bed rather than wait to see how it plays out though.

    n

  67. lynn says:

    “SpaceX’s Starman and Elon Musk’s Tesla just made their 1st Mars flyby”
    https://www.space.com/spacex-starman-tesla-mars-flyby

    “Starman got less than 5 million miles from the Red Planet.”

    Cool.

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