Sun. Dec. 20, 2020 – 12-20-2020 hmmm more weird looking numbers

By on December 20th, 2020 in decline and fall, personal, Random Stuff, WuFlu

Cool but clear.  That’s the forecast.   I’m hoping it’s correct because I’ve got stuff to do.

Did some stuff yesterday.  The heavy rain put a damper (ha!) on my day.   My wife found a local food distribution scheme she liked so all the flats of food are out of my foyer.  I’ve still got bins of auction stuff there though.

A gingerbread house was constructed on the kitchen table.  Some cookies were decorated.   Kids played Skyrim and Portal2 all day and night.  Somehow we ended up with a very late bedtime.

The little one and I are halfway through the last Little House book, The First Four Years.  It’s hard to think of little Laura as a mom, especially when she wants to sled down the hill outside the house…  and it’s a bit daunting to read the books and see how much of their success was down to not having bad luck at a bad time.   Then when everything should come together, and they should ‘live happily ever after’, they don’t.   Real life, even through the filter of story, doesn’t always have the happy ending.  What is consistent throughout the books is that Pa’s attitude and depth of knowledge, and willingness to ACT when needed, carries the family through travail after travail.  The pioneers that lived and succeeded were TOUGH and yet FLEXIBLE.

That seems to be something to keep in mind and nurture in general, and in the coming hard times specifically.  Hard times are ALWAYS coming (shout out to the ‘nearer’ bois!)  It is the nature of the world that the wheel turns.  What seems more likely for the near and medium term, prosperity and good times, or hard times?  Show your work…

I’m gonna keep stacking.

 

nick

63 Comments and discussion on "Sun. Dec. 20, 2020 – 12-20-2020 hmmm more weird looking numbers"

  1. Greg Norton says:

    My WD 2 TB Black drive in the server is acting weird. I suspect that it is failing so I am in big trouble. The last time I upgraded my contact database was to the 2012 version which can no longer be installed. So, I get to install a new drive AND upgrade to the 2020 version of the contact database simultaneously. Sounds like a recipe for failure to me.

    My last two drive replacement cycles for both my primary desktop and server involved cloning the drives using dd from the command line on the Gparted live system ISO and then expanding the file systems with the ISO’s primary GUI tool. Essentially, a poor man’s Partition Magic, but, at this point, developed sufficiently that I trust the software more than the commercial product.

    After cloning, the old drives go into a drawer as a backup.

    The upside/downside of the process is that I’ve had the same Windows 7 install with all of the software intact for a decade on my primary desktop.

    I’m also always nervous that I’m going to fat finger something and lose data. I’d love a set of the forensic investigation USB-IDE cables which are read only for the connected drive, but those were $200 the last time I checked. I’ll live with my $30 cables.

    When the intern comes back in May, have them look into serving SMB from a Fedora system running Samba as an experiment. The only trouble I’ve had doing that over the last dozen years was when a recent upgrade set the minimum SMB protocol at version 2 while our HP all-in-one’s firmware is limited to version 1.

    Scanning PDF directly to an SMB share is incredibly handy.

    I cookbooked my Samba configuration file out of the OReilly book when I first started the server project, and the settings haven’t changed significantly in all that time. I guess I should keep a Git repository for it somewhere safe.

  2. Greg Norton says:

    One might have seen that AOC got the vaccine today.
    Remind me again which priority group she is in??

    Spoiled rich girl who grew up in Westchester and went to Boston University.

    If you believe that is really a vaccine shot and not B-12 or sterile water.

  3. Ray Thompson says:

    If you believe that is really a vaccine shot and not B-12 or sterile water.

    I think everyone can agree it most certainly was not brain cells.

    The pioneers that lived and succeeded were TOUGH and yet FLEXIBLE.

    I like to think my grandfather was one of the last of the generation. He was born in 1899 and raised without running water or electricity. Used a horse and buggy. Married when he was 16 because his girl friend was pregnant and she was 15. Worked on road construction outside all his life. Owned his own Caterpillar road grader for as long as I can remember. No cab, not even a roof. He did have an umbrella. Out in the SOCAL sun for hours each day. Dropped out of high school so not formally educated. But was a very intelligent person. Gentle, calm and wise.

    True story. When he found out his girl friend was pregnant he left town. His brother went after him and brought my grandfather back under duress. They married and planned to divorce when the child was 10. A couple more children arrived by then and plans got delayed. Eventually they were married 70 years before passing within 6 months of each other.

    Their first son had to sign up for WWII. When he went to sign up it was discovered that his parents were celebrating his birthday six months past the actual date. He almost got in trouble with the military because he was past the sign up date. Took some statements from several people to keep him out of the trouble. His parents had hid the actual birth date until he was six months old to avoid the stigma of getting pregnant before getting married.

    It was also discovered by looking at records that my grandmother had a fourth child, unknown to everyone. The child was still born and that fact was well hidden by my grandparents.

    There are a couple of other skeletons in the closet that have been discovered when relatives die and it is time to settle estates and examine old records.

    And why am I wondering into such useless drivel?

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  4. Greg Norton says:

    There are a couple of other skeletons in the closet that have been discovered when relatives die and it is time to settle estates and examine old records.

    After my father-in-law passed, digging through a cubic meter of paperwork, we discovered his good friend “Earl” from work was Earl Meggison, the defendant in one of Orlando’s most notorious child molestation cases, spanning more than a decade.

    We also learned that, after telling my wife that “Student loans build character” for years, he fully funded two Florida Prepaid College Plans for his prostitute’s daughters, making regular payments until the day he died.

    Then there was the homemade pr0n on the computer. Guess who had to catalog all of that mess.

  5. Greg Norton says:

    Another report on the United passenger from fringe media. Points to the EMT passenger for stepping up and doing the right thing. Most people are still decent.

    Too bad United put everyone in that situation *on a packed flight*. The cabin crew had the final say about the individual who was “shaking and sweating”. The lawsuits should bankrupt the airline.

    https://www.tmz.com/2020/12/19/man-dead-dies-united-flight-covid-coronavirus/

    UPDATE: More mainstream media has the story, but details are similar to DM or TMZ. Only TMZ has the EMT tech.

  6. brad says:

    @Lynn: Sucky situation. I do the same as you: let things run until they fail. Sometimes that’s 10 years or more. In a big company, of course, one would be more pro-active, have redundant systems, etc. – but it takes a lot more effort. Overall, it’s easier to fight a big battle every 10 years or so, but that doesn’t make it fun. nBest of luck…

    Bottled some more beer today – I finally have my stocks up to where I want them. The stuff is just better, if it matures in the bottle for 8 weeks or so. And I now have all bottles in use, six different kinds of beer. Now I just need to brew when we’ve emptied enough bottles – keep the stocks topped up. What started as a hobby has gradually turned into another standard household task. But self-brewed is at least as good as (and generally better than) commercial, plus a whole lot cheaper, at around $0.50 per 500cl bottle. My newest recipe is an amber ale that I would put up against something like Anchor Steam.

    And why am I wondering into such useless drivel?

    Because it’s Sunday afternoon, and our minds wander? While scrubbing bottles, I was fantasizing about ways our idiotic neighbors might suffer some misadventure. You’ll recall that they complained to the canton (state) about the way they’ve been treated by our town and the local building commission. We, and the town, sent in separate statements – hopefully showing clearly where the real problem lies. Now the canton has given them 30 days to respond to our responses to their complaint. The never-ending story… Also the never-ending attorney’s fees, since we have long since resorted to passing everything through an attorney.

    We’re very much on the right side of the laws and regulations, and the canton should ultimately agree. At which time the only remaining option for the lovely neighbors is a civil suit. Which they will almost certainly file. And which they will lose, but it will still cost us yet more money and yet more nerves.

    Hence, the pleasure of imagining ways that they might meet some unfortunate end. Remember Jurassic Park and the dingbat sitting on the toilet?

  7. Greg Norton says:

    And why am I wondering into such useless drivel?

    You definitely influenced the buying decision on my wife’s next iPhone.

    Pro, but that’s an amount of money we’ll have to take a bit of time to ponder.

    Apple is still paying the price for the Burberry CEO running retail. I knew her days were numbered when we walked into the Chicago Michigan Avenue store in March 2019 to find the place deserted during a launch week for new … iPads (?).

    My wife needed a battery swap in her phone, and we were in the Walgreens *in the lobby of the Wrigley building* across the street almost daily for water, snacks, and, at one point, a screw for my glasses.

    Yeah, I didn’t stop to think about the Walgreens location until later. The corner is even in the old school Siskel & Ebert credits, where Siskel catches the cab. Bob Newhart used to walk out of his office building in his 70s show’s opening a block away.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVCA9_OxNio

    More drivel, but the point was the Apple Store on that corner being empty was a bad sign.

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  8. Richard says:

    One might have seen that AOC got the vaccine today.
    Remind me again which priority group she is in??

    Eh, maybe, Member of Congress?

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  9. SteveF says:

    500cl bottle

    I challenge you to drink an entire 500cl bottle. Don’t worry about alcohol poisoning, worry about your stomach splitting open.

  10. Geoff Powell says:

    @stevef:

    500cl (centilitres) is just over an Imperial pint. In US measure, probably a pint-and-a-half. Easily drinkable, but not, perhaps, in one go.

    G.

  11. dcp says:

    500cl (centilitres)

    Conversion check?

    500cl (centilitres) = 5 litres

    500cl (centilitres) = 8.8 Imperial pints

    Perhaps brad meant 500ml (millilitres)?

  12. MrAtoz says:

    Which they will almost certainly file. And which they will lose, but it will still cost us yet more money and yet more nerves.

    No “loser pays” tort reform there?

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  13. lynn says:

    With all of that rain we had yesterday, the Brazos river picked up 5 ft of water downstream. But, 6 ft to 11 ft height increase. The flow increased from 1,000 cfs (ft3/second) to 6,000 cfs.
    https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=hgx&gage=rost2&prob_type=stage&source=hydrograph

    Saw my neighbors down the street this morning at church. The new drainage that TXDOT put by their house for the road widening helped the flooding at their house immensely.

  14. Nick Flandrey says:

    Slept late, feel better for it.

    My aunt and uncle got married and moved to Cali in the early 60s. Announced the birth of their first child. Big baby, but they were big people too. Precocious baby. Passed all the milestones early all thru childhood. I think in light of Mr Ray’s story you suspect where this is heading…..

    She goes to get a passport, and needs a certified copy of her birth certificate. Gets same from Cali. Lo! What’s this? Yup. Born on time. Normal weight, normal development. Parents ‘fudged’ her birthday by months to hide the out of wedlock pregnancy. They did stay together and have 7 more kids, but he was a cheater the whole time.

    @greg, is your wife sure she was his genetic daughter? There can be many reasons for resentment and poor treatment, ‘not really my responsibility’ being high on that list. My best friend discovered the woman he was raised by and called “mom” was really his grandmother, and his older “sister” was really his mother. It explained a LOT about his relationship with his “dad” who resented having to raise him as his own. He was constantly reminded of his beloved daughter’s mistake. Not saying that’s your issue. Maybe the pregnancy just interfered with some plan he had, but there is usually a reason that makes sense if you know enough.

    Sunshine and lack of rain means I’ll be headed to my secondary location in a short while. Gotta work…
    n

  15. ech says:

    @Ray asked yesterday:

    It is another reason I question the wisdom of nursing home residents getting the COVID vaccine before others. Is it worth having a healthy young person die because the did not get the vaccine while a nursing home resident gets another 18 days of life.

    Not everyone in a nursing home is there because they are incapacitated and going to die. It is very common for patients from surgery, cardiac wards, etc. to be discharged from a hospital to a nursing home for rehabilitation. My mom had two stints in nursing homes of 6 weeks or so after cardiac surgery for PT and OT. The father of a FB friend got COVID when sent to one for post-surgical rehab, but he recovered.

    In addition, there are places that are combined assisted living/nursing home/Alzheimer’s care. A family friend recently died from COVID in such a place while in their assisted living center.

    Also, the risk of death to anyone under 45-55 is very, very low. Lower than bad flu and lower than regular flu for those under 18.

  16. Nick Flandrey says:

    The law of unintended consequences strikes again.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trying-get-hell-out-emergency-lockdown-london-triggers-mass-exodus

    If the goal was to keep London isolated, well…. this just exploded anything in London out into the surrounds. Just like last time.

    And people, this is another perfect example – if you are going to leave, leave EARLY. By the time you think it’s time to go, it’s already too late.

    Call it a dry run for a dirty bomb attack, or the zombie apocalypse.

    n

  17. Geoff Powell says:

    @dcp

    Conversion check?

    500cl (centilitres) = 5 litres

    500cl (centilitres) = 8.8 Imperial pints

    Perhaps brad meant 500ml (millilitres)?

    D’Oh! So much for the supposed superiority of the metric system. Yes, I’m sure Brad meant mL (millilitres). I misread it.

    Edit: So pseudo-HTML markup gets stripped out. I meant to have pseudo-tags (Homer Simpson) around the d’oh!

    G.

  18. Greg Norton says:

    @greg, is your wife sure she was his genetic daughter? There can be many reasons for resentment and poor treatment, ‘not really my responsibility’ being high on that list. My best friend discovered the woman he was raised by and called “mom” was really his grandmother, and his older “sister” was really his mother.

    Yes, she was his genetic daughter to the point that she was the best match possible for his heart transplant if something happened and she had died before UT Southwestern found a donor. My father-in-law was simply a jerk.

    To be fair, there were mitigating circumstances of the pregnancy being the result of a shore leave fling in Taipei, but my wife’s parents were 27 (mother) and 23 (father) at the moment of conception, hardly “kids”, especially in 1969 before the US adopted the extended adolescence model commonly practiced today.

  19. SteveF says:

    Geoff, you can put pseudo-HTML elements into comments if you <smirk type=”superior”>know how to work the system</smirk>

  20. Nick Flandrey says:

    Otherwise the template will strip out the greater than and less than arrows even if you use them as arrows “<--" n

  21. Nick Flandrey says:

    well, sometimes anyway.

    n

    Try using the old forum animations :headdesk :lmao :facepalm

    n

    They won’t work as animations but it will get the point across 🙂

  22. Nick Flandrey says:

    and there is a ‘code’ tag that should preserve both formatting (whitespace) and tags

    n

  23. Brad says:

    Yep, I definitely meant 500ml or 50cl.

    Loser pays, yes, but only if you can show that the lawsuit never had any chance, and the people filing should have known that. It happens, but it’s an additional hurdle to clear.

    What I don’t get, at this point, is: what do they hope to achieve? Are they deluded? Is this entertaining?

  24. Nick Flandrey says:

    Extra police are deployed at train stations in bid to stop non essential Tier 4 trips and halt spread of mutant Covid strain, as Matt Hancock slams travellers fleeing London as ‘totally irresponsible’ totally understandable and predictable

    Masked officers patrolled major London railway stations today in a bid to stop Londoners from fleeing capital
    Grant Shapps warned that extra British Transport Police would prevent ‘non-essential’ Tier 4 journeys
    Matt Hancock slammed ‘totally irresponsible’ people trying to escape city as Tier 4 comes into effect
    It comes as Boris Johnson effectively cancelled Xmas for Londoners by plunging city into draconian Tier 4

  25. Geoff Powell says:

    @stevef: @nick:

    Noted. Thanks.

    G.

  26. ~jim says:

    I’ve probably mentioned this before, but A Journal of the Plague Year
    Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London

    by Daniel Defoe is an educational and entertaining read.

    Loved the Glitterbomb 3.0!

  27. Alan says:

    You definitely influenced the buying decision on my wife’s next iPhone.
    Pro, but that’s an amount of money we’ll have to take a bit of time to ponder.

    @greg; any option to switch carriers? IIRC they usually have decent phone promotional pricing for new customers.

  28. Alan says:

    Also, the risk of death to anyone under 45-55 is very, very low.

    Not so much the chances (estimated at around 10% of survivors) of becoming a Covid “long hauler”. Average age around 40. Not dead but not pleasant in the least.
    https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2771111

  29. mediumwave says:

    Apropos fleeing from the cities:

    Living in Montana -Things They Don’t Tell You

  30. CowboySlim says:

    Too bad United put everyone in that situation *on a packed flight*. The cabin crew had the final say about the individual who was “shaking and sweating”. The lawsuits should bankrupt the airline.

    Yuuup, many years ago I was verifying funtionality of Douglas commercial aircraft’s, DC-8, Model 70, environmental system. I checked out temperature and pressure, but nothing to eliminate infectious elements.

  31. MrAtoz says:

    I read Bishop Mittens is trying to start a war with Russia all by himself. Issue him a set of combat boots and dog tags. Typical beltway swamp creature. War, War, War! Let the current admin do what is needed behind the scenes instead of sqawking about how we should retaliate NOW! He has no idea what is going on.

    LET THE HEELING AND WAR MONGERING BEGIN!

  32. Greg Norton says:

    I read Bishop Mittens is trying to start a war with Russia all by himself. Issue him a set of combat boots and dog tags. Typical beltway swamp creature. War, War, War! Let the current admin do what is needed behind the scenes instead of sqawking about how we should retaliate NOW! He has no idea what is going on.

    Mittens used a lot of tricks to avoid the draft in the late 60s, including two student deferrments and another for his missionary work.

    Follow the money trail. Bain Capital was involved in the initial IPO of SolarWinds in 2009.

  33. ech says:

    I checked out temperature and pressure, but nothing to eliminate infectious elements.

    Current airliners have to mix in outside air to keep CO2 levels down. The amount mixed in is under aircraft control and can be set higher at a small penalty to fuel use. I have read that the airlines are maxing out the airflow in to prevent aerosol buildup.

  34. Greg Norton says:

    Current airliners have to mix in outside air to keep CO2 levels down. The amount mixed in is under aircraft control and can be set higher at a small penalty to fuel use. I have read that the airlines are maxing out the airflow in to prevent aerosol buildup.

    Sure they are. I doubt they’ve budged from the minimum cabin air turnover standard of twice per hour.

  35. Greg Norton says:

    Closing the Portland Apple Store is huge. Vancouver, BC residents and others in Western Canada avoid the 22% VAT and 10% WA State sales tax buying their $3000 disposable laptops in Portland. The Cascades Amtrak runs between Portland and Vancouver, BC several times a day … or did.

    Prior to the current store opening, The Portland store in the basement mall looked like the planet in the “Star Trek” episode where the population had cured all disease and lost control of their numbers.

    The Portland store used to be the busiest in North America. I’m not sure if it retained that title since we left.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/19/22190895/apple-close-retails-stores-covid-19-london-california-pandemic

  36. drwilliams says:

    If I ever find myself holding a lamp with a genii popping out, one of the wishes is going to involve a long line of every fool ever involved in any internet ad campaign for the gullible, including but not limited to “Cut your electric bill be 90%”, “Try this weird trick tonight”, etc., marching in lockstep toward the funnel entry of the largest wood chipper every deployed.

    Oh, yeah. Let’s not forget every code monkey that ever designed a popup that covers content.

  37. lynn says:

    @Lynn: Sucky situation. I do the same as you: let things run until they fail. Sometimes that’s 10 years or more. In a big company, of course, one would be more pro-active, have redundant systems, etc. – but it takes a lot more effort. Overall, it’s easier to fight a big battle every 10 years or so, but that doesn’t make it fun. nBest of luck…

    I have ordered a new WD 2 TB SSD drive $220 for the file server. I already have a copy of Winders 10 Pro for it. I will get it done after Christmas.
    https://www.amazon.com/Blue-NAND-2TB-SSD-WDS200T2B0A/dp/B073SBRHH6/?tag=ttgnet-20

  38. RickH says:

    I’ve been noticing a distinct reduction in the number of spam messages in my gmail account. I used to get 50+ a day, but the past few days the number has been under 5.

    Maybe MS taking down that C&C server that was involved in the SolarWinds hack has something to do with that reduction? I’ve seen no external reports of that, but I find it curious.

  39. Greg Norton says:

    I have ordered a new WD 2 TB SSD drive $220 for the file server. I already have a copy of Winders 10 Pro for it. I will get it done after Christmas.

    Sam’s had portable 4TB drives on clearance for $79 today. I guess that means 6 or 8 TB will be the new standard.

    I grabbed a drive for weekly Time Machine backups of the Mac Book Pro the new job sent me. The loaner is 8 core i9 with 32 GB RAM. My permanent machine will be 64 GB RAM.

    We develop a Linux system, but run the build and test VMs in VMware. No M1 — Intel only.

  40. lynn says:

    And why am I wondering into such useless drivel?

    Because I like seeing that my family is not the only crazy out there. We have these stories in our families also.

  41. Greg Norton says:

    “And why am I wondering into such useless drivel?”

    Because I like seeing that my family is not the only crazy out there. We have these stories in our families also.

    Putting the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional.

  42. ~jim says:

    Regarding heads and tales, the book, _Planet of the Apes_ is one helluva social satire. Never did read anything else by him. Came to mind because I got think about Daniel Defoe and _Journal of the Plague Year_.

    Currently reading more John Wydham. He’s not without his observations, either. In _The Secret People_ he goes on about religion and politics being nothing more than superstition. And one can only speculate whether _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_ was truly about Communism, or *any* social movement which seeks to subsume the masses.

    “Wrong thinking will be punished. Right thinking will be as quickly rewarded.”

  43. lynn says:

    “REVEALED: ‘Simple Math’ Shows Biden Claims 13 MILLION More Votes Than There Were Eligible Voters Who Voted in 2020 Election”
    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/12/breaking-huge-simple-math-shows-biden-claims-13-million-votes-eligible-voters-voted-2020-election/

    “The 2020 election will go down as the most corrupt US election in history.”

    “With 212Million registered voters and 66.2% voting,140.344 M voted. Now if Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden. These numbers don’t add up to what we are being told. Lies and more Lies!”
    http://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings

    Yup.

  44. lynn says:

    I’ve been noticing a distinct reduction in the number of spam messages in my gmail account. I used to get 50+ a day, but the past few days the number has been under 5.

    Maybe MS taking down that C&C server that was involved in the SolarWinds hack has something to do with that reduction? I’ve seen no external reports of that, but I find it curious.

    One can only hope.

    I am still getting my token 15 to 20 a day in my spam folder. Bad days are 30 to 50 and I have not had one of those in a few weeks.

  45. lynn says:

    If I ever find myself holding a lamp with a genii popping out, one of the wishes is going to involve a long line of every fool ever involved in any internet ad campaign for the gullible, including but not limited to “Cut your electric bill be 90%”, “Try this weird trick tonight”, etc., marching in lockstep toward the funnel entry of the largest wood chipper every deployed.

    Oh, yeah. Let’s not forget every code monkey that ever designed a popup that covers content.

    Preach on brother ! Preach on !

    I have a big wish list for the “Hot Skillz” folks.

    Yes, cattle prods might be involved.

  46. Alan says:

    and there is a ‘code’ tag that should preserve both formatting (whitespace) and tags

    So I know (with brackets replacing the GT and LT symbols) that these work here:
    [strong] [/strong]
    [blockquote] [/blockquote]
    [em] [/em]
    [strike] [/strike]
    [a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmb5ENInqVk”]This Explains Everything[/a]

    And there’s a way to get a superscript TM but I don’t recall the syntax.

    https://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2005/05/29/30snap_beer_gallery__550x385,0.jpg
    Hopefully Nick is the only one with access to embed photos.

    Probably RickH is the best to elaborate on this topic…

  47. SteveF says:

    And there’s a way to get a superscript TM but I don’t recall the syntax.

    HTML entities and character codes are allowed.

    &trade; ™
    &230; æ
    &aelig; æ
    &#1f89d; 🢝

    Of course, if you’re going to enter Unicode symbols or other oddball character codes, you (and other readers) need to have the character sets loaded into the browser.

  48. RickH says:

    Well, you can use the ‘sup’ tag to superscript things.

    And the ‘sub’ tag to subscript things.

    ‘Do-it-yourself’ tags are not allowed – they are stripped out by WordPress. Except for ones added like really intelligent people like RickH. (I had to do admin-type things to get that to work.)

    But even those tags get stripped out by standard WordPress process. Unless authorized specifically. Which are not authorized here. Even the ‘sarcasm’ tag doesn’t always work right the first time. Not a bit priority for me to fix here – I’m swamped by other projects.

  49. Harold Combs says:

    I’ve probably mentioned this before, but A Journal of the Plague Year
    Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London

    by Daniel Defoe is an educational and entertaining read.

    Samuel Pepys documented the great bubonic plague of 1665 in London in his dairies.
    https://theconversation.com/diary-of-samuel-pepys-shows-how-life-under-the-bubonic-plague-mirrored-todays-pandemic-136222
    My wife, the medieval English Professor, introduced me to Pepys and I was hooked. He even documents his infideleties

  50. Nick Flandrey says:

    Yes, I am one of the few and mighty with the ability to embed images, quiver before my glory!!!

    actually, Rick, and possibly Jenny could too, but you do have to take a few extra steps.

    and now that all y’all have seen the glorie I’m guessing there are even fewer votes for the ability to embed images 🙂

    Trademark ™

    and

    registered (r)

    work if you just put the lower case inside parenthesis, no spaces, after the word with one space. Except when they don’t.

    n

  51. Nick Flandrey says:

    There are a couple of Canterbury Tales that always amuse me, I think the one I like best is the Millers Wife? She hangs her arse out the window and the paramour buries his face in it, noticing the hair at the last moment…

    Earthy.

    n

  52. lynn says:

    Over The Hedge: Santa in the Pandemic
    https://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge/2020/12/20

    Heh.

  53. drwilliams says:

    In olden days we came back from a local show and a demo of a new Epson dot matrix printer with a high-density print head and a dual-color ribbon to print in RED.

    We thought about buying one for the DEC Rainbow , which had a mammoth 640kb and dual-boot capability. Hot Skillz in early desktop publishing.

  54. Nick Flandrey says:

    So when did Mittens go ’round the bend? He clearly has zero understanding of cyberwarfare, can’t wait to start a hot war….

    “one that’s going to have to be met with a strong response,’ Romney continued. ‘Not just rhetorical, important as that is, but also with a cyber response of like magnitude or greater.’ ”

    –just tell our elite haxor squad to perpetrate a copy of the biggest penetration in modern history. I’m sure they’ll get right on that.

    n

  55. Rick Hellewell says:

    elite haxor squad

    I think you might be surprised at the quality and knowlege of that squad.

    In fact, there are several people lurking about on these pages and elsewhere that are ‘afraid’ (for lack of a better term) of the NSA and others (public and private companies) and their access to personal information or posts on public forums. (Example: talking about ‘gubs’.)

    Or ‘afraid’ of the skillz of hackers employed by various political parties that are smart enough to screw with the election.

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  56. Nick Flandrey says:

    I don’t have any doubts that a 3 letter agency can get whatever they want domestically from any number of sources commercially or legally compel any of the vast and myriad number of companies which move, process, store, analyze, fold,spindle, and mutilate my traffic, or the traffic of commentors here. Especially since the majority of the domestic intarweb is accessible to google and others, and social media is an open book to the fusion centers.

    On the other hand, I have serious doubts that Mittens or anyone in our government can just order up a widespread and effective penetration of Russia’s DoD, military networks, and commercial firms at a moments notice, and then, what? Reveal ourselves so that our enemies might KNOW that they’ve been pwned in return?

    Nine months the as yet unknown attacker had widespread pwnage of .mil and .gov and .com systems. It took however long before that to get the assets into place, physically installing stuff into hardware if I read that correctly.

    So Mit wants us to do the same right F’ing now and then REVEAL IT? Because otherwise what’s the point? How does ‘russia’ know we got even? And if you could get that level of access, WHAT SORT OF A MORON would blow it on purpose?

    The whole thing stinks.

    n

    wrt election ‘hacking’ the allegation is insiders BUILT it that way on purpose, and used built in tools for most of the shenanigans. No actual ‘hacking’ was required. If someone wanted to actually hack the machines, MANY people and orgs have shown that it doesn’t take nation state level skills to do so. There is purportedly evidence that hacking occurred after the fact to remove evidence of the cheating, but as with most of it, I’m just watching from the sidelines to see how it plays out.

  57. lynn says:

    _Host: A Rogue Mage Novel_ by Faith Hunter
    https://www.amazon.com/Host-Faith-Hunter/dp/0451462467/?tag=ttgnet-20

    Book number three of a three book fantasy post apocalyptic series, the Rogue Mage series. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB published by ROC in 2009. I doubt that there will be any more books in the series but, one never knows.

    It has been 105 years since the first plague, and 87 years since the last battle between the seraphs and the darkness that killed 90% of the human race. The war is unresolved as seraphs and demons pursue each other across the face of the Earth and in the depths of the Earth. As a result of the nuclear weapons used by the humans against the demons, the earthquakes, and the volcanoes, the Earth is in a serious Ice Age.

    Thorn St. Croix and her champards have won the battles on the mountain to date. There were two seraphs and a cherub imprisoned in the mountain that Thorn freed. But, there is a dragon imprisoned in the mountain and he is breaking free of his bonds. His minions are already walking the Earth with impunity.

    The dragon fought his battle in Heaven and lost. He was then banished to Earth. Now he fights on Earth for control.

    The author has a website at:
    http://www.faithhunter.net/

    My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    Amazon rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (175 reviews)

  58. lynn says:

    wrt election ‘hacking’ the allegation is insiders BUILT it that way on purpose, and used built in tools for most of the shenanigans. No actual ‘hacking’ was required. If someone wanted to actually hack the machines, MANY people and orgs have shown that it doesn’t take nation state level skills to do so. There is purportedly evidence that hacking occurred after the fact to remove evidence of the cheating, but as with most of it, I’m just watching from the sidelines to see how it plays out.

    Yup, the election hack was designed and built carefully over the last four years. It is both robust and well distributed. Rolling it back out of the system may never happen as the people involved think that this is a righteous and justified act on their part.

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