Tues. July 13, 2021 – more camp, more cleaning and organizing

By on July 13th, 2021 in ebay, medical, personal, WuFlu

A bit cooler, wet, humid, hot, and probably all at the same time. Yesterday was sunny but then ended with rain. I didn’t get a ton of time to work on the patio, but at least the rain held off while youngest was at camp.

Her camp is a nature walk outdoors in the woods, so better if there isn’t rain in the morning. She was very aggrieved that the other kids weren’t serious about learning and disrespected the councilors and the animals by talking loudly and not listening. They also spent a lot of the time walking off the paths. Drove my little OCD kid nuts. Then last night while we were getting her stuff ready for the morning, we had a yelling fight about bug spray. The stuff I sent her with didn’t work. I pulled out 3 other brands, but they were all “poison” and she didn’t want them. FFS, what other house has 4 different kinds of bug repellent on the shelf?? If you don’t want to use the good stuff, don’t complain about getting bit. (I don’t get bit so I don’t often use the stuff, but when I do, it’s the stuff with DEET. But that’s POISON. Which is the point, kid.) After talking to my wife, it turns out there is a 5th kind in the house. That was what the kid wanted. Jeez.

The other child had a dime sized abrasion on her ankle for the last 3 days, dirty from camp and hiding under a bandaid. Got that cleaned up and smeared with ABX cream. Had a chat about infection and sepsis and that a dime sized abrasion can kill you if not taken care of. Oh, and threw out a box of walgreens bandaids. F that noise. Bandaid brand flexible fabric bandaids stick. Generics do not. It’s not worth the “savings” to later throw them away. Buy the good stuff.

I spent the afternoon organizing and going through auction stuff. So much more to do. No word back from the auction house on the trashed 3d printer. I’ll try them again today. And then back to cleaning and organizing, and chauffeuring… maybe to the Dr’s office.

Oldest isn’t feeling well. That’s a couple of days now. No fever, but generally feels unwell. Scratchy throat, some coughing. If her throat is red, white, or some other color I guess we’ll be going to the doc in the box for some swabbing a bit later. Might as well use it while we still have it.

That should be a motto, use it while we still can. And of course, keep stacking.

nick

104 Comments and discussion on "Tues. July 13, 2021 – more camp, more cleaning and organizing"

  1. Greg Norton says:

    And with all of the rain, our mosquito population is exploding. Frogs eat mosquitos. So he is not going to get the boot from the back yard. In fact, I would like for a few of his friends to come up from the front ditch.

    Unfortunately, it is also alligator nesting season, and where there are frogs, you will find appropriately-sized gators maintaining the circle of life.

    Of course, gators generally aren’t a problem for people until the clueless start feeding them pastrami sandwiches.

  2. Greg Norton says:

    Anna Kendrick to lead psychological thriller about a girls trip gone horribly wrong in Alice, Darling”

    –doesn’t sound like my cuppa, but some of her other work listed sounds interesting… and some of her quotes sound like she’s a nice and an interesting person too. Rare in today’s world.

    “Scott Pilgrim” gets an unfair rap IMHO. Studio expectations for the flick were extremely high.

  3. Nick Flandrey says:

    73F but 96%RH, it’s dripping out there despite the sun poking through.

    Time to wake the Kraken.

    n

  4. JimB says:

    Mosquitos, I suffered with them when I was a kid. Attracted them, and reacted to them. Big, itchy welts. Yecch.

    We don’t have ’em here. When I say that, someone always claims they saw one back in ought-eight. Fine, but I haven’t been drilled since arriving at the desert. Love it.

  5. dcp says:

    gators generally aren’t a problem for people

    Reminds me of the song “Rippy the Gator” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2NAMh1HGQ0

  6. Chad says:

    If you don’t want to use the good stuff, don’t complain about getting bit. (I don’t get bit so I don’t often use the stuff, but when I do, it’s the stuff with DEET. But that’s POISON. Which is the point, kid.)

    I’m not afraid of Deet and I’ve told my kid multiple times if she wants good bug spray to look for the one with the highest percentage of Deet. Luckily, she’s not as anti-chemical as some of her classmates. Around town for outdoor activities I’ll just use Deep Woods Off (25% Deet). If I’m in the woods or camping or whatever then I use Coleman 100 Max (98.11% Deet) as it’s available as a nice continuous spray aerosol which for some odd reason is tough to find for bug sprays with that much Deet (most are pump spray).

    Bandaid brand flexible fabric bandaids stick. Generics do not. It’s not worth the “savings” to later throw them away. Buy the good stuff.

    🎶 “I am stuck on Band-Aid brand, ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me.” 🎶

    I’ve always used Band-Aid, but only because my parents did. It’s one of those brand loyalty things programmed into me early in life. I’m honestly not sure how well the other brands work as I’ve only ever used Band-Aid. Perhaps there was one or two Curads thrown in there if I got injured at a friend’s house.

    I agree that the flexible fabric stick best, but that’s also why I don’t like them. Every bad memory I have of a Band-Aid tearing off hair or leaving a sticky residue behind is from those flexible fabric Band-Aids. I swear that stuff was design by NASA.

    Mosquitos, I suffered with them when I was a kid. Attracted them, and reacted to them. Big, itchy welts. Yecch.

    They get my nephew real bad. HUGE welts that last forever. You can actually build up an immunity. That one TV personality that they drop off in various wilderness places to survive for x number of days said at some point he stopped getting mosquito bites. They still bite him, but he no longer gets that itchy welt reaction. Makes sense. The mosquito bites I get now are much smaller and shorter-lived than the ones I got as a kid.

  7. ech says:

    We drove through the checkpoints several times in each direction, and I noticed that, in addition to the manual processes NB, the agency had some experimental-looking automated zones on the road NB and SB which included plate reader cameras, RF antennas (Passport Cards fluoresce in RF) , and clusters of imaging devices similar to what we used in one failed project attempting to count vehicle occupants optically at the last job.

    That stuff has been on the I-10 checkpoint for many years. I saw it on a trip there in 2014 or so.

  8. ech says:

    Now Joe Biden Wants Federal Agents To Go Door-To-Door, Violating It

    Not a violation. They don’t have medical data of yours to disclose. Plus it’s probably covered by a public health exception.

  9. Nick Flandrey says:

    They don’t have medical data of yours to disclose

    –they will after they collect your vax status…

    n

  10. ech says:

    Jenny, a good family film is “Explorers”. Kids build a spaceship in the back yard. Features River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke.

     

  11. Chad says:

    Jenny, a good family film is “Explorers”. Kids build a spaceship in the back yard. Features River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke.

    We were surprised how much my daughter, who was 11 at the time, enjoyed Knives Out. It’s PG-13.

  12. MrAtoz says:

    “Flight of the Navigator” is a good kid flick.

  13. ech says:

    About 100 Preliminary reports of Guillain-Barré have been detected after the administration of 12.8 million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement Monday.

    You would expect about 117 to 234 cases of G-B in a year in that many people. Probably some are related, some aren’t. It has a 70% full recovery rate. Not really worrisome on an individual basis. For example, about 1600 of 12.8 million people die in car crashes per year. So, it’s riskier to drive. And injuries are several orders of magnitude higher.

     

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  14. Alan says:

    Apropos of nothing: For whatever reason, the Swiss news had a small report about Sean Pean directing a father-daughter film in which he put his daughter (who apparently has very little acting experience) into the lead female role. And then decided to put himself into the main male role.

    It was supposed to be an endearing tale, but it struck me exactly the other way around: How entitled does he have to be, to choose his daughter, instead of just about anyone else? To give himself a lead role? And how normalized is nepotism in Hollywood, that this is considered endearing? This surely wouldn’t fly in any other industry…

    Not in any other industry??

    Here’s a start…

    https://www.accounting-degree.org/resources/famous-businesspeople-who-benefited-from-nepotism/

  15. ~jim says:

    Google says you can’t find it here but the best darn mosquito repellent I’ve ever used was in India, Maxo Mosquito Shield. If you can find something with diethyl phenyl acetamide 20% give it a try. I’m familiar with DEET and this beats it hands down.

    Back in high school a friend of mine used to get huge welts from a mosquito bite. Size of a half dollar (or is a dollar bigger?) Never seen anything like it. Couple years ago I asked if he still had the same reaction and he said no.

  16. nick flandrey says:

    So, it’s riskier to drive

    — depends on how much you drive, what you drive, where you drive, when you drive

    the vax is optional, sold as essentially risk free, and far better than the alternative. This is looking like not true as time and number of test subjects increases.

    G-B, heart inflammation, other issues. Different things popping up in different parts of the population.

    Given that lots of people here have received shots, and many reported side effects, who here filed a report with the The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System?

    I know I didn’t. I think the incidence of adverse effects must be MASSIVELY underreported.

    n

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  17. lynn says:

    Apropos of nothing: For whatever reason, the Swiss news had a small report about Sean Pean directing a father-daughter film in which he put his daughter (who apparently has very little acting experience) into the lead female role. And then decided to put himself into the main male role.

    It was supposed to be an endearing tale, but it struck me exactly the other way around: How entitled does he have to be, to choose his daughter, instead of just about anyone else? To give himself a lead role? And how normalized is nepotism in Hollywood, that this is considered endearing? This surely wouldn’t fly in any other industry…

    I would not call Sean Penn a grade A actor. Nor a grade B actor. That leaves grade C and below …

  18. nick flandrey says:

    I think the article author must have been a fan–

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9783751/LA-rapper-Indian-Red-Boy-shot-dead-Instagram-Live.html

    -uses active tense. Calls it a murder. Uses the word “gang” although cluelessly or intentionally calls his posing “gun” signs…. FFS people, GANG signs. GANG violence. Or maybe an editor “fixed” it.

    And the victim has a nicer glock than most people I know.

    n

  19. lynn says:

    And with all of the rain, our mosquito population is exploding. Frogs eat mosquitos. So he is not going to get the boot from the back yard. In fact, I would like for a few of his friends to come up from the front ditch.

    Unfortunately, it is also alligator nesting season, and where there are frogs, you will find appropriately-sized gators maintaining the circle of life.

    Of course, gators generally aren’t a problem for people until the clueless start feeding them pastrami sandwiches.

    I’ve got 35,000 alligators living ten miles away from my house and office in Brazos Bend State Park. They are free to come and go as they please. Just about every pond in these parts has a gator or two in it. Lots of warning signs. Around here, people feed them raw chickens. I kid you not, entire raw chickens.
    https://tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/park-information/alligator-safety

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  20. Greg Norton says:

    I would not call Sean Penn a grade A actor. Nor a grade B actor. That leaves grade C and below … 

    Penn gets a pass from the media because of his activism, the rationalization being his Oscar for “Milk”, awarded by Academy voters in a politically charged season in 2009.

  21. lynn says:

    Ah, the most beautiful house in our neighborhood is up for sale. Only $1,375,000. 4,900 ft2 one story house with an 8,000 ft2 stables on 2.4 acres.
    https://www.har.com/homedetail/5942-sagamore-bay-ln-richmond-tx-77469/2401184?lid=6256775

    I’ll bet all those marble floors are slicker than pig snot.

  22. nick flandrey says:

    God I hate windows.

    Once again, windows update started thrashing my machine to the point it was unusable.   By design, mistake or poor programming, Defender, windows Update, and searchindexer.exe (which isn’t even supposed to be enabled) started thrashing my pagefile to the point of saturating my disk usage to 100%.

    This makes actually doing anything on the machine impossible.  It took several minutes for task manager to open after the three finger salute.

    Keeping in mind, I’ve turned of search indexing for the whole disk.  I’ve turned off windows updates to the extent I can.

    Firefox is also either involved, or caught up in the mess as many of the processes hammering the pagefile are labelled as ‘firefox’.

    Why is searchindexer.exe running at all? and why in anyone’s name would it run against PAGEFILE?

    WTF is Firefox doing hammering the pagefile, or hammering away at some firefox files nested 20 levels deep in the user cache folder?

    Gah, it’s enough to make me consider linux for my everyday machine.

    n

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  23. lynn says:

    Jenny, a good family film is “Explorers”. Kids build a spaceship in the back yard. Features River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke.

    James Patterson’s review of “Night at the Museum” says it best: “Night at the Museum
    The reviews for this movie were mostly pretty bad and I have no idea why. It’s a terrific family movie that’s fairly inventive, and the performances are just fine and dandy. As I said, though–this is definitely a family movie.”
    https://www.jamespatterson.com/landing-page/movie-reviews-n/#NightAtTheMuseum

  24. Greg Norton says:

    I’ve got 35,000 alligators living ten miles away from my house and office in Brazos Bend State Park. They are free to come and go as they please. Just about every pond in these parts has a gator or two in it. Lots of warning signs. Around here, people feed them raw chickens. I kid you not, entire raw chickens.

    That’s a really bad situation with the gators associating the taste of chicken with people and their pets. A large male human is not going to be a target for a hungry gator, but a child or a dog will be in a drought environment if things get really tough.

    Call the game warden if you see feedings in one place on a regular basis. Gators are no longer endangered, but IIRC they are still protected.

    I can guess the demographic of the feeders. Gators grow to fit their environment and food supply, and a real “redneck” knows better.

    The South Padre bird/wildlife sanctuary has a 12 1/2 footer “Big Padre” who was a rescued nuisance gator if you ever want to understand the potential danger of feeding them up close.

    We did a bunch of touristy things beyond SpaceX’s launch site last week, including the bird sanctuary, turtle rescue, and USS Lexington.

  25. nick flandrey says:

    Gator ate that kid at WDW because the firefighters had been feeding him chicken.

    n

  26. nick flandrey says:

    As Jerry used to say “predictable, and predicted.”

    you get what you measure

    Navy is not ready for war because sailors are forced to focus on diversity training with officers blaming poor leadership for destruction of warship, two collisions and surrender of US boat to Iran, scathing report finds

    Members of Congress commissioned the report on issues in the surface Navy
    Came in response to fire on ship in San Diego and two ship collisions in Pacific 
    Retired Marine general and Navy admiral spoke with current and former officers
    They identified a number of disturbing trends in Navy leadership and training
    Many officers said that diversity training took precedence over warfighting
    They claimed combat readiness had become a ‘box-checking’ exercise 

    n

  27. lynn says:

    We did a bunch of touristy things beyond SpaceX’s launch site last week, including the bird sanctuary, turtle rescue, and USS Lexington.

    The Lexington is a neat visit ! My uncle flew off the Lexington in the 1960s as she was the training ship for new naval aviators then. She is oil fired so she could only do 30 knots on a good day. Jets need lots of wind over the bow, according to the uncle she was an exciting launch, especially for A4s with no afterburner on that single B-52 engine.

  28. lynn says:

    Mosquitos, I suffered with them when I was a kid. Attracted them, and reacted to them. Big, itchy welts. Yecch.

    We don’t have ’em here. When I say that, someone always claims they saw one back in ought-eight. Fine, but I haven’t been drilled since arriving at the desert. Love it.

    I live in the swamp known as Houston covering around 10,000 square miles. We have LOTS of mosqitos. We’ve got a foot of water in the ditch in front of the house right now.

  29. Greg Norton says:

    “I would not call Sean Penn a grade A actor. Nor a grade B actor. That leaves grade C and below … “

    Penn gets a pass from the media because of his activism, the rationalization being his Oscar for “Milk”, awarded by Academy voters in a politically charged season in 2009.

    I forgot to add that next year will be the “Fast Times” 40th anniversary so you’re going to see a lot of Penn and the other formerly young actors whose careers were made by that flick. The film press knows Penn and the rest are full of gas, but they will want the interviews none the less.

    Director Amy Heckerling and writer Cameron Crowe are persona non grata with Hollywood as of late, and with Roy Walston gone, Penn is now the elder statesman of the flick.

  30. Ray Thompson says:

    That leaves grade C and below

    You give him too much credit. “F” being the lowest on the scale I would propose giving Sean Penn a rating of “K”.

    windows update started thrashing my machine to the point it was unusable

    I had a problem with a computer at church, system is only a couple of years old, all-in-one, quite good specs. At times the system became unusable. Constantly hitting the disk. Programs would not load, could not get any work accomplished. I thought it was a hardware issue and was going to replace the system. Multiple sessions with the machine failed to really reveal any issues that would indicate the issue.

    Then I accidently (I would rather be lucky than good) on OneDrive constantly trying to log in to a Microsoft account that did not exist. A Microsoft account had never been set up on the system. But OneDrive was determined to contact the mother ship.

    So I terminated OneDrive, went into the Programs and Apps section of the settings panel and removed OneDrive. Since doing that the system has exhibited no issues and performs as it did when new.

    So you may want to try removing OneDrive from the system. Just a guess on my part.

  31. Greg Norton says:

    Gator ate that kid at WDW because the firefighters had been feeding him chicken.

    More likely tourists in the high dollar beach front rooms at the Grand Floridian tossing down chicken from the balconies late at night, a well known underground activity. Who else do you think bought the cr*ppy overpriced meat at Goodings?

    (BTW, Goodings closed well ahead of schedule last year even though their lease covered through the end of 2021, when the plaza will go under the wrecking ball. One upside of Covid.)

    A firefighter on the Reedy Creek payroll doing that would have been canned in a heartbeat, but guests with money get away with all kinds of mischief on property. Even by Disney standards, the resort is high end with the only Michelin three star restaurant in FL on site so a *lot* of poor behavior gets overlooked to keep the money flowing.

    Either way, the incident took place at 9-10 PM, which raises the question why an unsupervised toddler was out on the beach at that time of night. That story had all kinds of holes.

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  32. Greg Norton says:

    Gah, it’s enough to make me consider linux for my everyday machine.

    Our late host tried that with mixed results. Desktop Linux hasn’t changed much since he stopped regularly posting updates to focus on prepping.

    My 4 GB “road” laptop exclusively dual boots the latest Fedora and Mint, but Fedora gets the most time, with Mint only receiving enough run time to stay current with updates.

  33. Greg Norton says:

    The Lexington is a neat visit ! My uncle flew off the Lexington in the 1960s as she was the training ship for new naval aviators then. She is oil fired so she could only do 30 knots on a good day. Jets need lots of wind over the bow, according to the uncle she was an exciting launch, especially for A4s with no afterburner on that single B-52 engine.

    We squeezed the aquarium and the Lexington into a single day.

    Unfortunately, that part of Corpus Christi is blighted. We did the two touristy things and got out.

    If that part of Texas really is going to be home to a big spaceport with links to major overseas destinations, a lot of development work is ahead.

  34. RickH says:

    I did the latest Windows Update a couple days ago. No issues with the update, or the time involved. Took a few minutes to complete.

    Of course, I am a firm believer in installing updates when they arrive. I get the ‘need to restart’ message during the day, but I have my updates set to happen outside of ‘work hours’. So I just hit the ‘restart later’ button if I am in the middle of something. If I can interrupt what I am working on, I’ll just do the update when notified. I always save any open docs/work beforehand.

    After the restart, I open up FireFox, tell it to ‘Restore Previous Session’ (under ‘History’), and I am back where I started. Some FF tabs will require a login again, but that’s OK.

    Updates on my systems are No Big Deal. As is the daily operation of my main laptop (which I use 10-12 hours a day).  It all works fine for me.

  35. lynn says:

    “Elon Musk says SpaceX planning second rocket facility near Waco”
    https://www.kwtx.com/2021/07/11/elon-musk-says-spacex-planning-second-rocket-facility-near-waco/

    “Musk: Goal is to power a fleet capable of building city on Mars”

    ““This will focus on volume production of Raptor 2, while California factory will make Raptor Vacuum & new, experimental designs.
    Musk explained that by ” volume production,” he meant two to four engines a day. “That’s super high volume for big rocket engines, but low volume by automotive standards,” Musk tweeted.”

    Dream big. And get out of California.

    And a thousand rocket motors a year is breathtaking for the capabilities of those.

    ADD: Still looking forward to the daily ballistic from Houston to Tokyo and back. Fifteen minutes of free fall in a 30 minute flight. Free barf bags for all !

  36. Greg Norton says:

    “Elon Musk says SpaceX planning second rocket facility near Waco”

    “The challenges of operating at Starbase left us with no choice but to put engine production in McGregor,” he replied.

    Conditions at Boca Chica are really primitive, particularly the roads.

    If you go to watch a launch, find a hotel on South Padre Island and plan on watching from the state park on the south end of the island.

    If you head out to see the “Starbase”, Google for the county’s web site which posts road closures to the site in advance, and take a vehicle suitable for bad road conditions — in other words, leave the Tonymobile at home.

  37. lynn says:

    “Bill Cosby Trolls His Haters, Thanks Supporters on His 84th Birthday, Calls Himself a Freedom Fighter”
    https://mediarightnews.com/bill-cosby-trolls-his-haters-thanks-supporters-on-his-84th-birthday-calls-himself-a-freedom-fighter/

    Hey, the Cos is still hanging !

    Hat tip to:
    https://thelibertydaily.com/

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  38. lynn says:

    “Texas Gov To Arrest Dem Lawmakers Who Fled State On Private Jet To Block Voting Rights Bill”
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/texas-dems-fled-state-private-jet-over-voting-rights-bill-abandon-democracy

    “As AmericanThinker.com’s Andrea Widburg details, the background to the story is that the Texas legislature, which currently has a Republican majority (18-13 in its Senate and 83-67 in its House) is poised to pass a voting reform bill. As with similar bills across America, the point is to ensure that the people voting have a legal right to vote and are, in fact, who they claim to be.
    The most contentious issues for Democrats are cleaned-up voting bills and, especially, photo ID. The problem is that most Americans support photo ID. According to a Monmouth Poll, when it comes to photo ID, 62% of Democrats, 87% of independents, and 91% of Republicans support it. Texas, with a strong Republican majority, is intent upon passing a bill that the vast majority of Americans would back.
    So, what do the Democrats do? Like Brave Sir Robin, they run away:”

    Nice comparison.

  39. Ray Thompson says:

    raises the question why an unsupervised toddler was out on the beach at that time of night.

    Maybe the quests ran out of chicken.

  40. nick flandrey says:

    @rick, “It all works fine for me. ” — that’s what all the devs say.

    n

  41. MrAtoz says:

    Nice comparison.

    Didn’t the Tejas Dumbo’s try this before and nothing happened?

  42. nick flandrey says:

    Rain is hammering down all of a sudden.

    still 91F

    n

  43. Mark W says:

    A bit cooler, wet, humid, hot, and probably all at the same time. Yesterday was sunny but then ended with rain

    I was in Houston this weekend, and it was more humid in San Antonio when I got back. Houston was actually quite pleasant.

  44. nick flandrey says:

    TX dems have fled before.   I don’t remember any consequences.

    n

  45. nick flandrey says:

    Still looking forward to the daily ballistic from Houston to Tokyo

    –in one of the SF books I read, they make it a point to be sure the LANDING strip is empty before LAUNCHING. The implication is that it once wasn’t. Can’t remember the story though.
    n

  46. lynn says:

    Nice comparison.

    Didn’t the Tejas Dumbo’s try this before and nothing happened?

    Yes, the Tejas Dumbos have done this several times before. Inevitably, one or two of them come back home at which point the Texas Rangers arrest them and present them to the chamber’s sergeant at arms. It just delays the inevitable.

  47. Greg Norton says:

    TX dems have fled before. I don’t remember any consequences.

    A handful of Dems, mostly African American, fled at the end of the regular session on Memorial Day weekend, but not the entire Democrat caucus. Abbott wasn’t going to arrest those who fled that time lest it be the lead on the local Faux News every night for a month as protests raged Downtown.

    The bars reopened in Downtown Austin that weekend, and enough members of both parties were AWOL that quorum was broken in the waning hours of the session, leading to the current mess.

    The Governor will eventually get something to sign. He has the line item veto power over the staff members’ salaries in the Legislature, and as things currently stand, he’s one state-wide power outage away from a serious primary challenge.

    All right, all right, all right?

    We’ll see. 🙂

    For those unfamiliar with the meme’s origins:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuER2Puym4I

    annnnd

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD2cVhC-63I

    (Another politically charged Oscar vote)

  48. nick flandrey says:

    Now down to 80F and we got 0.14 inches so far.  Rate of precip is declining though.

    Just went thru the Dell warranty process with my auction monitor.  Back light comes on but no image…  looks like the purchaser just returned it to amazon, who sent it to their returns auction.  Warranty is transferable, even if purchased used, and there weren’t any service calls on the tag number…

    If the warranty transfer goes thru ok, and it’s automated, they said they’ll send me a replacement monitor.   If there are any issues, I’ll call the auction seller.  Worst case, I open it up and look for loose cards or cables, before writing off the $40.

    n

  49. nick flandrey says:

    I try to avoid commenting on people’s appearance, unless they  make their living by it, but those fleeing dems were  remarkably uniform in appearance.

    n

  50. Chad says:

    Jenny, a good family film is “Explorers”. Kids build a spaceship in the back yard. Features River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke.

    James Patterson’s review of “Night at the Museum” says it best: “Night at the Museum
    The reviews for this movie were mostly pretty bad and I have no idea why. It’s a terrific family movie that’s fairly inventive, and the performances are just fine and dandy. As I said, though–this is definitely a family movie.”
    https://www.jamespatterson.com/landing-page/movie-reviews-n/#NightAtTheMuseum

    I enjoyed Night at the Museum. I’m not a huge Ben Stiller fan, but I enjoyed that one. I also enjoyed The Librarian.

    We’ve got a foot of water in the ditch in front of the house right now.

    It’s a code violation around here to have any piece of land where standing water doesn’t go away within 48 hours. Though, we do rely more on storm drains and pipes than ditches. It was quite the adventure as a kid to walk into the storm drains. The entrance I used had a 6′ diameter concrete pipe.

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  51. lynn says:

    “Microsoft did door-to-door router replacements to stop Trickbot malware”
    https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/12/22573804/microsoft-trickbot-malware-botnet-router-replacement-brazil-latin-america

    “Microsoft says it’s gone door-to-door replacing routers compromised with the Trickbot malware in Brazil and Latin America, hoping to squash an international hacking group. The Daily Beast reported the detail in an article about the group, which is an ongoing target for US Cyber Command as well as information security companies like Microsoft.”

    Wow, impressive.

  52. ~jim says:

    Any ideas why my phone suddenly started charging verrrry slowly all of a sudden last night? I’ve switched batteries, chargers, cables to no avail. Tried a hard reset, too. Old Samsung, Android 6.1.

  53. lynn says:

    We’ve got a foot of water in the ditch in front of the house right now.

    It’s a code violation around here to have any piece of land where standing water doesn’t go away within 48 hours. Though, we do rely more on storm drains and pipes than ditches. It was quite the adventure as a kid to walk into the storm drains. The entrance I used had a 6′ diameter concrete pipe.

    We are quite the opposite. When you get an average of 65 inches (2 meters) of rain every year, there is a impetus to keep all that rain from going downstream at once. All new property developments must keep 12 to 15 inches of rain on site in rainwater detainment ponds and slowly trickle it out over a long time period using pumps. I am also of the opinion that we need to go back and develop water detainment ponds for all existing buildings, both commercial and residential.

  54. Greg Norton says:

    “Microsoft did door-to-door router replacements to stop Trickbot malware”

    Wow, impressive.

    When I worked at the Death Star, we talked with Redmond about doing a wholesale replacement of the Linksys BEFSR41 in this country about 15 years ago, when the NAT from one firmware update couldn’t keep UDP assignments from randomly swapping port numbers, most critically for us dealing with port 500 inbound and the asinine “IPSec support” convention Linksys followed.

    Fortunately, Linksys eventually provided a fix, but they weren’t thrilled about it since the model was obsolete and they had to scrounge for developers capable of untangling the spaghetti code. The “Come to Jesus” meeting, when Linksys found religion, was when Microsoft had the XBox networking people join the call and Irvine realized that their status on the “approved for XBox” vendor list was at stake.

    Even Microsoft’s business customer numbers didn’t motivate Linksys as much as the video gamer population counts.

    The BEFSR41 stuck around for a long time despite lack of Wifi built into the router. The primary competition, the DLink 601, which received the PC Magazine “Editor’s Choice” award over the Linksys — God only knows why — was a piece-o-cr*p.

  55. paul says:

    Any ideas why my phone suddenly started charging verrrry slowly all of a sudden last night?

    Dust in the socket?

  56. lynn says:

    Even Microsoft’s business customer numbers didn’t motivate Linksys as much as the video gamer population counts.

    The BEFSR41 stuck around for a long time despite lack of Wifi built into the router. The primary competition, the DLink 601, which received the PC Magazine “Editor’s Choice” award over the Linksys — God only knows why — was a piece-o-cr*p.

    PC Magazine was really bad about advertising in the magazine being reflected in the Editor’s Choices.

  57. EdH says:

    Another family movie is “Fly Away Home” – my sisters kids literally wore out the VHS it was on.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_Away_Home

     

  58. JimB says:

    Linux vs Windows. I once had a boss who had an oil painting of fences crossing at right angles, with four cows straining through each fence segment happily eating grass on the other side. Good metaphor.

    I had essentially Nick’s same problem, but on Mint Linux. I kept it up to date, which required two or three maintenance sessions a week. I turned OFF the indexing, repeatedly, but couldn’t get rid of it. I did other stuff. I reinstalled from scratch so many times it seemed I was on autopilot. I posted on the Mint fora about my problems. Nothing worked. The system would be slammed with activity and unusable for about ten minutes after a restart or resume from suspend to disk. No problem with suspend to RAM, because that didn’t work. 😛

    I should have tried Fedora or Red Hat. That was the only major distro I didn’t try. I messed with distros for more than five years on two or three test systems before I tried Mint, which IMO was the best I had found since Mepis faded away (the resurrected Mepis hadn’t been available yet.) I used Mint exclusively for about five years. Other than the above complaints, it was OK. My main beef was with the applications, most of which were second rate.

    I even took a Linux course taught by a guy I respected. Unfortunately, he was of little help, because he was a server guy trying to teach desktop. Some of the students were helpful, but I quickly found out that two thirds of them were also server guys and didn’t use desktop Linux. The rest were what I would call extremely casual users who played with desktop Linux, and who got their business work done on the Windows machines their employer supplied. I was determined to rise above all that. I didn’t. It was a good learning experience. I still admire Linux.

    There is no perfect system, only one any of us can live with. Maybe my longstanding use of Windows makes a difference. For instance, I had forgotten that I disabled OneDrive, but for a different reason than Ray found. I did it because I didn’t want my wife indiscriminately saving files to it. It is very easy to do this without even knowing it. Example: clicking autosave in Word defaults to storing the file on OneDrive, even though it started on the local machine. This is sinister, and probably causes people a lot of grief. It also might have kept my machines free of disk hammering. Lucky, I guess.

    I do get the 100% disk operating time upon start, but when I look at the data volume it is pretty small. The machine is fully responsive, at least my old Xeon desktop. My wife’s i5 notebook does slow perceptably. Although I no longer look much at hardware, I have learned in the past that there are big differences.

    As for system load, I use Chrome for now because I had used it on Linux. It seems to work well. I have had more than 30 tabs open with no trouble. The inactive ones seem to sleep, just like on my phone. Firefox on the phone just worked for a long time, until I jumped to Chrome and then Brave. FF on Linux gave me troubles, and I dumped it. Chrome is different, but I like it. My Wife uses Edge, and it seems good, too.

    Please… everyone should give Linux a try, and write about your experience. As for which distro, try several until you find one that suits. I really liked a couple, but they seem to be gone or sleeping. I occasionally think I might try one, but would need yet another computer, and some space in my cramped office. Not for a while. Shoot, I have a spare monitor and would like to try a dual monitor setup, but I made some furniture that only accommodates one monitor. Didn’t plan much ahead.

    No sour grapes here. I learn something every day.

  59. ech says:

    Didn’t the Tejas Dumbo’s try this before and nothing happened?

    They’ve done it a few times. The first big one was the “killer bees” in 1979. They made out that they had left the state, but were actually in an apartment a few miles from the capitol. It worked, as the bill they were opposing (splitting the dates of the presidential primaries to benefit John Connally’s bid to be the Republican nominee) was killed.

    It’s happened maybe twice since, with little to no effect.

    This time they have the entire party supporting them and are out of state, so unless the local cops allow the Rangers to show up and arrest them, they might win. Will the DC cops allow the Rangers in to arrest a bunch of Democrats?

     

  60. Marcelo says:

    Firefox is also either involved, or caught up in the mess as many of the processes hammering the pagefile are labelled as ‘firefox’.

    Looks like a no brainer to me. There are a lot of alternatives out there and they cost nothing. Get it out of the equation. I ditched it years and years ago when it was in the big transition with the new engine and had more problems than I could stomach.

  61. lynn says:

    “Self-Driving Cars: Still a Bad Idea” by John C Dvorak
    https://dvorak.substack.com/p/self-driving-cars-still-a-bad-idea

    “I first wrote about self-driving cars in 2012 and had high hopes for the idea. After all, these cars would lessen congestion and lower traffic deaths, which hover around 33,000 a year in the United States alone. Since those early days, I’ve concluded that self-driving cars are so disruptive to society that they should be illegal.”

    “The good news is that the technology is beginning to look like handwriting recognition or voice recognition. These technologies get to 95-99 percent accuracy but never turn the corner to perfection. Even OCR software cannot be 100 percent accurate. The cars will have similar software failures, but this kind of failure is life-threatening.”

    My thoughts exactly.

  62. ~jim says:

    Dust in the socket?

    Nope. Really weird.

    I don’t know why people become so attached to Firefox. It has always had more hiccups and more stubborn users than any other browser I can think of.

    Speaking of kid movies, I enjoyed the new Thunderbirds movie, directed by none other than Jonathan Frames, aka Cmdr William Riker. Perhaps it was just nostalgia for the original?

  63. dcp says:

    Fly Away Home

    The original PBS show C’Mon Geese was even better. Search by title on YouTube.

  64. Alan says:

    “Microsoft says it’s gone door-to-door replacing routers compromised with the Trickbot malware in Brazil and Latin America, hoping to squash an international hacking group. The Daily Beast reported the detail in an article about the group, which is an ongoing target for US Cyber Command as well as information security companies like Microsoft.”

    As long as they were going door-to-door they could have done some Covid jabs at the same time. Just a thought…

  65. RickH says:

    @~jim

    I am currently using Firefox (version 90.0) without any issues. Have not had any major issues with it for a long time.

    I typically have under 20 tabs open at a time, sometimes 30. Occasionally there is a site (tab) that gets carried away with doing something, slowing things down. Doesn’t happen enough to bother me.

    As mentioned before, updates are installed on this computer within a day or two of availability. I use this Win10 laptop (HP Envy 17″, 256GB SSD, 1TB spinner as D, some programs are installed on D) 10-12 hours a day. Mostly use FF, with some PHP development (via the RapidPHP editor), and Word 2019 (standalone, not subscription/365 – cost me about $50 for the full Office 2019 suite). Sophos Home AV runs on my systems.

    That’s my environment. No issues. Just Works. Of course, YMMV.

  66. Alan says:

    This time they have the entire party supporting them and are out of state, so unless the local cops allow the Rangers to show up and arrest them, they might win. Will the DC cops allow the Rangers in to arrest a bunch of Democrats?

    I wouldn’t think the Rangers would have any jurisdiction outside of Texas? IF the DC cops arrested them on TX warrants wouldn’t they have to then be extradited through the courts? I heard Abbott plans to call one special session after the next for as long as the Dems remain out of state. In the ‘old days’ in politics there used to be something called compromise.

  67. PaultheManc says:

    Gah, it’s enough to make me consider linux for my everyday machine.

    Being natively anti Microsoft – I followed RBT all those years ago, and have lived in the Linux (mainly Ubuntu) world ever since.  Very rare problems, very reliable and works like an OS should (in my opinion), it is the slave, not the master. I am politely invited to update, and can choose to delay – but don’t, because, unlike Windows, I can carry on my active work without noticing the upgrade – whereas Windows … go get yourself a long coffee…

    3
    1
  68. drwilliams says:

    The Food and Drug Administration is preparing to announce a new warning for the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine saying the shot has been linked to a serious but rare side effect called Guillain-Barré syndrome, in which the immune system attacks the nerves, according to four individuals familiar with the situation.

    About 100 Preliminary reports of Guillain-Barré have been detected after the administration of 12.8 million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement Monday. The cases have largely been reported about two weeks after vaccination and mostly in men, many aged 50 or older.

    You would expect about 117 to 234 cases of G-B in a year in that many people. Probably some are related, some aren’t.

    The expected cases for 2 weeks 12.8 million people would be 1/26, or 4.5-9.0, leaving an “excess” of 91 to 95 cases potentially associated with the vaccine.

    But it’s “mostly in men, many aged 50 or older”, so we’d need sub-population statistics to get a better handle on it.

    30% of an excess of 91 to 95 is about 27-29. Good odds, but sucks to be in that group.

    Be interesting to see the data for influenza vaccine year over year.

  69. drwilliams says:

    “Texas Gov To Arrest Dem Lawmakers Who Fled State On Private Jet To Block Voting Rights Bill”

    Time for a very close reading of state law.

    Then track the jet. When it returns to Texas, impound it.

  70. Greg Norton says:

    “Texas Gov To Arrest Dem Lawmakers Who Fled State On Private Jet To Block Voting Rights Bill”

    Then track the jet. When it returns to Texas, impound it.

    I wonder where they flew the jet from in order to avoid DPS. Georgetown?

    Also — who supplied the jet?

  71. drwilliams says:

    Gov Abbott could suspend salaries again, then restart under a new system that uses paper checks and requires a confirmation signature from the legislator to get staff paid. Have a court challenge ready and file it in the reddest county in Texas with a judge who is willing to rule immediately (without, of course, tipping his hand as to which way he would rule).

    And surely there’s an argument that not showing up for work is, like, you know, quitting? State needs a quorum to conduct business–time for special elections.

    In the meantime, surely the committee that assigns office space could reassign absent Dems to new digs in the parking garage in favor of legislators who are actually working?

  72. nick flandrey says:

    phone suddenly started charging verrrry slowly

    –could be the charger is failing. Caps die and switching power supplies are particularly hard on capacitors.

    –well, daughter one has strep throat. And it comes out that one of the girls at camp went home early with suspected strep… thanks. Now 10 other girls will have it, and it will probably cause two weeks of GS camp sessions to cancel, because my wife doesn’t want to be ‘that one’ who infects everyone else.

    To add insult to injury, d1 has lost her iphone. She’s only had it since we got back from Florida. That’s a new record. Sucks to be her if she can’t find it, as she’ll be buying the next phone on her own.

    –I liked Night at the Museum a lot and I’m not a Ben Stiller fan.

    n

  73. lynn says:

    “Texas Gov To Arrest Dem Lawmakers Who Fled State On Private Jet To Block Voting Rights Bill”

    Time for a very close reading of state law.

    Then track the jet. When it returns to Texas, impound it.

    One of the jets (there were several) was owned by the Lebonese embassy.

  74. Greg Norton says:

    I wouldn’t think the Rangers would have any jurisdiction outside of Texas? IF the DC cops arrested them on TX warrants wouldn’t they have to then be extradited through the courts? I heard Abbott plans to call one special session after the next for as long as the Dems remain out of state. In the ‘old days’ in politics there used to be something called compromise.

    Abbott line item vetoed he staffing budget for the Legislature which starts in September. If the Dems don’t come back by the end of next month to establish a quorum to override the veto, their full time staff members start to miss paychecks.

    Also, Texas-style wheelin-and-dealin means that some committee chairs are held by Dems, and the House leadership can revoke the titles at any time.

  75. Marcelo says:

    Windows 10 (upgraded from 7 to 8 to 8.1 to 10) with all the baggage the upgrades must have brought and a boatload of HP-crapware still lurking somewhere in there running  on an HP Envy Core I7 from around 2012. One small 256GB SSD and a very old and slow HD 750GB with a huge 8 GB of memory.

    All the following continuosly open:

    – Edge with 3 windows and 26+16+5 tabs.

    – Vivaldi with 7 windows and 24(6 pinned)+10(6 pinned)+8+20+26+26+10 tabs.

    – Solitaire.

    – File Explorer in 2 windows.

    – Notepad++

    – Notepad

    – Excel: 3 Workbooks.

    – Visualstudio 2019: 4 Projects.

    – Task Manager.

    Did I mention 8GB of memory? It obviously pages from time to time but nothing locks-up and the paging is obviously not an issue, if not, I would not have all those instances of VS running…

    Ahhh, and 2 networks attached: wired 1GB for my local boxes and wireless for Internet. This has routing issues I have to fix…

    As mentioned many times, I do the Windows Updates when it suits me and I am running Windows 10 Home. Speaking of which, today is Patch Tuesday…

    …. and for PaulTheManc’s comments: What version of Windows was your comment about? XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10? Things have changed a Lot with updates. Win7 was probably the worst in that regard.

  76. drwilliams says:

    “Also — who supplied the jet?”

    News reports say “a billionaire”.

    Flight plans. Tail numbers. Public records. Not difficult to find someone who keeps track of these things. I suspect the msm are being coy by not naming.

    ADDED: Lebonese embassy. Be time to remember them in the foreign aid budget on 2022.
    Probably can’t impound that one, but if it comes back to Texas, it could have problems getting serviced.

  77. nick flandrey says:

    I’m on FF89, will update to 90 when I restart it.  I’ve usually got less than 8 tabs open in each of two windows.  Most are plain text sites.   FF does cause memory issues over time, I can see when the memory faults top out the graph.  Killing FF brings the line back to the bottom when that happens.  Been that way thru at least 20 versions.  I suspect the culprit there is AOL or youtube.

    I use FF because I have all my log ons saved in it.  Sometimes I go to a site I haven’t been to in years and it fills in the log on perfectly.    That would be a major PITA to get that all working again elsewhere.  Plus the adblocking works pretty well at this point.

    The total disk thrash only happens when MS is downloading updates in the background.  I can watch the active files it’s so slow, and there are usually a ton of them in the system32 and driver folders.  shite that shouldn’t even NEED updating.

    n

  78. RickH says:

    Interesting news about the REvilransomware gang, probably based in Russia:

    A prolific, Russian-speaking ransomware gang has suddenly disappeared from the internet months after executing some of the most high-profile cyberattacks on U.S. targets.
    It is unclear why the group’s online footprint, including its blog and payment-processing infrastructure, have gone offline, but its absence has prompted questions about whether the U.S. took action just days after President Joe Biden promised consequences for a string of cyberattacks. But ransomware gangs have also been known to voluntarily disband, only to return under a different name.
    The group, REvil, is one of the most prolific cybercriminal organizations in the world. It hacked more than 360 U.S. targets in 2021 alone, part of an extortion spree that locks up victims’ computers, leading to demands of payment in exchange for a decryptor program and a promise to not leak sensitive files.
    The group disappeared from the dark web early Tuesday morning without leaving any known indication why, and the timing is noteworthy. Biden has repeatedly insisted he plans to take some action against ransomware hackers, many of whom are believed to reside in Russia. On Friday, Biden told reporters the U.S. may attack the “servers” used to carry out attacks, but he didn’t give specifics.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/russian-speaking-ransomware-gang-goes-offline-rcna1403

  79. drwilliams says:

    And, according to a troubling new report from leading physicists, these vast batteries amount to electrical bombs with the force of many hundreds of tons of TNT.

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/07/13/study-grid-battery-facilities-could-explode-with-greater-force-than-the-beirut-harbour-blast/

    Soooo…

    Gotta store energy close to where you use it? CHECK!

    Most energy use is in the cities, as shown by their CO2 generation? CHECK!

    Sounds like a marvelous coincidence waiting to happen!!!

    4
    1
  80. drwilliams says:

    To be fair the deployment logistics of building enough nuclear to hit net zero would be insanely expensive – as Willis calculated in US Green Impossibilities, the US would need to complete a brand new 1.2GW nuclear plant every week, between now and 2040 (975 weeks), to replace an estimated 1175GW of generating capacity with zero carbon nuclear. And we’re already 12 weeks behind schedule. At around $10 billion per plant, total cost would be around $10 trillion dollars.

    But attempting to replicate this feat with wind or solar is ever more absurd. Given a renewable capacity factor of around 15%, a 5MW wind turbine produces an average of 0.75MW. So we need 1175GW / 0.75MW = 1.6 million wind turbines or solar plants.

    To put it another way, the wind industry estimates wind turbines cost $1.3-2.2 million / MW nameplate capacity. So, lets be generous, 1.6 million wind turbines x 5MW x $1.3 million / MW = $10.4 trillion.

    OK, so far the cost of wind power is comparable to the cost of building nuclear plants.

    Ah but I forgot battery backup. If you assume a need for at least 5 days worth of backup power, to cover widespread wind droughts which occur every other year, you need 1175GW x 24 hours per day x 5 = 141,000GWh of battery capacity.

    The Hornsdale Battery in South Australia holds 194MWh, and cost $161 million Aussie dollars. Lets say 161 * 0.75 = $121 million USD. Scale up to 141,000GWh, to cover a 5 day winter wind drought, and you need 141,000GWh / 194MWh x $121 million USD = $87,943,298,000,000 – eighty eight trillion US dollars

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/07/13/foreign-affairs-no-time-for-nuclear-power-to-save-us-from-climate-change/

    It’s really apparent why progressives want to destroy the ability of people to understand simple arithmetic.

  81. nick flandrey says:

    Well, I just got issued a dispatch number for a replacement of my  curved ‘gaming’ monitor.   Looks like the replacement is due here in 2-3 days.  Hooray if true!

    n

  82. drwilliams says:

    @Nick

    All the looters aren’t in Africa.

    Just looking at eBay’s new “managed payments” “keep you in the dark” system, I forgot again that giving the “oops I made a boo-boo” refund results in a net loss of 30 cents, balance to eBay.

    If you call and get a live person, they are happy to refund your money. Illegitimati.

    ADDED: Good news on the monitor.

  83. nick flandrey says:

    She thought her zip code would protect her.

    Schweitzer says that she normally feels ‘very safe in this neighborhood’ and describes it as ‘a community of families and people who we trust.’ It’s exactly because her neighborhood is normally so ‘safe and inviting’ that this ‘incident is mind blowing.’

    the stranger who walked around her home uninvited for 16 minutes while her children were inside alone on July 11.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9784429/MA-mom-felt-sick-stomach-watching-Ring-video-stranger-snooped-home.html

    n

  84. Ray Thompson says:

    directed by none other than Jonathan Frames, aka Cmdr William Riker

    I think you meant Jonathan Frakes. I suspect your spell chucker got in the way.

    I have tried Linux, multiple version, multiple times for some. The result was the same, back to Windows. I need software that works and don’t have time to mess with cryptic commands to try and make something work. Probably not this way now, but several years ago when having difficulty I would get responses from others “read the manual”. I would ask where is the manual. Response “RTFM”. Yeh, right. If I don’t know where the problem is located, how do I find the proper location in the manual? It was frustrating. I finally gave up.

    I once considered an Apple desktop. Problem with that is something works easily or is nearly impossible to figure out. I also not at all pleased with Apple just abandoning a complete processor line thus abandoning many systems.

    I was also not all pleased with Apple writing two files to every writeable storage device, in every folder that is touched with two files that being with a period (.). Even memory sticks which have the files placed in the root directory. In fact Apple is so rude about this behavior that inserting a completely full thumb drive in a USB port will result in a fully corrupted drive. The response from Apple when questioned is to never insert a full thumb drive. I asked how do I know the drive is full unless I insert the thumb drive. Complete silence. Thus Apple desktop systems are on my “nope” list. Apple has this attitude they are never wrong and they know best.

  85. drwilliams says:

    FBI Calls for People to Rat Out Friends and Family, Gets Clown-Slapped on Twitter

    One of the eleven best:

    FBI@FBI
    Jul 11, 2021
    Family members and peers are often best positioned to witness signs of mobilization to violence. Help prevent homegrown violent extremism. Visit https://go.usa.gov/lolgf to learn how to spot suspicious behaviors and report them to the #FBI. #NatSec

    Uncle Bumpy Knuckles@CherryPepsiFan
    Hello, FBI. I’d like to report Portland. You’re welcome
    7:39 PM · Jul 11, 2021

    https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2021/07/13/fbi-calls-for-people-to-rat-on-family-gets-clown-slapped-here-are-the-10-best-twitter-responses-n1461449

  86. drwilliams says:

    I was at a con when STNG was in first syndication.

    The most popular drink that weekend was a concoction they called “Shut Up Riker”.

    I stuck with bourbon, because it’s smoooooooth.

  87. SteveF says:

    Lynn, given that we have a certain need for petroleum for plastics, asphalt, and other non-inflammatory uses, if we totally removed gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, and other energy uses from consumption, how would that distort the petroleum products market? How long would it take the refineries to adjust to not producing those products? Would there be barrels of sludge-which-would-have-been-gasoline sitting around until someone figured out another use for them?

    I can (and have) read a bit about the science of petroleum processing but I don’t know how that plays out in the actual world of facts and economics. (You know, the world which people of a certain mindset hate because it doesn’t match what they want.)

  88. SteveF says:

    U-S-consumer-prices-surge-June

    No kidding. Gasoline at the pump is up another 3% (from the Jan 19, 2021 baseline) and I suffered a bit of sticker shock at two grocery stores in the past few days.

    The most popular drink that weekend was a concoction they called “Shut Up Riker”.

    Not the “Die Wesley Die Die Die”?

    To add insult to injury, d1 has lost her iphone.

    Can’t that be traced, if it has power? I’m hardly an expert, what with despising Apple, but my wife is constantly losing hers and she does something to have it ring (if it’s in the house or car or yard or…) or to indicate where it is if she left it at work or a friend’s house.

  89. RickH says:

    I’ve had Alexa find my phone for me.

    Also, Google will find it if you search for “find my phone”. The Googles will even show you a map with the location. I’ve seen that map accurate enough to figure out which room it is in. It also has a feature to ‘ring’ the phone to help you find it.

  90. drwilliams says:

    @SteveF

    “Lynn, given that we have a certain need for petroleum for plastics, asphalt, and other non-inflammatory uses, if we totally removed gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, and other energy uses from consumption, how would that distort the petroleum products market? How long would it take the refineries to adjust to not producing those products?”

    About 80% of a barrel of oil is refined into transportation fuels. The bulk of this are the C6-C10 alkanes (single bonds connecting carbon atoms), which are naturally occurring or catalytically cracked from more complex compounds.The simplest alkane, methane (CH4), has one carbon and is the primary constituent of natural gas. Ethane (C2H6) is primarily feedstock for ethylene. Propane (C3H8) is both a fuel and feedstock to make propylene. Ethylene and propylene are in turn feedstocks for building more complex molecules, including many plastics.

    Each refinery is designed to handle particular type(s) of oil, and make particular products. A refinery is a complex of individual units, each designed for a particular task. There is very little potential to repurpose a unit outside a narrow range.

    Taking a modern oil refinery and eliminating transportation fuels from the products makes about as much sense as taking a donut machine and converting it to make pizzas.

    There isn’t any scenario for eliminating fossil fuels from transportation and home heating that would pass analysis in freshman engineering (at least the ones still using real math).

    Lynn may have another answer.

  91. drwilliams says:

    Freshman engineering…

    50 years ago the discussion was hydrogen, using metal hydride storage. No pressure problems, recharge took a few minutes, and a standard “tank” could be designed to be swappable. Hydrogen is a synthetic gas and transportation has it’s challenges.  Oil supplies expanded and became more stable, and development languished.

    Bush II keynotes hydrogen development in a SOTU in 2003. Response by engineering and science societies prog propagandists culminates in an entire issue of SciAm devoted to pooh-poohing the idea. No development.

    Suddenly hydrogen is in the news again*, pushed by the same prog propagandists and/or their students. Nothing has changed: No hydrogen wells, no production capacity, no way to transport it. But now it’s “sciency” again, with the added coolness of high-pressure carbon-fiber tanks that can be turned into torch bombs by a stray or not-so-stray round. Any coincidence that filling a pressure tank now takes hours, just like filling a Tesla from anything but bespoke high-voltage/high-amperage chargers?

    Gotta love it.

    *In the meantime our nation developed natural gas in abundance. We had the opportunity to use existing tech to diversify our transportation reliance by partly to natural gas.

  92. lynn says:

    “Texas Gov To Arrest Dem Lawmakers Who Fled State On Private Jet To Block Voting Rights Bill”
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/texas-dems-fled-state-private-jet-over-voting-rights-bill-abandon-democracy

    “As AmericanThinker.com’s Andrea Widburg details, the background to the story is that the Texas legislature, which currently has a Republican majority (18-13 in its Senate and 83-67 in its House) is poised to pass a voting reform bill. As with similar bills across America, the point is to ensure that the people voting have a legal right to vote and are, in fact, who they claim to be.
    The most contentious issues for Democrats are cleaned-up voting bills and, especially, photo ID. The problem is that most Americans support photo ID. According to a Monmouth Poll, when it comes to photo ID, 62% of Democrats, 87% of independents, and 91% of Republicans support it. Texas, with a strong Republican majority, is intent upon passing a bill that the vast majority of Americans would back.
    So, what do the Democrats do? Like Brave Sir Robin, they run away:”

    Nice comparison.

    What a bunch of Karens !

  93. nick flandrey says:

    Can’t that be traced, if it has power?

    -in theory yes, but her trace showed where it was 3 days ago and I know she has used it since then. And that was the driveway as it left our wifi coverage area.

    I had her call the doc in the box we went to. Didn’t hear what the result was. Last I saw it was last night, while she was getting ready for bed, loading up the Harry Potter audio book she likes to fall asleep to. Other than losing a gift (my sibling’s old phone) I’m thinking ‘valuable lesson’ and am not too broken up. SHE’S distraught though and I don’t love that.

    n

  94. nick flandrey says:

    WRT not burning petroleum as fuel, in the 70s Lawrence Sanders wrote a novel called ‘The Tomorrow File” and one of the premises was that oil had become too valuable to burn.

    He also had the idea of tracing people by their personal micro-fauna, and addressed the issue of whether something should be illegal just because it was addictive.

    The book gets very mixed reviews now, but I enjoyed it a lot back in the day.

    n

    (It also has scientists and technologists running the government.  The POTUS waits in the hall for his meeting with the lead character, a government scientist.)

  95. lynn says:

    Lynn, given that we have a certain need for petroleum for plastics, asphalt, and other non-inflammatory uses, if we totally removed gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, and other energy uses from consumption, how would that distort the petroleum products market? How long would it take the refineries to adjust to not producing those products? Would there be barrels of sludge-which-would-have-been-gasoline sitting around until someone figured out another use for them?

    I can (and have) read a bit about the science of petroleum processing but I don’t know how that plays out in the actual world of facts and economics. (You know, the world which people of a certain mindset hate because it doesn’t match what they want.)

    Right now, any heavy carbon chain, C12-C30+, that is not sold for lubricating oil, converted into other specialized products, etc, is just dumped into a Catalytic Cracker, a huge pressurized rolling bed with activated alumina and other catalysts, and hydrogen is injected into the mix to break the heavies into smaller carbon chains to make more gasoline and diesel. The whole unit runs at 1500 F to 1800 F. The interior metal pipes sometimes have to rebuilt twice a year as the unit operates at the ragged edge of metal technology. The compressors are also high maintenance.

    If we did not turn this “sludge”, think Venezuelan oil with an average molecular weight of over 300, into gasoline and diesel, we would have to landfill it somewhere. We could not make enough barrels to store it all. That said, all of the shale oil from Colorado, Texas, Dakotas, and Pennsylvania is very light oil with almost nothing above C10. It is the old oil wells across the USA that pump out heavy oil. And the Tar Sands from Canada. And Mexican oil. And Gulf of Mexico oil.

    BTW, we are still flaring half of the natural gas produced in the USA. There are not enough pipelines to get it all to market. And there is extreme resistance to pipelines now as the population density of the USA has been rising.

  96. lynn says:

    @SteveF

    “Lynn, given that we have a certain need for petroleum for plastics, asphalt, and other non-inflammatory uses, if we totally removed gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, and other energy uses from consumption, how would that distort the petroleum products market? How long would it take the refineries to adjust to not producing those products?”

    About 80% of a barrel of oil is refined into transportation fuels. The bulk of this are the C6-C10 alkanes (single bonds connecting carbon atoms), which are naturally occurring or catalytically cracked from more complex compounds.The simplest alkane, methane (CH4), has one carbon and is the primary constituent of natural gas. Ethane (C2H6) is primarily feedstock for ethylene. Propane (C3H8) is both a fuel and feedstock to make propylene. Ethylene and propylene are in turn feedstocks for building more complex molecules, including many plastics.

    Each refinery is designed to handle particular type(s) of oil, and make particular products. A refinery is a complex of individual units, each designed for a particular task. There is very little potential to repurpose a unit outside a narrow range.

    Taking a modern oil refinery and eliminating transportation fuels from the products makes about as much sense as taking a donut machine and converting it to make pizzas.

    There isn’t any scenario for eliminating fossil fuels from transportation and home heating that would pass analysis in freshman engineering (at least the ones still using real math).

    Lynn may have another answer.

    What he said.

    The refineries are reconfigurable though. After the initial processing of the crude oil where the crude oil is vaporized and hydrotreated, separated, cracked, separated, and hydrotreated again, and then cooled down to liquids again, some of the liquids move into specialized processes for special treatment on a batch basis. For refineries above 300,000 barrels per day (about 100 in the USA), they have 20 or more additional treatment plants for octane boosting, more cracking, conversion into alkanes, etc. The tea kettle refineries are just simple separation and hydro treating though.

    Hydrotreating is the process of removing sulfur from the crude oil and replacing it with hydrogen. Only works with crude oil as a vapor.

  97. lynn says:

    BTW, an Italian billionaire is building a deep water terminal to bring in 65 foot deep crude oil tankers in Point Comfort, Texas. He has spent a half billion dollars on dredging the channel so far. And is spending another half billion dollars on the crude oil pipeline from Eagle Ford to Eagle Ford and the crude processing plant. He is planning on shipping one million barrels (42 million gallons) of crude oil per day to Italy.
    https://www.virtualbx.com/construction-preview/point-comfort-max-midstream-to-invest-360m-in-port-of-calhoun-improvements/

    Why is he doing this ? The Italian refineries were built before WWII to process Libyan and Syrian crude oil, a very light and sweet oil. They were upgraded to handle more oil but they do not have the ability to process sulfur, hydrotreating. Hydrotreaters are a couple of billion dollars each per 300,000 barrels per day. And they need two of them. And the three crude oil pipelines from Syria and Libya to Italy were blown up by the rebels. Thank Obama for that.

    So, instead of upgrading their refineries to handle medium sour oil, he is going to import light sweet oil from Eagle Ford to Italy. He thinks he can get this running for one billion dollars cash. I think he needs two billion dollars cash. That deep water port is going to need constant dredging with the amount of storms that we have in the Gulf of Mexico.

    BTW, he already has an Army Corps of Engineers permit and is dredging away. I am blown away that he got that so easily.

  98. lynn says:

    If we did not turn this “sludge”, think Venezuelan oil with an average molecular weight of over 300, into gasoline and diesel, we would have to landfill it somewhere. We could not make enough barrels to store it all. That said, all of the shale oil from Colorado, Texas, Dakotas, and Pennsylvania is very light oil with almost nothing above C10. It is the old oil wells across the USA that pump out heavy oil. And the Tar Sands from Canada. And Mexican oil. And Gulf of Mexico oil.

    Duh. The primary place that we get rid of old sludge is pump it into old oil wells. Even the EPA does not know how many old oil wells have had sludge, salt water, acid leftovers, drilling mud, etc, etc, etc, pumped into them since we did not track that until the 1970s.

  99. lynn says:

    “Law Banning Handgun Sales for Those Under 21 Unconstitutional, Rules Federal Court”
    https://mediarightnews.com/law-banning-handgun-sales-for-those-under-21-unconstitutional-rules-federal-court/

    “In 1968, then-President Lyndon Johnson signed a law banning the sale of handguns for those under 21, now the law has been ruled “unconstitutional” by a federal court.”

    “The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday this law is unconstitutional and Trump-appointed judge Julius Richardson said, “In the law, a line must sometimes be drawn. But there must be a reason why constitutional rights cannot be enjoyed until a certain age.” Richardson points out that 18 year olds who served in the militia when the second amendment was written were require to have their own weapons.”

    I have been wondering this myself. How can rights be banned above the age of 17 ? Specifically, guns and alcohol.

    At the tender age of 18 and up, I bought a LOT of beer with my buddies at TAMU. We drank it like crazy because there just was not that many women at TAMU in the 1970s.

    Hat tip to:
    https://thelibertydaily.com/

  100. nick flandrey says:

    Beer and the pursuit of young women is why I’m not an engineer today.  Well, add math, statics, thermo, and diffeq to that list too.   The weed out classes weeded me out….

    n

  101. PaultheManc says:

    …. and for PaulTheManc’s comments: What version of Windows was your comment about? XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10? Things have changed a Lot with updates. Win7 was probably the worst in that regard.

    Windows 10 21H1.

  102. ~jim says:

    The most popular drink that weekend was a concoction they called “Shut Up Riker”.

    Lol, don’t you mean “Shut up, Wesley!” Thanks for the laugh, it brought back memories. Memories which unfortunately can’t be shared on a family-friendly forum. 😉

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