Sun. Aug. 22, 2021 – not much rest for the sorta bad…

By on August 22nd, 2021 in ebay, personal, WuFlu

Hot again, and humid. Yesterday was over 103F in the sun, so we’re back to HOT. It was so humid I had sweat dripping off my eyelids and nose just standing still in the garage working on small things. Soaked through my clothes. Yuck.

Slept late with a sore back in the now familiar pattern of one tough but productive day, one recovery day. I’m getting better at ‘fixing’ the pinching painful misalignment in my back so I can get back to my normal self, but it can take a while before I get to the point where it actually works. Getting old is not for the weak, and all the abuse adds up over time. There may even be a log scale for ‘damage done to my body’ vs ‘continued use of my body’.

I did get a bunch of stuff done, even if it was low priority and low value stuff. There are things on the list that make good ‘filler’ for those times when a bigger project or something critical won’t fit or would require more than is available. And there are targets of opportunity for when I’m already in a place or moving something, or stacking stuff in that area. Some people might call them ‘distractions’ but since they have to get done sometime, this time might be the time.

If I want to take more stuff to the auctioneer, I have to pull it and get it ready today. I’ll be pulling a bunch of electronics as well as other stuff that I’m sure I’ll find when pulling the other stuff. I am sort of ‘cherry picking’. In a true estate sale you start at one end and move to the other, putting a price on everything. I’m just pulling a layer off, picking stuff I think will do well. I want this sale to be successful, so he doesn’t find reasons not to have another, and another, and another.

This coming Friday is setup for my non-prepping hobby swapmeet and gabfest, so I have to pull that stuff too. The weekend is complicated by my wife’s plans to get a Girl Scout cert in some sort of water activity, so she’ll be gone. Managing the kids while working a convention and selling at the meet is gonna purely suck. Some advance planning is needed.

And normal prepping activities will continue. Stuff will be acquired, stacked, used, or just piled somewhere. Some sort of learning will happen, and bonds in the community will be (hopefully) strengthened.

Oh, and there is a storm hitting Long Island and the surrounding area. If you are in the path, be safe, be smart, and be prepared. And give use a report after.

Everyone else, keep stacking.

nick

63 Comments and discussion on "Sun. Aug. 22, 2021 – not much rest for the sorta bad…"

  1. pecancorner says:

    –sick enough to be hospitalized. In fact every hospital seems to have lots of patients that are vaccinated but still sick enough to be hospitalized.

    In the paper last week, Hendrick Health (Abilene, now owns Brownwood) said that 16% of the COVID patients in their hospitals have been “fully vaccinated”.   Vaccination rate is running about 35% in both Taylor and Brown counties.

  2. Greg Norton says:

    In the paper last week, Hendrick Health (Abilene, now owns Brownwood) said that 16% of the COVID patients in their hospitals have been “fully vaccinated”. Vaccination rate is running about 35% in both Taylor and Brown counties. 

    How many people are in the hospitals in those places? I can’t imagine the numbers being statistically significant unless they’re taking random exurban Fort Worth hospital overflow, and stats drawn from that population would have all kinds of problems.

    Do those counties have bacchanalia-theme attractions for outsiders like Fredericksburg’s wineries? We haven’t done a lot of travel to that part of Texas north of Dublin.

    Not that the numbers really matter. It seems like we are in a holding pattern waiting for FDA approval of one of the shots and then the real power games begin.

  3. MrAtoz says:

    I bet the Rev. Jackwagon is begging doctors to “give me what tRump got”! My late BIL always said “when you go on the ventilator, your chance of coming off go way down.” Jackwagon better ask for forgiveness for all the race-baiting harm he’s done.

  4. pecancorner says:

    How many people are in the hospitals in those places?

    16% of their hospitalized COVID patients… not 16% of their patients.  Technically, the way they reported it was that 84% of their hospitalized COVID patients are unvaccinated!!!! “Therefore everyone must be vaccinated!!!” was the ultimate message.

    We’re all rural/isolated, even Abilene, but are having a surge of cases as people have returned from all their end-of-summer travel.

  5. Greg Norton says:

    Last night we went for Chinese at Din Ho, one of Austin’s preferred Asian restaurants, and a popular venue for large family gatherings. Lots of big parties, and the plates on the cars in the parking lot stretched from Florida to Oregon, California being most common after Texas.

    The whole country is still traveling down here regardless of what the Covid numbers say.

    Austin City Limits isn’t backing down that their annual booze fest -er- Texas cultural event will proceed on schedule. Austin is Westworld except the droids are resigned to their fate.

    Din Ho was closed for dine-in most of the last 18 months. I wouldn’t be surprised if they closed the dining room again. Driving home, I noticed that the local Chick-fil-A has signs up that their dining room will close again tomorrow.

  6. Greg Norton says:

    I bet the Rev. Jackwagon is begging doctors to “give me what tRump got”! My late BIL always said “when you go on the ventilator, your chance of coming off go way down.” Jackwagon better ask for forgiveness for all the race-baiting harm he’s done. 

    Jesse Jackson is easily a billionare, if not in actual numbers then in terms of access to resources. He’s getting the best care on the planet, no expense spared.

    The only difference with Trump might be that he doesn’t truly care about skin color of the doctor or the initials after the name. Though, when push comes to shove and the spotlight is off, I doubt that the Reverend does either.

  7. Greg Norton says:

    My wife didn’t know ACL was still on for this year.

    The pictures on the website belie the true nature of the event.

    A guaranteed performance of “WAP” opening night? Miley Cyrus possibly on the duet? Oh, sure, the crowd will demonstrate nothing but responsible behavior.

    I wonder how many fake Covid vaccination cards will be shown at the gates. Of course, I’m willing to bet that the virus will be the least of the worries with that Friday night lineup.

    https://www.aclfestival.com/

  8. ech says:

    In fact every hospital seems to have lots of patients that are vaccinated but still sick enough to be hospitalized.

    Yes. Again, Simpson’s paradox.
    https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/covid-and-simpsons-paradox-why-so

    Vaccination rate is running about 35% in both Taylor and Brown counties.

    According to state data, Taylor is 41% fully vaccinated in the 12+ population and 74% in the 65+ population and Brown, 42% and 68%, respectively.

  9. pecancorner says:

    Vaccination rate is running about 35% in both Taylor and Brown counties.

    According to state data, Taylor is 41% fully vaccinated in the 12+ population and 74% in the 65+ population and Brown, 42% and 68%, respectively.

    Thanks for updated info. Where did you locate that? The last info I had was from early last week, on the Brownwood/Brown County website, which is updated M-F,  and is still showing 35% today:

    “Percentage of people 12+ fully vaccinated – 35.00% ”

    http://www.brownwoodtexas.gov/546/COVID-19-Prevention-Tips

    I had thought I had seen a number of 67% a week ago, and could not find it again – your “65+” number reflects that.

  10. Nick Flandrey says:

    There is still a bunch of ‘missing the point’ in the vax discussion, and in the article linked, and the article SHE bases her article from, which, by the way, ends with this…. “At some point or another, we’re going to have to accept that COVID is an ongoing disease, protect ourselves the best we can, and go on with our lives.”

    It’s frustrating that she does math while only spelling out ONE number in the equation. How freaking hard would it have been to say ” 300/5.6M ” instead of “do a similar operation on” some other numbers I had to go look for? She never defines the total population she uses for a divisor, never spells out the number of partially vaxed, and takes other shortcuts that look like the same sort of ‘armwaving’ that so many others have indulged in. Especially when she indulges in ‘straw man’ arguments like this “it certainly has removed the mistaken idea that vaccinated people have a higher risk of being hospitalized with COVID.” Who has been saying THAT?

    The original author, very unironically, says this… “Sometimes, with observational data there is confounding of multiple factors that can make it easy to misinterpret simple percentages like this…”

    I contend that people who use percentages do so for that very reason.

    All the panic over the israeli data, they have 500 hospitalized patients of a population numbering 9,3M. ZERO are under 12yo.

    Further, of the ‘breakthru’ cases,

    “the majority of these patients received two vaccine doses at least five months ago, are over the age of 60 and also have chronic illnesses known to exacerbate a coronavirus infection. They range from diabetes to heart disease and lung ailments, as well as cancers and inflammatory diseases that are treated with immune-system suppressing drugs”

    –in other words, they are the exact same group that was getting very sick before vax became available. The question that should be asked is “out of the total population of VERY vulnerable people, does being vaccinated make a significant difference in outcome?”

    “”The vaccinated patients are older, unhealthy, often they were bedridden before infection, immobile and already requiring nursing care,” said Noa Eliakim-Raz, head of the coronavirus ward at Rabin Medical Centre in Petach Tikva.

    In contrast, “the unvaccinated COVID patients we see are young, healthy, working people and their condition deteriorates rapidly,” she said. “Suddenly they’re being put on oxygen or on a respirator.”

    https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-doctors-find-severe-covid-19-breakthrough-cases-mostly-older-sicker-2021-08-20/

    –or in other words, the same people we saw being hospitalized in the US as the result of workplace exposures on the “young” side, and the same nursing home patients we saw on the “old” side.

    –again, a better question would be “can we reduce the death rate thru other means, like exposure controls, or effective treatments, equally well or better than the vax?

    Both authors armwave natural immunity. At this point large portions of the population have been exposed to wuflu, right? Asymptomatic, but ‘catchy’, right? HUGE numbers if the politicians in the CDC and the media and .gov are to be believed. What I have not seen is a definitive statement one way or the other that people get immunity to reinfection by having the disease. There USED to be careful caveats regarding that in most press statements. It was even pointed out that if there isn’t natural immunity, we can’t really expect a vaccine to work. We’ve gone from carefully worded statements hedging on the issue to “everyone must be jabbed or we’ll make your life miserable” in the space of a few months.

    I may not be able to judge the science (what little is actually available) with out a lot more study than I have time for, but I can judge the politics and the social aspects, and I smell a rat.

    n

  11. Nick Flandrey says:

    Tossed in at the bottom of that same Reuters article–

    In Texas, 92% of the vaccine breakthrough cases that resulted in death were in people over the age of 60 and 75% had a known underlying condition that put them at high risk from COVID-19, according to a public health department spokesperson.

    –and again, no hard numbers so you can gauge scale, just the percentages. 75% of WHICH GROUP? The breakthru cases that died, or breakthru in general?

    And they are STILL hedging on the one possibly compelling reason to get a vax if you are otherwise at low risk–

    “The vaccinated patients I’ve treated usually left the ICU in about three days. The unvaccinated patients took a week or two until they stabilized,” said Yael Haviv-Yadid, head of the critical care ward at Sheba Medical Centre near Tel Aviv.

    Even if the vaccine did not stop them getting ill, it may have mitigated their illness, said Alex Rozov, head of the coronavirus ward at Barzilai Medical Centre in Ashkelon.

    Our cautious impression is that the vaccinated patients suffer an easier course of illness – the treatment is more effective among those who have antibodies.”

    n

  12. drwilliams says:

    “You know what woke means. It means you’re a loser. Everything woke turns to shit. It’s true.”

    –President Donald J. Trump, Cullman, AL, August 21,2021

  13. Greg Norton says:

    We’ve gone from carefully worded statements hedging on the issue to “everyone must be jabbed or we’ll make your life miserable” in the space of a few months. 

    Biden failed to meet his stated goal of having 75% of the country vaccinated by 4th of July. Even his adopted home state of Delaware is still sitting at 56%, and no single state is at 75%.

    They’re playing games with numbers, keeping the argument going around in circles, until one of the shots is approved by the FDA, and then the real draconian measures begin to obtain compliance.

  14. Greg Norton says:

    –again, a better question would be “can we reduce the death rate thru other means, like exposure controls, or effective treatments, equally well or better than the vax?

    Mississippi finally moved to make sick people stay home by law for 10 days from onset of illness, regardless of test results. FOMO has been the biggest problem with this pandemic.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mississippi-orders-coronavirus-infected-individuals-to-isolate-at-home-or-face-up-to-5-years-in-prison/ar-AANAadX

  15. pecancorner says:

    Early on, I started ignoring data/statistics for COVID outside my local ones. What happens in my little county is all that interests me.   When I see that vaccination has not reduced very much the incidence of local cases, and that the local death rate has been consistently 3% of total tested positive cases, even now with 64% of the over-65s vaccinated (per ech), it suggests that vaccination is not helping to reduce spread or severity here.

    The same people in my demesne who ignored safety precautions from the very beginning, didn’t catch it before they were vaccinated and still haven’t caught it.  Some people who did practice safety, came down with it when they were finally exposed.  I believe there is some yet-unknown element of natural immunity TO the contagion that is probably most responsible for preventing illness.

    What I AM interested in, is the various treatments and which seem to be working despite Big Pharma’s attempts to focus only on expensive new meds.

  16. pecancorner says:

    Mississippi finally moved to make sick people stay home by law for 10 days from onset of illness, regardless of test results. FOMO has been the biggest problem with this pandemic.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mississippi-orders-coronavirus-infected-individuals-to-isolate-at-home-or-face-up-to-5-years-in-prison/ar-AANAadX

    Good for Mississippi.  Such a policy should apply to other contagious diseases as well (RSV for one….).   We’ll never get that in Texas, and even most of our counties lack the will to apply it. I’m a believer in quarantine. It works when all sick people are forced to comply.  Let the healthy go on with their lives in the meantime.

    3
    1
  17. MrAtoz says:

    They’re playing games with numbers, keeping the argument going around in circles, until one of the shots is approved by the FDA, and then the real draconian measures begin to obtain compliance.

    Yup. The Aussies are locking people up just for being outside.

    “Vax passport, please.”
    “I don’t have one.”
    Blammm! “You were outside without a VP, you are no longer a problem.”
    Judge Dredd a ‘comin.

  18. Greg Norton says:

    Good for Mississippi. Such a policy should apply to other contagious diseases as well (RSV for one….). We’ll never get that in Texas, and even most of our counties lack the will to apply it. I’m a believer in quarantine. It works when all sick people are forced to comply. Let the healthy go on with their lives in the meantime.

    As I’ve pointed out before, most states have strict quarantine laws for TB.

    RSV is a really common virus. Most kids develop immunity early.

  19. Greg Norton says:

    Yup. The Aussies are locking people up just for being outside.

    The government there is playing with fire.

    As I used to joke with our Australian co-workers, both countries were founded with labor provided by the exported underclass of England, but my ancestors were just slightly faster running for the docks then theirs were.

    Imagine trying to enforce Australian-level lockdowns in mostly poor, white sections of Georgia or the Carolinas. Same genetic attitude towards authority.

  20. Nick Flandrey says:

    Same genetic attitude towards authority.

    –you get the splash of chewing tobacco spit, then the slow grin and the straight look in your face.

    n

  21. Greg Norton says:

    Ford has a new set of spokesmen. Caption the photo, “F*ck Humvees”.

    Just wait until they figure out how to get the Blackhawks flying. You think the Chinese aren’t going to help in exchange for a look at the hardware?

    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/meet-new-taliban-special-forces-look-american-car-american-weapons-american-costume

  22. Greg Norton says:

    @Nick – Bethesda released Quake I for the Switch in celebration of the game’s 25th anniversary.

    $10. Graphics are about what they were like on the most advanced hardware when the game was released.

    At GTE, our “skunk works” advanced object group with a virtually unlimited budget spent most of the mid-90s playing Doom and Quake on their LAN.

  23. lynn says:

    “Larry The Cable Guy Does What Late Night Hosts Won’t — Skewer Biden”
    https://www.dailywire.com/news/larry-the-cable-guy-does-what-late-night-hosts-wont-skewer-biden

    “On August 15, as the situation on the ground in Afghanistan was unraveling, the Blue Collar Comedy veteran quipped, “Our country’s leadership right now reminds me of a wal-mart on Black Friday when only 2 cashiers are working and no one can find a manager.””

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

  24. Nick Flandrey says:

    LOVED Quake.

    n

  25. lynn says:

    Ford has a new set of spokesmen. Caption the photo, “F*ck Humvees”.

    Just wait until they figure out how to get the Blackhawks flying. You think the Chinese aren’t going to help in exchange for a look at the hardware?

    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/meet-new-taliban-special-forces-look-american-car-american-weapons-american-costume

    Every 10th or so humvee has a cryptographic radio in it. Not good.

  26. MrAtoz says:

    Also loved QuakeX. I ran Cat5 to the kids PCs and we played away.

  27. MrAtoz says:

    I’m hoping we pulled all the crypto. If not, take plugs out and shoot him just like he will shoot the troops.

  28. lynn says:

    @Nick – Bethesda released Quake I for the Switch in celebration of the game’s 25th anniversary.

    $10. Graphics are about what they were like on the most advanced hardware when the game was released.

    At GTE, our “skunk works” advanced object group with a virtually unlimited budget spent most of the mid-90s playing Doom and Quake on their LAN.

    John Carmack has got to be the best programmer of the 1980s to 2000s. One of these days I am going to read the book about him, it is in my SBR (strategic book reserve).
    https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Culture/dp/0812972155/?tag=ttgnet-20

    And is there anything that does not run Doom or Quake ?

  29. Greg Norton says:

    I’m hoping we pulled all the crypto. If not, take plugs out and shoot him just like he will shoot the troops.

    Key cards. Even if the keys were left behind, they’ve been “revoked” in crypto terms.

  30. Greg Norton says:

    John Carmack has got to be the best programmer of the 1980s to 2000s. One of these days I am going to read the book about him, it is in my SBR (strategic book reserve).

    Carmack and Michael Abrash in the 90s. IIRC, Abrash works for Facecrack now.

    If you can find a copy, “Zen of Assembly Language Volume I” is worth the time. It will change how you think about x86 optimization, but, nowadays, GCC/Clang can generate better code than any machine language expert, especially for x86_64.

    Much like John McCarthy’s landmark paper inventing Lisp, there was no “part two”.

    http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.pdf

    I keep my copy of Abrash’s book safe. The last time I saw a copy on the shelf in a bookstore, it was Powell’s in Portland, locked in a cabinet in their rare books section in the old technical bookstore before they moved in 2011.

  31. Greg Norton says:

    LOVED Quake.

    The Switch port nails it. Graphics are much better than the PC I could afford at home at the time.

    $10 unless you count the cost of the Switch Lite.

  32. lynn says:

    John Carmack has got to be the best programmer of the 1980s to 2000s. One of these days I am going to read the book about him, it is in my SBR (strategic book reserve).

    Carmack and Michael Abrash in the 90s. IIRC, Abrash works for Facecrack now.

    If you can find a copy, “Zen of Assembly Language Volume I” is worth the time. It will change how you think about x86 optimization, but, nowadays, GCC/Clang can generate better code than any machine language expert, especially for x86_64.

    Much like John McCarthy’s landmark paper inventing Lisp, there was no “part two”.

    http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.pdf

    I keep my copy of Abrash’s book safe. The last time I saw a copy on the shelf in a bookstore, it was Powell’s in Portland, locked in a cabinet in their rare books section in the old technical bookstore before they moved in 2011.

    Nah. My big problem is getting our algorithms to work consistently and correctly. Our central thermodynamic algorithm is around a quarter million lines of Fortran and C++ in almost 2,000 subroutines. I spend a lot of my time putting in diagnostic messages trying not to scare the user but tell us where things went to heck in a hand basket.

    One of these days, I am going to move us from our 1993 F77 / C++ compiler to the latest GFortran / GCC compilers. I figure a speedup of at least 100% but the number of bugs moving from a F77 to a F2003 compiler is going to be a disaster.

  33. SteveF says:

    gfortran takes a “-std=legacy” option, which accepts F77 source code. You could spend a weekend building the code and running through the test suite, to see whether it comes anywhere close to compiling and running. In terms of migrating code to a newer standard, I don’t know if F77 and F2003/F2008/F2018 code can work together or if you’d have to upgrade all of the code together.

  34. Nick Flandrey says:

    I still have as copy of one of John Romero’s early works, Dangerous Dave. It was inserted into one of the pc magazines. He was the other big name in gaming from that era.

    https://www.playdosgames.com/play/dangerous-dave/

    n

  35. Nick Flandrey says:

    Spent hours with lemmings too.

    https://www.playdosgames.com/play/lemmings/

    n

  36. lynn says:

    The next few days are going to be tough on ERCOT. We are at 98 F here in west Fort Bend County with no big clouds in the sky. We are almost at 72,000 MW of demand on Sunday afternoon. If we have the same weather across Texas on Monday with ALL of the freaking schools running their A/C units and kids leaving every door open, we may be looking at 75,000 or 77,000 MW demand tomorrow.
    http://www.ercot.com/mp

  37. Greg Norton says:

    The next few days are going to be tough on ERCOT. We are at 98 F here in west Fort Bend County with no big clouds in the sky. We are almost at 72,000 MW of demand. If we have the same weather across Texas on Monday with ALL of the freaking schools running their A/C units and kids leaving eavry door open, we may be looking at 75,000 or 77,000 MW demand tomorrow.

    Brownouts?

    All right, all right, all right!

     

  38. lynn says:

    gfortran takes a “-std=legacy” option, which accepts F77 source code. You could spend a weekend building the code and running through the test suite, to see whether it comes anywhere close to compiling and running. In terms of migrating code to a newer standard, I don’t know if F77 and F2003/F2008/F2018 code can work together or if you’d have to upgrade all of the code together.

    I will try that option if the initial port does not work. But our big problem is that all of our global and local variables must start off with a value of zero. That is for both scalars and vectors. Intel Visual Fortran fails this test (I gave up after the second time I tried, the first time our 300,000 variables overflowed the zeroinit table in IVF, Steve L. won’t talk to me anymore but he retired a couple of years ago from Intel, they used to call him Dr. Fortran).

  39. MrAtoz says:

    Key cards.

    They’re actually little electronic keys you program from the *master GPS doohicky* and then transfer to the black box. But, any of that stuff is still Top Secret even if the codes are dead. It would be unforgivable if any of that was left behind. Where do you think the Thermite grenades sit when crypto is has to be left.

  40. lynn says:

    The next few days are going to be tough on ERCOT. We are at 98 F here in west Fort Bend County with no big clouds in the sky. We are almost at 72,000 MW of demand. If we have the same weather across Texas on Monday with ALL of the freaking schools running their A/C units and kids leaving eavry door open, we may be looking at 75,000 or 77,000 MW demand tomorrow.

    Brownouts?

    All right, all right, all right!

    There is a reason why we, TXU, 40% of the power generation in Texas in the 1980s, used to pay all of the schools in north and central Texas to stay closed until after Labor Day. Our demand would jump 5 to 10% when those schools opened up. 100+ tons of A/C for each elementary school, 300+ tons of A/C for each high school.

    ERCOT does not have a clue how to run a reliable power grid. But they do run a inexpensive power grid. The Bible says it is hard to have two masters, you please one and the other one hates you. Reliability and Frugality, two masters, which one is more important to you ?

  41. SteveF says:

    But our big problem is that all of our global and local variables must start off with a value of zero.

    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49618317/make-sure-fortran-common-variables-are-initialized-to-zero-in-a-third-party-libr

    Between the gcc command line options and BLOCK DATA, does that cover what you need?

  42. Greg Norton says:

    ERCOT does not have a clue how to run a reliable power grid. But they do run a inexpensive power grid. The Bible says it is hard to have two masters, you please one and the other one hates you. Reliability and Frugality, two masters, which one is more important to you ?

    ERCOT does Oncor’s bidding. If Abbott is shown the door over brownouts, action in the next Legislative session will result in the new Governor writing Warren Buffett a big check.

  43. Alan says:

    Spent hours with lemmings too.

    I seem to remember too many hours playing Adventure (aka Colossal Cave Adventure) on our HP mini-computer.

    https://dosgames.com/game/colossal-cave-adventure/

  44. Nick Flandrey says:

    You are in a dark room. There is a lamp.

    #>

    n

  45. lynn says:

    You are in a dark room. There is a lamp.

    #>

    n

    You are in a maze of twisty little passages.

    > go forward

    You are in a maze of little twisty passages.

    >

  46. RickH says:

    You are in a maze of little twisty passages.

    Yep. I never did finish Zork 1. Or any of it’s variations.

    I do note there’s a Zork app for phones.  Installed it a long time ago.

    Still in a maze of little twisty passages.

    [sigh]

  47. SteveF says:

    Try combining Zork and Pokemon Go: you have to try to walk your way out of the twisty little passages, without getting run over by a car or mugged.

  48. lynn says:

    But our big problem is that all of our global and local variables must start off with a value of zero.

    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49618317/make-sure-fortran-common-variables-are-initialized-to-zero-in-a-third-party-libr

    Between the gcc command line options and BLOCK DATA, does that cover what you need?

    We don’t use BLOCK DATA. We specifically identify all of our 260+ common blocks.

    Our original Fortran code is over 50 years old. It expects all common block variables to be zero upon startup, both scalars and vectors. Our code also expects all local variables to be automatically allocated and initialized to zero upon startup. We have looked for the guilty variables but with 300,000 global and local variables, the search is long and hard.

    I also compile our code into a huge Win32 DLL. Everything is allocated and run inside that DLL (32 MB debug, 11 MB release). That way our calculation engine can run inside a window, on the command line, in a Visual Basic program, or in a Excel spreadsheet. Much easier to debug also if you are not warping in and out of several DLLs.

    When I do the port, I will be using the Simply Fortran IDE. It handles all of those command line options for me.
    http://simplyfortran.com/

  49. EdH says:

    …Steve L. won’t talk to me anymore…

    Heh, Funny.  I think he worked with most Fortran compilers at one time or another. The one or two times I talked with him he was quite gracious about what was in each case in error on my part.

     

  50. Ray Thompson says:

    @Ray, hoping all is well…

    Long distance from my location. Fairly local to the affected area. Most of the damage is along a river. In my opinion if you live by a river you take your chances.

  51. Greg Norton says:

    You are in a maze of twisty little passages.

    I learned years after playing Zork that completely mapping the maze is possible using an algorithmic approach, but I ended up buying the map from Infocom.

    The documentary “Get Lamp”, available on YouTube covers the history of iteractive fiction (Zork, Adventureland) pretty well, the producers managing to get all of the important interviews for posterity with the exception of either Crowther or Woods.

  52. Greg Norton says:

    Much easier to debug also if you are not warping in and out of several DLLs. 

    Mixing DLLs compiled with different MSVCRTs, even the same version/point release, is problematic.

    In my experience, when spanning several third party DLLs, *everything* has to be compiled out of the same Visual Studio install, preferably with the IDE, to avoid blue screens on ThinkPads. The alternative is the device driver C++ compiler, and I doubt you would want to go there.

    BTW, before you ask, I don’t know why it is ThinkPads.

  53. Greg Norton says:

    I do note there’s a Zork app for phones. Installed it a long time ago.

    Frotz. That was an early port for iOS.

    Most Linux distributions and Cygwin have a port of Frotz. All you need at that point is an Infocom *.dat file from any of their game disks for any OS. Infocom was “write once run anywhere” long before Java.

    Activision holds the copyright on all of the Infocom games, and the files are not publc domain.

  54. Nick Flandrey says:

    Hang on a minute…

    NYC’s ‘Homecoming’ concert intended to mark the end of the Covid pandemic was dramatically cancelled half way through, as Barry Manilow was singing on stage as the city was hit by thunderstorms

    –what was that again? NYC threw a party because the pandemic is over? That would be the same NYFC that has instituted Vax Passports to enter businesses because of the threat of chinkyflu? What the actual F?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9916665/Tropical-storm-Henri-barrels-Rhode-Island-packing-60mph-winds.html

    n

  55. Alan says:

    NYC’s ‘Homecoming’ concert intended to mark the end of the Covid pandemic was dramatically cancelled half way through, as Barry Manilow was singing on stage as the city was hit by thunderstorms

    I guess Mother Nature decided that for NYFC, the pandemic is only half over.

  56. lynn says:

    …Steve L. won’t talk to me anymore…

    Heh, Funny. I think he worked with most Fortran compilers at one time or another. The one or two times I talked with him he was quite gracious about what was in each case in error on my part.

    All of our problems with Microsoft Powerstation, CVF (Compaq Visual Fortran), and IVF were supplier issues. They literally had no idea that developers were going to try to port mainframe software to their compiler / linkers. I ran into internal limits all over the place that I never had on the mainframes, the DEC 32 bit machines, the Prime machines, the 32 bit Unix boxes, and the Watcom C++/F77 compiler/linker. Those three compiler / linkers from Compaq, Intel, and Microsoft were quite frustrating. Just getting them to listen to me was an exercise.

  57. Nick Flandrey says:

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/08/23/01/46948937-9916665-A_sea_of_unmasked_New_Yorkers_packed_Central_Park_to_watch_a_sta-a-183_1629678908601.jpg

    pic of the crowd at the official NYFC “pandemic is over” celebration party… but those same people in the crowd need to show a passport to get into a restaurant because the covid is such a terrible threat.

    If that doesn’t lay bare the true nature of the “passport”, ie CONTROL, then nothing does.

    n

  58. lynn says:

    You are in a maze of little twisty passages.

    Yep. I never did finish Zork 1. Or any of it’s variations.

    I do note there’s a Zork app for phones. Installed it a long time ago.

    Still in a maze of little twisty passages.

    [sigh]

    The secret to the twisty little passages in Zork is to watch the wording. It has been many years, but if the wording changes then go back and go another direction until the wording matches.

  59. lynn says:

    “Global Climate Strike: If you don’t pay Climate Reparations, All the Useless People Will Walk Out Until Their Demands are Met”
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/08/22/global-climate-strike-if-you-dont-pay-climate-reparations-all-the-useless-people-will-walk-out-until-their-demands-are-met/

    “ON SEPTEMBER 24, WE WILL STRIKE TO DEMAND FOR INTERSECTIONAL CLIMATE JUSTICE! JOIN US!
    #UPROOTTHESYSTEM
    The climate crisis does not exist in a vacuum. Other socio-economic crises such as racism, sexism, ableism, class inequality, and more amplify the climate crisis and vice versa. It is not just a single issue, our different struggles and liberations are connected and tied to each other. We are united in our fight for climate justice, but we must also acknowledge that we do not experience the same problems; nor do we experience them to the same extent.
    The time to join the masses and follow the lead of the environmental defenders and workers has been long overdue. Reparations to MAPA must be paid for the historic injustices of the richest elite, drastic emission cuts in the Global North, vaccine equity, cancellation of debt, and climate finance are only the beginning of these. Together we will fight for a just future where no one is left behind. The historical victories of collective action have proven the need for the youth to stand united with the multisectoral, intergenerational struggle for a better future for all; a future where people and planet are prioritized.
    Read more: https://fridaysforfuture.org/september24/

    What a bunch of whackjobs !

    I first saw this in the “Blazing Saddles” movie where the sheriff threatened to off himself if they did not let him go.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_JOGmXpe5I

  60. Greg Norton says:

    pic of the crowd at the official NYFC “pandemic is over” celebration party… but those same people in the crowd need to show a passport to get into a restaurant because the covid is such a terrible threat.

    If that doesn’t lay bare the true nature of the “passport”, ie CONTROL, then nothing does.

    Most of the “passport” cards would be fake anyway.

    A guy on the news tonight attending a bacchanalia event at the Austin grand prix track showed off a card that looked sketchy even on my old stadard def Sony TV.

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