Fri. Oct. 15, 2021 – the decline of Western civ continues

By on October 15th, 2021 in decline and fall, ebay, prepping, WuFlu

Hot and humid, maybe cooler and wet. Yesterday was rainy all day, so technically cooler than hotter, and wetter than notter…

Did some auction stuff through most of the day because of the rain. The lost item appeared at the buyer’s door today. After I refunded him, and after he’d bought a replacement from someone else. Didn’t make sense to ship it back and he didn’t think to refuse delivery. It never did show up in the USPS system. That’s 11 days to get from Houston to Virginia without Christmas rush…that ain’t great.

Sold another couple of items on a ‘make an offer’. Usually if I can do 2 or more I can combine shipping and pass on the reduction in cost, but UPS and the Post Office both raised rates and I couldn’t quite make it work until I countered. Surprisingly he went for it. My experience has been that 99% of the time, the offer is the max they want to pay, a counter almost always fails.

I’m surprised by the sale, as I usually get shut out when my store has been on vacation hold…glad of it though.

Got out to Costco in the late afternoon and put some observations in yesterday’s comments. A year and a half later, we are still seeing shortages of stuff like paper products. Had an interesting chat with a lady in the TP area. She’s very aware of shortages, “saw it reported”, is stacking extra food (“I never liked canned food but I’m buying it because you never know”) and when I mentioned planting a garden, she wholeheartedly agreed because “there might not be any food”. Nice lady, and well outside of my demographic… so it’s not just white middle aged men prepping.

I’ll have to get some Charmin blue out of my storage if I can’t buy any at Costco.

I’m buying masks at auction too. People are too quick to unload and there are some real bargains on PPE at the moment. This is the first of the plagues, not the last, and I need to restock stuff I’ve used now that it’s available again.

Some gub stuff and tactical gear in the estate auctions this week too, but it went for too much money. Lots of bidders looking for that sort of thing.

I rounded out the afternoon by swinging by one of my favorite ‘high end’ thrift stores. It’s an independent run by a collection of churches in a very affluent neighborhood. Not much for resale, but lots for personal use. VERY STRANGE to see shortages in a thrift store, but there were. This store can be counted on to have the same sort of stuff from week to week, and there were departments that were WAY under normal levels of stock. Kids toys was almost bare. On the other hand, someone raised prices in electronics and small appliances so there was a LOT of stock in that area.

Stuff is weird all over.

Secondary market is getting patchy too.

Time and past time to be stackin’. Get to it.

nick

65 Comments and discussion on "Fri. Oct. 15, 2021 – the decline of Western civ continues"

  1. Nick Flandrey says:

    76F and raining this am, at least I think so.  Weather station says 99%RH and I've never seen that when it wasn't raining….

    I'll have to stick my head out the door.  Seems like that is something the weather liars never do 😉

    n

    weellllll….. sticking my head out the door, and it’s not actually raining. Still 99%RH though. And if feels like it.

  2. Nick Flandrey says:

    Anyone who is interested into a deep dive of the left side of the political spectrum can read a few pages of this woman's tweets.

    https://twitter.com/IAmPoliticsGirl

    In many cases, she sees the same things the right sees, but gives them the opposite meaning.   She sees the mechanism but fails to understand that it is the same for both sides.   and TRUMP takes up about half their waking hours apparently.

    Protect unions.   Get the vax, at gun point if needed because I need you vaxed to protect the already vaxed.  Climate change will kill us all.  Blacks are being slaughtered by police.   Jan6 was a violent insurrection funded and organized by shadowy forces who are now running for office and attacking school boards.  They want to TELL TEACHERS WHAT TO TEACH!!!!!!!   OMG!!!    Get your abortion while you still can.  DEMS were the ones that wanted election security and reform.

    Jebus.

    n

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  3. Greg Norton says:

    Did some auction stuff through most of the day because of the rain. The lost item appeared at the buyer’s door today. After I refunded him, and after he’d bought a replacement from someone else. Didn’t make sense to ship it back and he didn’t think to refuse delivery. It never did show up in the USPS system. That’s 11 days to get from Houston to Virginia without Christmas rush…that ain’t great.

    I'm at two weeks and counting for a return shipped to Boston from Austin utilizing SmartPost via Fedex.

    The vendor isn't motivated to do any investigation unless I get Amex involved.

    I haven't received notice that Citi Costco received my Visa payment sent a week ago, but the late fee is probably more cashflow for Costco so they play this game a couple of times a year.

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  4. Greg Norton says:

    Protect unions. 

    AT&T broke their union in 2009, and it remains broken. Their union guys were told to get the jab.

    Verizon is in negotiation with their union over the shot. The company endured an ugly strike five years ago, complete with software developers climbing telephone poles so labor is exercising that hard-won power.

  5. MrAtoz says:

    A couple of items in the news caught my eye:

    1. Sec. Petey Buttplug has been on *paternity* leave for TWO MONTHS. The Lame Stream Media isn't reporting this. In one of the biggest transportation clusterfarks evah, the Sec. of Transportation is not even in the office. I guess it is true he is an empty suit with no experience. Who's running Transportation?

    2. If plugs gets his COVID mandate for all federal agencies and contractors, and, wheels gets his mandate through the legislature and becomes law, who wins? What happens to a place like Fort Hood, the largest Army base in the FUSA, when federal contractors aren't vax'd and the flow of food, fuel, etc. stops to Fort Hood? plugs' mandate certainly is not a law. I'm thinking if wheels gets his mandate into the Texas law books, plugs will lose in front of SCOTUS. If not, have we become a banana republic with some tyrant ruling by EO?

  6. Greg Norton says:

    If plugs gets his COVID mandate for all federal agencies and contractors, and, wheels gets his mandate through the legislature and becomes law, who wins? What happens to a place like Fort Hood, the largest Army base in the FUSA, when federal contractors aren't vax'd and the flow of food, fuel, etc. stops to Fort Hood? plugs' mandate certainly is not a law. I'm thinking if wheels gets his mandate into the Texas law books, plugs will lose in front of SCOTUS. If not, have we become a banana republic with some tyrant ruling by EO?

    In the immediate short run, the fired workers collect on the contractors' unemployment insurance accounts at TWC. The termination will not be for a reason recognized as legitimate by the laws of the State of Texas, and another court case will have to decide if the terminated workers were violating the statute that allows for termination without payment if their actions were threatening the work or the safety of other employees.

    At a minimum *everyone* gets a tribunal hearing. The jammie clad HR departments haven't thought this one through sufficiently, assuming that no one really wants to lose their job … and so close to Christmas. Think of the children…

    Texas doesn’t care if the employer shows up for the hearing in their jammies. Not showing up will quickly get expensive.

    As an aside, I'm over the implied message about Christmas being "in jeopardy" unless everyone gets jabbed. The magic has been gone from the holidays in most American households for over 20 years.

  7. Nick Flandrey says:

    If not, have we become a banana republic with some tyrant ruling by EO?

    –yes.  It just becomes more clear with every passing day.  See also, CDC and eviction moratorium.

    n

  8. Greg Norton says:

    –yes.  It just becomes more clear with every passing day.  See also, CDC and eviction moratorium.

    In the “press conference” yesterday, Biden said that they have purchased enough vaccine to innocculate every child over 5 once the CDC approves jabs for that age group. No word on whether parents get a choice, of course.

    In other words, once enough pressure has been applied to the people making the decision by the cabal behind the scenes. Think of Christmas. For the children …

    Of course he didn’t take any questions before shuffling away. My grandfather moved faster when he was circling the drain with Parkinson’s.

    “And that’s Uncle Joe … movin kinda slow … at the Junction … Petticoat Junction”

  9. Nick Flandrey says:

    Some short time ago, someone here asked essentially, "why are the feds involved in discussions about port slowdowns in Cali?"

    https://gunfreezone.net/how-california-is-fking-the-america-supply-chain-right-now/

    https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-green-new-deal-turns-out-to-be-at.html

    –TLDR – Cali enviro mandates blocking older trucks from entering the state and the ports,  Cali labor law turning independent truckers into employees – which is keeping them out of state,  and I'm certain, union work rules.

    FWIW I used to work with a guy who operated an unloading crane at Port of Long Beach.  A full 8 hour shift is only 4 hours of work, with butt in seat.   It's a bit like limits on pilot flight crew time.   The job is incredibly demanding – the operator is WAY up there, the containers are WAY down there, they are heavy, F=MA, and when you f#ck it up people die.  Not just anyone can  do the job, and they can't do it well for long periods of time.  One of the tricky bits was canceling out the swing in the cables and container by moving the crane DURING the lift.  All this while doing it as fast as possible.  He had mandatory time off between shifts, and mandatory limits on his time in the seat.

    n

  10. SteveF says:

    have we become a banana republic with some tyrant ruling

    What's the difference between the United States in 2021 and a banana republic? The bananas.

    I'd say that this is not so much exaggeration as jumping the gun. Get back to me in a few years, and especially after seeing how much fraud is found in the 2022 and 2024 elections.

    The rot in Loudon runs even deeper

    Some elected officials and bureaucrats seeing the inside of a jail cell would have a salutory effect on others. Don't expect it to happen, though.

    One of the tricky bits was canceling out the swing in the cables and container by moving the crane DURING the lift.  All this while doing it as fast as possible.

    That seems like a ripe area for AI to assist, if not perform entirely.

  11. lynn says:

    I’ll have to get some Charmin blue out of my storage if I can’t buy any at Costco.

    Go to Home Depot.  My Home Depot has tons of Charmin Blue and Bounty.  Maybe yours does too.

  12. Nick Flandrey says:

    Not my monkeys, not my circus, but an alternative view…

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/10/wayne-root-shameful-public-lynching-jon-gruden/

    n

  13. ~jim says:

    Who needs a bow & arrow when you can use a cobra? 😉 

    https://www.onmanorama.com/news/kerala/2021/10/13/uthra-snakebite-murder-case-punishment-against-husband-sooraj.html

    Cobras (Russell's vipers less so, but a lot more poisonous) are pretty common down there and when someone finds them in their yard they call the local snake catcher. A gaggle of people show up to watch him do his stuff, everyone chats and shares the latest gossip. It's what Nick would call meat space, lol. 

  14. lynn says:

    Went to the Victoria, TX Cinemark with Dad yesterday and saw the new James Bond flick, "No Time To Die" on one of their big screens.   Was pretty good and very politically correct.  The new 007 was interesting but if she is the new Bond then will probably skip the next movie.  We did not get a private showing this time as three other patrons showed up in the 500 seat theatre with us at the 1:45pm showing. The previews were 30 minutes long and the movie was 2:30 hours:minutes long. We both had to get up and run to the potty.

  15. lynn says:

    "Fairfax County parents say they're not 'domestic terrorists,' call on school board to condemn DOJ"

        https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fairfax-county-parents-school-board-doj-domestic-terrorists

    My mother made an observation about this yesterday that Biden and the DOJ are calling concerned parents terrorists.  Mom's observation was that Biden and the DOJ are taunting people.  And when you taunt people, you tend to get the behavior that you are falsely accusing them of.

  16. Greg Norton says:

    Went to the Victoria, TX Cinemark with Dad yesterday and saw the new James Bond flick, "No Time To Die" on one of their big screens.   Was pretty good and very politically correct.  The new 007 was interesting but if she is the new Bond then will probably skip the next movie.  We did not get a private showing this time as three other patrons showed up in the 500 seat theatre with us at the 1:45pm showing. The previews were 30 minutes long and the movie was 2:30 hours:minutes long. We both had to get up and run to the potty.

    The Bond flick seemed reshot in places and heavily edited, particularly the parts with the female "007".

    The home life of 'Q' also seemed forced and very “Russel T. Davies”. "A Very English Scandal" is now too far in the past for Bond to get much of that audience.

    With Davies returning to run the show, Ben Wishaw is back on the short list for the "Doctor Who" lead. His 'Q' appearances should have been an argument for him to get that job, similar to what he did reintroducing the character in “Skyfall”.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcgG_E9gQJM

  17. brad says:

    she sees the same things the right sees, but gives them the opposite meaning

    This. I think it is important for someone to understand the other side's point of view. On most issues, I can argue the leftist side at least as well as they can. If people don't understand the other viewpoint, then why do they think their view is the better one? Standing on a hill, saying "King of the Mountain" is kind of dumb, if you aren't sure it's the highest hill around.

    Of course, few people on any side of any political debate bother to understand the opposition. Most are trapped in their echo chambers, confirmed in their views by the like-minded, and "triggered" by anything different.

    Biden said that they have purchased enough vaccine to innocculate every child over 5 once the CDC approves jabs for that age group. No word on whether parents get a choice, of course.

    I see that Texas currently requires DPT, Polio, MMR, Hep-A/B, and a couple of other vaccinations for school children.

    If the government believes that Covid is as serious as any of those diseases, then requiring a vaccination makes sense.

    That's the issue that needs discussed.

    FWIW, I do think that governments everywhere have made a muck of things. However, screwed up government is no reason to take Covid lightly – it is clearly more dangerous than your average cold or flu.

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  18. Greg Norton says:

    I see that Texas currently requires DPT, Polio, MMR, Hep-A/B, and a couple of other vaccinations for school children.

    If the government believes that Covid is as serious as any of those diseases, then requiring a vaccination makes sense.

    That's the issue that needs discussed.

    The Biden Administration doesn't want to have that debate because the death count for age 0-17 from Covid is currently ~ 500 for the entire country. The risk from the vaccine is much higher, but the agenda comes first.

    For the record, my kids both have the shot, and getting vaccinated was their choice.

  19. drwilliams says:

    @Nick

    re: Gruden and your song lyrics list

    Be interesting to survey various pre-football game playlists. If what I suspect is there (I’d look at Philly first) then it would seem that Gruden went quietly into the night when a more vigorous defense might have been interesting. 

  20. Alan says:

    >> Ibhaven't received notice that Citi Costco received my Visa payment sent a week ago, but the late fee is probably more cashflow for Costco so they play this game a couple of times a year.

    Why not just pay online? 

  21. Alan says:

    >> As an aside, I'm over the implied message about Christmas being "in jeopardy" unless everyone gets jabbed. The magic has been gone from the holidays in most American households for over 20 years. 

    The heck with Xmas, join the enlightened and celebrate Festivus, "the holiday for the rest of us." 

  22. Greg Norton says:

    Be interesting to survey various pre-football game playlists. If what I suspect is there (I’d look at Philly first) then it would seem that Gruden went quietly into the night when a more vigorous defense might have been interesting. 

    Gruden probably received a big chunk of his remaining contract as a settlement.

     

  23. Alan says:

    >> –yes. It just becomes more clear with every passing day. See also, CDC and eviction moratorium.

    I haven't heard about hoards of new homeless people since the eviction moratorium ended. Or have I missed something? 

  24. Alan says:

    >> Go to Home Depot. My Home Depot has tons of Charmin Blue and Bounty. Maybe yours does too.

    You can check stock on their site. 

    My store has 37 packages of Blue 18 Mega Plus rolls for $24.97 per package. 

  25. Greg Norton says:

    >> Ibhaven't received notice that Citi Costco received my Visa payment sent a week ago, but the late fee is probably more cashflow for Costco so they play this game a couple of times a year.

    Why not just pay online? 

    I do if I'm running late with the bills, but if I send in payment a week out, that's plenty of time for the check to arrive in … Tennesee (?) … from Austin.

  26. drwilliams says:

    “Gruden probably received a big chunk of his remaining contract as a settlement.”

    Complete with non-disparagement clause. 

  27. Alan says:

    >> We both had to get up and run to the potty.

    Check out the RunPee app for your phone. Essential for us older guys. 

  28. Greg Norton says:

    Not my monkeys, not my circus, but an alternative view…

    Gruden fanboy.

    He needs to be really careful with implications about the organization in Tampa. Gruden did a lot of damage there, and I'm sure that the Yucs are sitting on a few emails that would prove embarrassing to both the coach and GM Bruce Allen, his drinking buddy.

    Gruden's firing in 2008 was weird but not unjustified. Ownership absorbed the PR hit for the better part of a decade.

  29. Alan says:

    >> That's the issue that needs discussed.

    "Discussed" in a non-partisan way by our level-headed politicians, sure, now about that bridge that we have to sell…

  30. ~jim says:

    Just when you think you've heard it all…

    https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-10-transgender-breast-cancer.html

    @Rick

    I still can't select more than one word at a time in the comment editing box. I've tried it on Chrome and other browsers on Android 10.

  31. lynn says:

    >> Go to Home Depot. My Home Depot has tons of Charmin Blue and Bounty. Maybe yours does too.

    You can check stock on their site. 

    My store has 37 packages of Blue 18 Mega Plus rolls for $24.97 per package. 

    Yup, I did not say that they were cheap.  We are in a time when the product availability trumps the price.  I did not even check the pricing when I saw the stack of over 100 Charmin Blue packages on top of their huge racks.  I was just impressed with the availability.

  32. lynn says:

    Just when you think you've heard it all…

    https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-10-transgender-breast-cancer.html

    What !  Male breast cancer is 1/1000th of the occurence that female breast cancer is.  I have actually met a guy who had to have a double mastectomy though.  He got a "whoa" out of me when he showed me his scars.

    Of course, if you are taking female hormones then all bets are off. The same with male hormones. Taking that stuff is like playing with sweaty dynamite.

  33. Alan says:

    >> I do if I'm running late with the bills, but if I send in payment a week out, that's plenty of time for the check to arrive in … Tennesee (?) … from Austin.

    I just waited two weeks for a Priority Mail package to show up that should have been here in three days. I was really hoping it hadn't gotten lost as it was an eBay item that had seemingly been mis-priced and at the moment not replaceable at the price I paid for it. Finally arrived yesterday. But don't worry, at least DeJoy isn't out of the office for two months.

    I have only a couple of bills that I can't pay online and for those I use my bank's bill paying service. They send out a paper check and no charge to me for the postage.

  34. Greg Norton says:

    Just when you think you've heard it all…

    Y chromosomes do not carry an immunity to breast cancer, and hormone therapy comes with risks, including cancer.

    Transgender women seeing the OB/GYN "for the experience" is a whole other story.

  35. lynn says:

    "The Vega Sector (Perry Rhodan #5)" by K. H. Scheer and Kurt Mahr, translated by Wendayne Ackerman
    https://www.amazon.com/Vega-Sector-Perry-Rhodan/dp/B000GR58AY/br?tag=ttgnet-20 />

    Book number five of a series of one hundred and twenty-six space opera books in English. The original German books, actually pamphlets, number in the thousands. The English books mostly have two translated German stories per book. The German books were written from 1961 to present time, having sold two billion copies and even recently been rebooted. I read the well printed and well bound book published by Ace in 1970 that I had to be very careful with due to age. I bought an almost complete box of Perry Rhodans a decade or two ago on ebay that I am finally getting to since I lost my original Perry Rhodans in The Great Flood of 1989.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan

    In this alternate universe, USSF Major Perry Rhodan and his three fellow astronauts blasted off in a three stage rocket to the Moon in 1971. The first stage of the rocket was chemical, the second and third stages were nuclear. After crashing on the Moon due to a strange radio interference, they discover a massive crashed alien spaceship with an aged male scientist (Khrest), a female commander (Thora), and a crew of 500.

    The Arkonide built FTL detectors have registered over 100 space ships transitioning from FTL in the nearby Vega star system. Perry Rhodan and Reginald Bell take a crew of fifty plus two space fighters to investigate. Rhodan and Bell find a known lizard race, the Topides, attacking the Ferrons, the inhabitants of the Vega system, and decimating their defenses. And the lizards have a stolen Arkenide battleship.

    One has to remember that this book was written in German in 1961 and translated to English in 1970. Many items that came about in the 1970s and beyond such as cell phones are not reflected in the book. However, commercial aircraft commonly traveling at Mach 3 are not available to the public as talked about in the book. Niels Bohr's saying "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future" comes to mind.

    My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    Amazon rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (6 reviews)

  36. RickH says:

    @Rick

    I still can't select more than one word at a time in the comment editing box. I've tried it on Chrome and other browsers on Android 10.

    I think this is a known issue with CKEditor 4; see bug message on CKEditor 4's GitHub: https://github.com/ckeditor/ckeditor4/issues/2362 . This site is using CKEditor 4.16.2 ; I think that is the latest (dated 12 Aug 2021).

    I can't see where this has been resolved yet; my amateur searching on GitHub doesn't seem to see a solution. Not sure that this issue exists in CKEditor 5; it may.

  37. lynn says:

    Net analysis of the Facebook debacle: "Astounding to see that Facebook basically locked its keys in the car."

        https://twitter.com/zittrain/status/1445117965205000208?s=20

    My son said he heard through the grapevine that five Facebook admins were locked out of the building.  They managed to get a data center rat on the cellphone and were teaching him how to edit the border gateway router over the phone with much screaming and yelling.

    Hat tip to:

       https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2021/1015.html#cg13

  38. Alan says:

    >> 

    My store has 37 packages of Blue 18 Mega Plus rolls for $24.97 per package. 

    Yup, I did not say that they were cheap.  We are in a time when the product availability trumps the price.  I did not even check the pricing when I saw the stack of over 100 Charmin Blue packages on top of their huge racks.  I was just impressed with the availability.

    So $1.39 on a per roll basis at HD, about how much a roll at Costco? Or per package if it's the same number of rolls.

     

  39. lynn says:

    We just had our daily power outage at the office.  I just found out that my UPS for my office PC has failed. I have had almost every UPS at the office fail in the last 12 months.

  40. lynn says:

    My store has 37 packages of Blue 18 Mega Plus rolls for $24.97 per package. 

    Yup, I did not say that they were cheap.  We are in a time when the product availability trumps the price.  I did not even check the pricing when I saw the stack of over 100 Charmin Blue packages on top of their huge racks.  I was just impressed with the availability.

    So $1.39 on a per roll basis at HD, about how much a roll at Costco? Or per package if it's the same number of rolls.

    My Sam's Club does not have Charmin Blue.  My HEB has 12 roll packs of Charmin Blue for around $14 or so.  Maybe $15, I have stopped looking since it is so hard to find the correct label on the rack now.

  41. ITGuy1998 says:

    My son said he heard through the grapevine that five Facebook admins were locked out of the building.  They managed to get a data center rat on the cellphone and were teaching him how to edit the border gateway router over the phone with much screaming and yelling.

    It's nice to see that even the big boys are just one freak incident away from a total shirt (-r) show. Will anyone learn? Yes, and changes will be made. Oh, wait, it will cost money? Never mind. It's all good.

  42. Greg Norton says:

    My son said he heard through the grapevine that five Facebook admins were locked out of the building.  They managed to get a data center rat on the cellphone and were teaching him how to edit the border gateway router over the phone with much screaming and yelling.

    "Wait, I can't edit the file. The computer doesn't have an editor I can use. Can we install Visual Studio Code?"

    Oh, you wouldn't believe the number of times I've heard that one. And from a 20 year experienced developer in one case.

    The same guy complained I committed a microaggression when I told him to get the O’Reilly book and read it cover to cover in order to learn shell scripting.

    I can understand the screaming. Maybe I’m too old.

  43. paul says:

    As an aside, I'm over the implied message about Christmas being "in jeopardy" unless everyone gets jabbed. The magic has been gone from the holidays in most American households for over 20 years.

    Disagree.

    When the kids were little, Christmas was a huge deal until about 13 or 14 years of age.  "The kids" includes me and my siblings and later various nieces and nephews. 

    I remember Mom giving me the speech about "shut up and don't ruin the fun for your little brother and sister" when I was ten or eleven.

    The "magic" is age related.   Ditto for Easter egg hunting and Halloween.

     

  44. Greg Norton says:

    Whether or not we've hit "peak Amazon", "peak Brown Truck Mall and Food Court" are close.

    I see the Instacart shoppers in H-Mart if I head out there late on a weeknight. They're easy to spot.

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/15/instacart-workers-strike-pay

  45. paul says:

    Why not plug your UPS units into a surge protector?  Like one of the Tripp Lite units that are about the size of an outlet box and have a duplex outlet?

    That's what I do.

    And yeah, blah blah blah you're not supposed to do that.  For not very clear reasons.  My reason is to let the $25 or so surge unit take the hit before the UPS gets hit.

    Someone also makes surge suppressors that mount in your breaker box that protect the entire building.

     

  46. Pecancorner says:

    The "magic" is age related.   Ditto for Easter egg hunting and Halloween.

    Amen. Also, it's a matter of choice.  I still love Christmas, and fortunately have little grandchildren to enjoy giving gifts to.  But even if not, it's still a happy time of year for those who choose to be happy about it. We always put our tree up on Thanksgiving weekend, but I told Paul I want to put it up after Halloween this year, and he said ok.  

    Halloween: we live in a tiny town where we have always been blessed with kids trick or treating – some years many more than others. Most of those who used to come have grown up, but this year, we have new neighbors with children, so we hope they will come and bring their friends. 🙂

  47. lynn says:

    My son said he heard through the grapevine that five Facebook admins were locked out of the building.  They managed to get a data center rat on the cellphone and were teaching him how to edit the border gateway router over the phone with much screaming and yelling.

    "Wait, I can't edit the file. The computer doesn't have an editor I can use. Can we install Visual Studio Code?"

    Oh, you wouldn't believe the number of times I've heard that one. And from a 20 year experienced developer in one case.

    The same guy complained I committed a microaggression when I told him to get the O’Reilly book and read it cover to cover in order to learn shell scripting.

    I can understand the screaming. Maybe I’m too old.

    It gets better.  The five admins were outside the main data center that the data center rat was in.  The rat could not let them in manually since their key cards failed.  They could see the rat through the glass (window ? door ?) but could not get it ! ! ! ! !  I would have found a fire axe and broke in. Or driven a vehicle through the side of the building.

    I would think that all data center rats could use vi. Vi should be a base requirement of the job.

  48. Alan says:

    >> Someone also makes surge suppressors that mount in your breaker box that protect the entire building.

    Or from the power company – goes between the meter and the meter panel.

    https://www.tampaelectric.com/residential/start-service/surge-protection/

  49. paul says:

    By the forecast, I'll be hauling houseplants in tomorrow.  Low about 50f tonight, high about 70f tomorrow.  And the last time they said mid-forties overnight I woke up for a pee and it was 28f at two am.

    Trust issues?  Me? Yep.

    I ran errands today.  HEB for a few things like chili powder.  And beer.  I bought a dozen cans of whole potatoes on my last trip at 78¢ each.  Today they were 48¢ so I snagged another dozen.

    I looked at canned meat.  Nothing there but the usual tuna, Spam and derivatives, corned beef, and corned beef hash.  None of the canned hotdogs and such like Nick mention.   None of the canned taco or enchilada meats. 

    I looked at the Banquet frozen dinners.  No fried chicken dinner.  Darn!  But I bought a few anyway.  Chicken Fried Chicken, same but Steak, and Salisbury Steak.  Not exactly Good Eats but for about a $1.50 not bad at all when you just don't want to cook anything.

    Then to Tractor Supply for cat and dog food.  Then the feed store for sheep and goat feed for the bird. 

    The girl working the loading dock sure did try to make me take the bags that have been patched.  No thanks if they are full price.

    I'm set for critter food until January maybe February.

    I have a ton of pellets for the pellet stove.

    I need to get under the house to inspect pipe insulation.  I think that about covers getting ready for Winter.

     

  50. lynn says:

    Why not plug your UPS units into a surge protector?  Like one of the Tripp Lite units that are about the size of an outlet box and have a duplex outlet?

    That's what I do.

    And yeah, blah blah blah you're not supposed to do that.  For not very clear reasons.  My reason is to let the $25 or so surge unit take the hit before the UPS gets hit.

    Someone also makes surge suppressors that mount in your breaker box that protect the entire building.

    The fire code says that devices are only allowed one extension cord.  Each UPS qualifies as a single extension cord.  So do surge boxes.  Yes, I have been written up on fire code violations before by the city fire marshal when we officed in Sugar Land.  I was arguing with the guy, made no difference.

    My office building has a 400 amp breaker box.  Very non-standard.  And no open breakers out of the 60 breakers, I have used them all.

  51. Greg Norton says:

    It gets better.  The five admins were outside the main data center that the data center rat was in.  The rat could not let them in manually since their key cards failed.  They could see the rat through the glass (window ? door ?) but could not get it ! ! ! ! !  I would have found a fire axe and broke in. Or driven a vehicle through the side of the building.

    I would think that all data center rats could use vi. Vi should be a base requirement of the job.

    Sadly, the rat followed protocol.

    Most Linux distributions now include GNU nano, which is essentially console Notepad, but there aren't any guarantees.

    In theory, anyone doing my last job needed to know Vi, but it seems like the more Hot Skillz they possess, the less they seem to know about how things really work.

  52. lynn says:

    The same guy complained I committed a microaggression when I told him to get the O’Reilly book and read it cover to cover in order to learn shell scripting.

    What a pansy. 

  53. lynn says:

    "Lawmakers send to Gov. Greg Abbott new political maps that would further solidify the GOP’s grip on the Texas Legislature"

        https://www.texastribune.org/2021/10/15/texas-legislature-redistricting/

    "The redistricting plans for the House, Senate and State Board of Education were approved Friday."

    "The Texas Legislature is nearing the end of its work to incorporate a decade’s worth of population growth into new political maps — pressing forward with efforts to cement GOP dominance of the statehouse and deny voters of color a greater say in who gets elected."

    I predict lawsuits.  No matter what they sent to the gov, there will be lawsuits.

  54. Nick Flandrey says:

    Well, I'm home from my running around, had my dinner (beer batter cod, costco frozen) and caught up here.

    @paul, look for the other meat in the ethnic aisle.   The taco and shredded beef in pouches is near the spam and Dinty Moore shelf stable meals in my small HEB and in the ethnic aisle in the big one.   The hot dogs are a product of Holland, and I think I might have bought them at the asian market, 99 Ranch.   I def bought the small egg shaped canned ham product there, "Danish ham".

    –can't find the hotdogs.   HA!  BigCliveDotCom is comparing them on youtube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnFkCZCsikU

    Weird that a google search finds them at HEB but the HEB tool doesn't find them.

    n

  55. Nick Flandrey says:

    And the canned meat balls, which the kids used to really like, preferring them to the pouch meatballs…

    https://www.burpy.com/h-e-b/ranchers-meatballs-in-gravy/product-detail/1245956

    n

  56. drwilliams says:

    for flocking-A:

    "They didn’t previously announce it, but Buttigieg’s office told West Wing Playbook that the secretary has actually been on paid leave since mid-August to spend time with his husband, Chasten, and their two newborn babies. "

    https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook/2021/10/14/can-pete-buttigieg-have-it-all-494710

    This is the same useless tit that had the Secret Service load his bicycle into a van, drive him to within a few hundred yards of the White House, then unload the bicycle so he could sit his butterfudge on the seat and pedal into a pre-arranged photo op to claim he was bike commuting to work.

    Tucker Carlson speculated that he's having a hard time learning to breastfeed. My guess would be he's having a hard time changing diapers without projectile vomiting, except I suspect that he's spending a pile of his misbegotten paycheck (screwed out of taxpayers that actually show up to their jobs) on infant body servants.

    When in the Actual F**k did we get to the point where the FPOTUS doesn’t tell the taxpayers that a cabinet member is out on leave, and the press covers it up?

    ‘Cuz you know that some in the press knew about it.

  57. Greg Norton says:

    "The same guy complained I committed a microaggression when I told him to get the O’Reilly book and read it cover to cover in order to learn shell scripting."

    What a pansy.

    Austin. They never say it to your face.

     

  58. SteveF says:

    the more Hot Skillz they possess, the less they seem to know about how things really work.

    Quoted for truth.

  59. Nick Flandrey says:

    super tired, calling a lid…

    n

  60. lynn says:

    On 10/14/2021 10:48 AM, Tony Nance wrote:

    I just ran across this article about an hour ago – it was published
    two days ago:
    https://bookriot.com/the-most-influential-sci-fi-books-of-all-time/

    I’ve added the full list below for those who don’t want to click/scroll.

    It’s strictly science fiction – so, for example, no Tolkien, or Stoker.

    To me, it’s a pretty well-considered and thorough list, especially through
    the 1970s. There seems to be some recency bias and/or maybe some
    nods to emerging/micro-genres.

    On first blush, I’d say the only significant omissions are Doc Smith
    (surely) and CL Moore (probably). Whether you’d cite Skylark or
    Lensman, I think both were highly influential. Moore (with & without
    Kuttner) had a wide range of influential stuff too, of course.

    I also appreciated the inclusion of the various collections & serials,
    giving a nod both to how influential the authors/works were and to
    how influential short/serialized fiction was and is.

    Full list below,
    Tony
    ———————————————————————————
    Again:  https://bookriot.com/the-most-influential-sci-fi-books-of-all-time/
    The webpage has a 3-4 sentence description of each member of the list,
    including why it’s on the list. The items with a range of years are either
    collections and/or the original material was originally serialized.

    Frankenstein – Mary Shelley (1818)
    Blake, or The Huts of America – Martin R. Delany (1859 – 1862)
    Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne (1869)
    The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
    The Time Machine – H.G. Wells (1895)
    Of One Blood, or the Hidden Self – Pauline Hopkins (1902-1903)
    A Princess of Mars – Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912)
    We – Yevgeny Zamyatin (1924)
    Metropolis – Thea von Harbou (1925)
    Brave New World – Aldous Huxley (1932)
    The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (1937-1999)
    The Complete Robot – Isaac Asimov (1939-1977)
    Shadow Over Mars (aka Nemesis from Terra) – Leigh Brackett (1944)
    1984 – George Orwell (1949)
    Astro Boy – Osamu Tezuka (1952-1968)
    Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury (1953)
    Starship Troopers – Robert A. Heinlein (1959)
    A Canticle for Leibowitz – Walter M. Miller (1959)
    A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle (1962)
    Dune – Frank Herbert (1965)
    Babel-17 – Samuel R. Delany (1966)
    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick (1968)
    The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. Le Guin (1969)
    Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
    Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang – Kate Wilhelm (1976)
    The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979-1992)
    Daughters of a Coral Dawn – Katherine V. Forrest (1984)
    Psion – Joan D. Vinge (1982)
    Vampire Hunter D – Hideyuki Kikuchi (1983 – present)
    Akira – Katsuhiro Otomo (1982-1990)
    Neuromancer – William Gibson (1984)
    The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood (1985)
    Watchmen – Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-1987)
    Lilith’s Brood – Octavia E. Butler (1987-1989)
    Ghost in the Shell: Deluxe Complete Box Set – Masamune Shriow (1989-1997)
    Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton (1990)
    Ring – Koji Suzuki (1991)
    Pretty Guardian Sailor moon – Naoko Takeuchi (1991-1997)
    The Thrawn Trilogy – Timothy Zahn (1991-1993)
    Ammonite – Nicola Griffith (1992)
    The Children of Men – PD James (1992)
    Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson (1992)
    Doomsday Book – Connie Willis (1992)
    Uzumaki – Junji Ito (1998-1999)
    A Civil Campaign – Lois McMaster Bujold (1999)
    Battle Royale – Koushun Takami (1999)
    Midnight Robber – Nalo Hopkinson (2000)
    Dark Matter: A Centruy of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora – ed. by Sheree Renee Thomas (2000)
    The Three-Body Problem – Cixin Liu (2008)
    Leviathan Wakes – James S.A. Corey (2011)
    Cinder – Marissa Meyer (2012)
    The Imperial Radch Trilogy – Ann Leckie (2013-2016)
    Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel (2014)
    Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy – Jeff Vandermeer (2014)

     From here, the article’s author predicts some works from 2015 & later
    that may well become influential. I didn’t add those works here.

    The fact that the list does not mention Perry Rhodan, David Weber, or John Ringo makes the list very suspect in my mind.

    And the single Heinlein book mentioned is not one of his three best, “The Star Beast”, “Citizen Of The Galaxy”, and “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress”.

  61. lynn says:

    "Climate Crusader Prince William Slams William Shatner Space Flight"

         https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/10/15/climate-crusader-prince-william-slams-william-shatner-space-flight/

    Just what Britain needs, another royal dunderhead. Bite me, prince boy.

  62. MrAtoz says:

    What a pansy

    Pansy is a colloquialism for a homosexual. I usually use "pussy". 😉

  63. Nick Flandrey says:

    Any list with Three Body Problem is suspect.

    n

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