Cool and damp again. It’s been pretty nice for the last week, so I guess I’ll spend next week in the path of a big storm. ‘Cuz why not?
Especially considering I’m flying on Monday and Black Friday during the shakedown for wuflu mandates with TSA and other airport/airline workers. What could possibly go wrong?
Yesterday I spent the morning learning about the Ubiquiti gear I have to support, and the afternoon poking at it. In the middle I caught my 10yo hiding what she was reading online from me. Mostly fanfic webcomics, but they do have comment sections and she was commenting. That is going to bear some additional scrutiny before she gets the lappy back and the sites unblocked. The titles of the comics look objectionable but the content might not be that bad. My wife will do the looking. I knew the little sneak was bosskey-ing me.
Did make some very small progress with the ubiquiti switch. It took nuking my side, and reinstalling the controller software, and a lot of factory restoring on the box side. I eventually got one switch and one access point enrolled in the cloud management tool and configured. I cobbled the theater together so they can at least watch movies in there for the next week. I hate half assing stuff but some is better than none in this case.
Today will be getting ready for travel and family visit. Joy.
Keep your head on a swivel and your awareness up, and keep stacking while you can.
nick
I hope ya'll have a fun and enjoyable trip, from beginning to end. I've never been to Boston, but I hear it is a great place to visit and beautiful country around it.
I put up our tree a couple of weeks ago. We decided to celebrate a long Christmas season this year and to really make it a happy time. My husband is still weak and not up to entertaining, so we are going to have several special meals for just the two of us, make cappucinos, and do something fun each week to spread it out.
22 immediate family on our gift list, and all checked off! I finished wrapping presents yesterday, so we can send most of them home with various family members when they are here for Thanksgiving and save postage. I still have a few gifts to make, but all the store-bought stuff is done. I also made the traditional Chex Mix this week, again to avoid mailing. I'll make candy and other food gifts over the coming weeks so that it will be fresh.
Nick and others here gave me recommendations for the battery chargers/power packs and I bookmarked that thread. I decided to save those for birthday presents over the coming year, as the best ones are too pricey for us to give at Christmas, and it would be a better use of $$$ to give them as good a one as we can afford, rather than a lesser one.
Exactly my thought and probably backed by science. Yet, we are *required* to wear masks on commercial aircraft because of plugs' mandate. How long can this be enforced? It's heading for two years. I doubt the pilots are wearing masks. THEY'LL POLLUTE THE WHOLE PLANE!
@pecancorner
Sounds like a great plan.
Just to throw some gasoline on the fire:
New study from Germany confirms higher vax coverage –> higher excess mortality
Early morning trip to HEB yesterday. Half the checkers and baggers were not masked. I guess Butt dropped the mandate if you are vaxxd. I would guess less than 1/3 of the shoppers were masked.
We saw Ghostbusters in the afternoon. We liked it except for the "during credits" scene. A waste. One couple in the pretty full theater came in wearing masks and took them off when the sat down. Sitting with a hundred+ unmasked people for two hours and they think wearing a mask from the lobby to the auditorium protects them. From what? I see the same at restaurants. Tejas dropped that mandate long ago.
We also have trees up in SA and Vegas. Most of us will be in Vegas for Christmas. The Bellagio usually has an exception Christmas setup.
The big downside of HTTPS Everywhere is that monitoring employee or kid activity on the Internet got a lot more complicated.
Pre pandemic, you were lucky if the airline was turning the cabin air over twice in an hour. That costs money and burns fuel. I doubt the situation has changed significantly so the masks are mostly kabuki on the aircraft.
I got chills and chuckles from this:
Clifton Hicks – Ballad of Kyle Rittenhouse
I downloaded it before YouTube deletes it. There are others, but this guy puts his face on it.
I sure am glad that none of my kids ever did anything like that. They were always perfectly obedient little ange — coughcoughcough!
Yah, couldn't even finish telling that lie.
In the YT comments, Hicks posts the lyrics.
Our HEB dropped the obvious mask signs a couple of months ago.
I haven't worn a mask in there since the beginning of the Summer, when people panicked after the surge of the weeks following the 4th when people first cut loose.
I regret allowing anime to get too far at our house without taking a closer look.
It isn't the content as much as the translations done by the American companies like Funimation and Titan Comics. There is definitely an agenda and psychologists involved.
Even the Japanese artists and original publishers are starting to gripe about what gets lost/gained in translation.
That's not real science, MrAtoz. Why, look, there's a typo in the article, invalidating the entire study.
… Just trying to help out the various apologists for the party line.
That is great. And his other stuff is very good too, Thanks for the link – I love American folk music and bluegrass. I subscribed to his channel.
Well, 71F in the sun today with 92%RH. It hasn't been getting below the mid 60s at night either for about the last week.
@pecancorner, when I was a kid, with so many relatives in driving distance, we did Christmas at least three times, and usually a couple more. I loved it. Loved making little houses for my HO gauge RR our of the half pint milk cartons we got at school, loved the smell of the tree.
My family has scaled way back as we grew older, but my kids get a bunch of stuff now. I shop the sales for them all year long, and for my siblings and mom. Fun stuff that I know they'll like, or laugh about and put aside. The kids get stuff from all over.
My wife's family doesn't have a big deal Christmas. Like their decorating style with empty shelves, I think it was rooted in not having much money for a long time.
And they are a "Christmas morning" family, while we are a "Christmas eve" family for the bulk of the presents. There are always a few for Christmas morning, including Santa gifts. This has caused some disagreement between W1 and me…
n
W1, again! Oof.
online search is completely useless for some issues without a date range.
On my android phone, the voice to text function, provided by swype and dragon, stopped working for me, but ONLY in text messaging.
half an hour of searching yielded only one 'fix it' from this year, and it wasn't my issue.
SO MUCH of it is just one site repeating another with the garbage fixes from 2017 that didn't even fix the issues back then.
I use the function a lot to text in the car (at stoplights.)
It works fine in other apps. And samsung works in IM but is wildly inaccurate.
n
W1, again! Oof.
–yeah feeling my oats today.
n
KR didn't cross state lines (not illegal) with a gun, anyway. He was given the gun by a friend in Kenosha.
Nadler knows this but chooses to continue the lie for the benefit of the weak-minded CNN and MSNBC viewers.
I grew up in a town that had several churches with bells, and they played the carillons and chimed the hours. I miss those. So I just bought a cd of English church bells on eBay.
… if it sounds right, I'll try to find a loud boom box and play it on the porch in the evenings during the Christmas season. Several on our street put up nice light displays, and that would be a good go-with.
Be my luck all the neighborhood dogs will howl at it LOL
We had one set of grandparents with lots of grands, and I remember half of their living room would be filled with presents. I LOVED that, even knowing only one of them was mine, so I try for the same look: I wrap *everything* LOL I even have some extra gifts in case someone shows up unexpectedly – plus it keeps the tree from being naked on Christmas afternoon LOL
The other grands only had one child and us 2 grands, plus their church didn't celebrate Christmas, so it was very low key. A small tree and a nice meal, but presents were practical (we got new bed pillows one year under the tree). They were very generous and giving people, but they did it through the year instead of at Christmas time since the church kind of frowned on too much "popery".
We were always Christmas Morning people, but a few years ago my mother commented she had opened her gifts on Christmas Eve "since she got so few gifts any more". Since then, I try to make sure to sent her at least four packages to unwrap. It has helped – she has begun putting up a small tree again, and doing a little decorating. And waiting until Christmas morning to open her presents. 🙂
It's a strange study, because all they did was create a graph with excess-deaths on one axis and vaccination rates on the other. The graph does not have any sort of clear visual trend – you can draw a line through it lots of different ways. But I'm not going to dig into it in any detail, because it isn't published or peer-reviewed. And who puts up a paper as a .docx (i.e., editable) instead of a PDF, that's just weird.
We alternate Christmas visits between the parents. One year at mine and the next at mother's. We have had a rule since our son was born – we will always be at home Christmas Day. One Christmas we visited her Dad in CA, and we were technically home on Christmas Day, as we flew back that day.
Presents are opened Christmas morning, with one exception. Christmas Eve we open one present, which are new pajamas for Christmas morning.
We used to have Thanksgiving at our house, with both sets of parents coming to us. Since my Uncle died, and some other family drama, we don't do Thanksgiving with extended family anymore, and that's honestly fine with me. It's just the three of us. Both sets of parents are still in good health, relatively speaking, but it's too far for them to drive now. Our local minor league hockey team always has a home game on Thanksgiving Day, so we've been going to that for that last 4 years. The place is always packed.
>> W1, again! Oof.
–yeah feeling my oats today.
More likely trying to get grounded and not able to go on the trip (nudge nudge, wink wink).
https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/current-activity/2021/11/17/cisa-adds-four-known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog
–for the more technical in the group…
n
>> some of my neighbors have Christmas lights out already
Hopefully not like these people…
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/a-family-put-up-christmas-lights-in-early-november-grinch-hoa-threatens-fines/
Used to be a post-Thanksgiving event for many people.
Checked in for my flight. Not only possible TSA delays, IAH terminals are under construction and two parking garages are being demo'd.
NORMAL ask is for 2 hours early at United in Houston because of the construction. I'm so f'd.
n
–nope he was attacked by a man ARMED with a skateboard, and attacked by a man ARMED with a pistol.
Of course, below the fold,
Even with their anti-gun bias, DM will eventually get to the truth.
n
Just rearranged all the cables in my new computer case. Routed all the cable behind the MB bracket. I had done so before for some cables, just finished up all the rest of the cables. Moved some cutouts by moving the grommet and the blocking plates to different openings. That took some stress off a couple of cables that had significant bends. Now the bends are more gentle.
That Fractal 7 case is quite awesome compared to cases in the past. No sharp edges, lots of flexibility in the configuration, placement of fans, routing of cable, location of hard drives. About the only thing that is fixed is the MB location, DVD location, and power supply location.
There are two USB 3.0 headers on the MB, one USB C 3.2 header. One of the USB 3.0 headers goes to the case as does the USB C header. Ports are on the top front of the case.
I also moved the three case fan power cables to the fan power header in the case. A single signal cable to the MB, power for the fans is drawn from a SATA power cable to the fan header. It support 3 PWM fans and five regular fans.
I have a USB 3.0 to external plate on order so I can have two more USB 3.0 ports on the back. Less than $9.00 from Amazon so seemed like a worthwhile addition.
Here in UK, external displays of Christmas lights, or, indeed any display of lights, is uncommon. There's one house a mile or so away (near where d1 & d3 used to rent a house) that does a display in their (paved) front garden, but it's the only one I know of.
When I was young, Christmas observance was low-key. As above, no external display, and we, at least, were a Christmas morning family. It was accepted that we would visit the most-immediate family, for present exchange, before returning home for Christmas lunch, which was the full turkey-and-trimmings. We would play host to my grandparents (both sets) in the evening.
At New Year, again it was traditional that we would host the families we exchanged presents with "to see the New Year in."
More recently, we still hosted our parents at Christmas, my mother having travelled up from Swansea for the entire holiday, but since they have all left us, we now host the girls (and Sarah's boyfriend Charlie) for lunch on Boxing Day. That meal is normally not turkey – increasingly, we do a beef joint, and seafood, take your pick.
As far as religious observances are concerned, my family was Anglican (or, synonymously, Church in Wales), although only my mother was practicng, especially in her later years. Jane is a practicing Catholic, as are our daughters, and as were her parents. I'm agnostic, shading towards atheist, so religion is not a uniting thing.
G.
Note also, in UK, Thanksgiving is not a thing.
G.
Really, Geoff? I heard that the English celebrate Thanksgiving on July 4.
@stevef:
I wouldn't know – I'm Welsh.
Seriously (and I know your comment was tongue-in-cheek) Thanksgiving is viewed as "something they do. It's not for us".
G.
Wonder if the lack of Christmas display is a leftover from the religious wars.
n
@nick:
Possibly. I've never actually thought about it.
G.
People need to get a grip. Most of the Westchase development was a swamp when I was a kid, sitting barely above the minimum grade for new construction in Tampa thanks to a lot of (unstable) fill, a Level I hurricane evac zone. Sooner or later, it won't matter if the neighbor puts out his lights a few weeks early when the long overdue storm rips up Tampa Bay at high tide.
Too many people in Florida and elsewhere believe in the power of a tenbagger to make their retirement dreams come true.
Houses are places to live, not investments.
Quoted for truth, as SteveF might say.
Didn't England have electric meters with a coin box? Perhaps somewhere else.
But if you have to drop a coin in the box for the refrigerator and lights to work, Christmas Lights would be a non starter.
>> But if you have to drop a coin in the box for the refrigerator and lights to work, Christmas Lights would be a non starter.
Most likely all these people with the over-the-top exterior decorating have switched to LED lighting, much to the consternation of the local power company.
I finally configured the Netgear router to "almost" a drop-in replacement for the existing D-Link that I thought had died the other day.
"Almost" as in "change it from .26 to .25". Sub-net and the rest is done.
I had some confusion while logging in to the router. Missed a capital letter or something a couple of times. "Enter the serial number on the router". That's slick.
The Nighthawk app on my phone is history. I see no need to configure my router from my phone. Not sure how that would work with the router's radios turned off. But really, in two days the app used 26% of my phone's battery. And if the router is just powered up with no Internet connection, the app doesn't work for me. So much for working off-line.
As much as I liked Win98Se and then XP, one nice feature about Win7 is that I can tinker with network settings and they take effect without having to re-boot.
Buddy is wanting his dinner. Pest…. 🙂
I saw a Karen — there is no other word — in Target today with a new-ish "Biden Won" t-shirt. You could still see the folds in the material so I wonder who is putting those out.
I'll bet she's going to spend Wednesday night trying to get a party of 20 into Cracker Barrel at closing.
@paul:
Yes, but normally only in rental homes, so that the landlord could collect monies to settle the 'leccy bill. Or else installed by the utility company, to ensure feckless or criminal tenants couldn't decamp with the bill unpaid. I've never actually seen one.
G.
We saw "Ghostbusters Afterlife" today.
I didn't hate the credits cameos, but I wish that the one clearly set in a NY apartment had included Rick Moranis.
Loads of fun, particularly if you are of my generation, whose parents got HBO instead of Showtime because your dad liked the George Carlin specials … after Carlin stopped being a "dirty hippie".
Showtime had “Star Trek” movies. HBO had “Ghostbusters” and “Tootsie” on endless replay in the afternoons after school.
Quoted again for truth.
I call houses bad savings accounts. If escrow wasn't a thing and people actually figured out how much they were paying in taxes and insurance…never mind, most people would still probably be clueless.
You have to live somewhere, and if it's long term, generally owning is better than renting. Your return on investment though is terrible, if you actually account for all of the expenses. This year is an oddity in the investment returns (well, potential returns for me, as I'm not selling and my substantially greater equity does nothing to help me eat).
When I did my last re-fi, I opted to not do an escrow account. I pay the homeowners monthly and I just paid the taxes for this year. Maybe that's why I've been in a bad mood this weekend…
Well, sooprise. The Marine Corps has not had a single death from Covid and only 80 hospitalizations as of about a month ago.
Gotta eliminate the control.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/marine-corps-compliance-with-vaccine-mandate-on-course-to-be-military-s-worst/ar-AAQXukn
Damn healthy Marines. They're ruining the narrative!
Just the proper amount of restraint:
https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2021/11/21/learn-to-code-ashole-amanda-milius-annihilates-nyts-david-brooks-and-all-leftist-media-in-savagely-legendary-thread/
Went looking, found this:
Wire spool specifications and tare weights
https://mwswire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Spool-Specifications.pdf
The columns for metal construction are woefully blank, so didn't get the tare for a roll of vintage wire on a metal spool, but it may be out there…
All right, all right, all right!
https://www.mediaite.com/news/shock-poll-matthew-mcconaughey-tops-texas-gov-greg-abbott-by-8-in-head-to-head-matchup-clobbers-beto-nearly-2-to-1/
We had a sustained, local power outage at our house last night, for the better part of three hours.
Woulda been four if Abbott hadn't been out there working in his jammies.
What? Another SEC coaching vacancy at a school where the alumni will write blank checks to get another national championship?
Oh Christmas tree … Oh Christmas tree …
https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-reacts-florida-gators-fire-223043779.html
We need comment numbers here so we can have trips of truth, just like 4chan.
Brutal.
High temps are forecast to be below 60 in Austin next Friday.
>> https://mwswire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Spool-Specifications.pdf
Huh??
I still maintain the Florida coach looks like cousin Eddie, shirt(-r)ter’s full.
"I don't know why they call this stuff hamburger helper. It does just fine by itself."
At one point, in "Ghostbusters Afterlife", the ambulance goes airborne, much like the station wagon in "National Lampoon's Vacation".
Well, I rented another storage unit and took two truck loads of bins out of the foyer. I'll empty and cancel the one that is far from home and my net storage cost will increase $9. This month though, I've got three.
At some point, I'll be able to cancel one or both, with the goal being 'both'. The foyer and library are still not empty of my stuff, but there is still room in the storage units. I'm out of time for now though.
Looked at the weather for the in-laws, and no bomb cyclone. Light rain, clear for a few days, then light rain for my return. 40s-50s in the day, right around freezing at night. Might see some freeze on the clear nights.
I'll be right down the street from a frequent commentor, maybe I'll have some time to meet for a donut… ping my email…
I really hope the travel isn't worse than normal for the week, but I gotta feeling that it will be. And the return could surely suck too.
I haven't decided if I'm taking my mini lappy, or just the phone or the galaxy tab with a keyboard.
I signed up for PreCheck, but the first appointment time is in December, so it won't help me this trip. I hate the idea of paying for decent treatment after they made it miserable on purpose. it's a protection racket and I hate it.
n
@nick: here's a forecasted weather map for this week from CNN https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/21/weather/weather-holiday-travel-weekend-windy-storms/index.html .
The story includes forecasted air travel delays.
Hope you aren't in a 'red zone'.
Ah sh!t.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/
All the stories. BREAKING: Multiple People Injured After Person Driving SUV Plows Through Waukesha Christmas Parade – Reports of Gunshots (VIDEO)
–weeeeellllll….. I hope to miss it Monday and they're not talking about Friday yet. Openweather map has little effect in the area between Boston and Providence. I'm really hoping they're right and CNN is wrong. "I guess we'll see".
n
added- I think the pilot will be heading east then north to avoid all that mess, rather than north then east…. He’ll want to anyway, and we leave at 940am so maybe things wont’ be all jammed up yet.
"The Night is for Hunting (The Tomorrow Series #6)" by John Marsden
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0439858038/br?tag=ttgnet-20 />
Book number six of a seven book young adult action adventure fiction series. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback published by Scholastic Paperbacks in 2007 that I bought on Amazon. The first book in the series was actually published in 1993, this book was first published in 1998. Book #6 is out of print so I had to order a used copy. I have also bought book #7 from Big River. And of course I found out that I could have bought the entire series in trade paperback at a discount:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IWWCXBC/br?tag=ttgnet-20 />
At the middle of their high school senior year in Australia, a group of seven 17 and 18 year old teenagers decide to go camping in the bush for a week before school restarts. They gather up their sleeping bags and supplies and go way out into the bush, actually at the edge of the desert in a place known as Hell. After a difficult trip by Land Rover and a long walk, they camp next to a spring fed stream. When they return to Ellie's farm after a week, her family is missing and the farm dogs are dead on their chains. They find out that Australia has been invaded by an Asian nation and that their families are being held captive at the town fairgrounds. The Asian forces have taken the airports first and then the cargo shipping seaports. The justification of the invasion is that the Asian nation needs the extensive natural resources of Australia.
It has now been a year since the invasion began. Ellie and her remaining friends blew up the huge airbase in the region by sneaking in the back of a supply truck and throwing grenades into the jet fighters being refueled. They managed to escape in the confusion by jumping in the river and floating twenty miles to the next town. While laying low, they rescued several orphan children. Now what do they do ?
The first book in the series was made into a film of the same name in 2010.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow,_When_the_War_Began_(film)
My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (94 reviews)
Mask requirements; even the base commissary at Fort Sam Houston has dropped the mask requirements. The staff wear them, but no more than 15% of customers do.
And military bases go by FEDERAL rules, not state.
@Nick
You and yours travel safely.
Came across this:
https://areaocho.com/no-description/
@Alan
If I have a good estimate of the spool weight, I can get a good estimate of the amount of wire left on the spool.
The trial of Theranos ex-CEO Elizabeth Holmes wrapped it's 11th week last Friday, with Holmes herself taking the stand.
She'd actually testified earlier:
https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/18/22790541/elizabeth-holmes-fraud-lies-recording
Ah,testing the Galaxy Tab on the new site. some weird issues. It’s old enough I had to use Opera Mini to get to https sites, and Opera mini and the tab find some things to be very strange.
Like this text box. I’ve pointed out before that FFox doesn’t see it as a text field. Turns out, neither does Opera on Galaxy Tab. I have to select the ‘source’ view to actually get the cursor to show up when I touch it.
There are weird things on the management pages too, none of the drop downs work, nor do the “edit” buttons for things like publish (so I can set a time.) I had to just save a draft post and then add a publish time from my phone browser.
Weirdness, doesn’t need to be addressed or fixed, unless you have a lot of free time Rick.
I’ll work around.
Currently using the galaxy tab 10.1 with a bluetooth keyboard, like a mini lappy.
At least I can type on this thing.
n
@nick – the comment box message area is actually in an iframe, so if your device is blocking that, there may be issues. Works fine on my recently purchased Samsung.
The theme shouldn't have any affect on the admin screens, though, (probably). Works OK on my Chromebook also.
Out this week, so not as quick response. Safe travels to us all!
Yes, gnu willing we all have uneventful travels.
FFox doesn't think it's a text field, as evidenced by the right click (shift right click) giving the web page context menu, and not a text edit context menu… and Opera Mini on my old Tab is the same. I can touch it and touch it, but the text entry cursor will not appear. If I switch to "Source" view, that is a text field and I touch it and the cursor appears.
The version of android on my Tab is old enough that chrome and FFox wouldn't run, and the samsung browser doesn't handle secure sites well, which keeps me out of here. Opera Mini was the only thing I found that would run and access all the modern sites. Well, until I checked the WP pages here. They just don't work completely correctly. Again, very edge case, and I can work around it. Mainly I use the Tab because it's big enough for me to read comfortably and it works well with the bluetooth keyboard I have.
n
I haven't posted much on the new site, and I usually type everything in Word and then paste, but this worked fine with my old Android 5 phone. Same for my new Android 11 phone. Both use Brave, however. I occasionally use Chrome on W10. All work fine. Obviously, I have no need for admin stuff.
I usually limit my formatting to italics for quotes, although I have used block quote once or twice.
Fine job, RickH, but I will admit I miss the old days before Robert changed to WordPress. Much simpler, but then, I am a bit of a minimalist.
BTW, I am typing this on a Motorola BT keyboard that I bought for 50 cents. First time I have used it. I hate the layout and the short travel keys. Reminds me of a laptop. Certainly not my Omnikey Ultra, but then few are.