Cool and clear is the forecast here south of Boston.
Flight was a bit bumpy, but otherwise uneventful. As usual, security is much easier with a small child in tow, not even a suggestion that you should go through the naked scanner.
Plan for the day includes a bookstore visit and possibly cooking. And relatives visiting. It’s what we are here for. Stacking up good memories.
Stack something every day,
Nick
Off to Atlanta today for the annual gathering with friends of 40 years. Met in San Antonio, we moved to TN, they moved to GA. Been going to their place for 20+ years for Thanksgiving.
Leaving today rather than Wednesday to avoid some of the traffic. We take highway 27 from OS to Chattanooga (have to watch two speed traps in Spring City and Sale Creek) where we get on to I-24 east. That is a real mess and horrible traffic. One year we hit there on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, at about 5:15 PM. Took two hours to go five miles, some of the delay due to lane closures for construction. From there we catch I-75 south to I-285 west in Atlanta. I-75 is three lanes but still a lot of traffic. Many clowns camp in the middle lane matching the speed of vehicles in the right lane causing problems for drivers and for trucks which are restricted from the left lane.
Will make a stop at the Buc-ee's in GA which sits just off I-75. No idea why, just because.
Happy Thanksgiving y'all.
I use Daddies Favourite on IKEA meatballs. Just a drop.
Frequent mentions here.
Just be prepared for a mad house, especially during a holiday travel period. We always stop at Buc-ee's.
The last time I drove I24/I75 between Atlanta and Chattanooga, it was all *huge* fireworks stands and Cracker Barrels. Buc-ee’s did their homework.
I've noted here before that the locals in Pittsburgh were not exactly eager to give me directions to the Lodge store.
Lows were under the freezing mark in sections of the Hill Country last night, with the local Faux News weather geek predicting the computer’s above freezing temp predictions in the city as being "too warm". Right before the weather, they ran this piece.
Nice.
The Governor is one sustained power outage from facing “All right, all right, all right” in the Republican primary if the event happens before Dec. 13.
https://www.fox7austin.com/news/texas-gas-bills-may-increase-companies-allowed-to-make-up-winter-storm-losses
And yes, Republican. Enough Libertarians and closeted weed head Republicans think McConaughey is the key to legalization in the state. All it took in GA was 11,000 like minded people "voting their conscience" in November to give us the current mess in the Senate; there are a lot more in Texas.
All right, all right, all right.
BTW, I actually received a lab order for a urinalysis yesterday from my potential new employer — the first in 30 years. Their offer is contingent on clean urine and a background check.
I remember seeing lingonberry preserves on the shelf many years ago and thinking, "WTF is a lingonberry?" So, I did a quick Google and, basically, it's a tiny berry that tastes more or less like a cranberry. I bought some to try. Sure enough. If you did a blind taste test most people would assume it was cranberry jam.
I usually make cranberry sauce from scratch *and* buy the canned stuff. The former being better if you like it as a condiment on turkey and the latter being better if you like it by itself. Fresh cranberries, simple syrup, and maybe a splash of orange juice and some orange zest. The "real" stuff is quick and simple to make.
We did have a communication failure last year and so nobody brought the canned stuff. You should have seen the look on the kids' faces. I tease my brother that canned jellied cranberry sauce is pretty much all his kids eat at Thanksgiving (plus very tiny obligatory spoonfuls of the main dishes).
My mother usually brings a Jell-O salad. I think the fascination with Jell-O molds and crazy Jell-O salads are just what comes from being a young wife and mother in the 1960s and 1970s (that, and endless casseroles made with various Campbells soups). Some of them are pretty good and a hit with the kids and it just wouldn't be the holidays in our family without them. Others really make you wonder what the hell the originator was thinking.
Geebus:
NYC City Hall Removes 187-Year-Old Statue Of Thomas Jefferson
I never thought I'd watch the fall of the United States in my lifetime. I guess only the statue of Saint Floyd will stand since his was a *decent* Black man. Geebus.
plugs is the worst:
Fossil fool: Biden to release 50M barrels of oil from strategic reserve to lower pump prices
Maybe part of the ProgLibTurd plan is to use all the strategic reserve and say "nanny nanny poo poo". Maybe save some for Congress to burn in their unlimited gas guzzlers.
Yesterday I noted what happened when my wife failed to buy the canned stuff one year. It was one of a half dozen store trips that day necessary to make my in-laws happy the first year my wife and I hosted after we were married. The others:
– Boujeaulais. We don't drink so it wasn't part of our tradition.
– Cheeze and crackers. Specifically, Cheeze Whiz and Nabisco saltines, not the water crackers and nice cheese my wife had purchased.
– XXXX. It was all a blur. Maybe jar gravy (?).
– White bread. The whole grain we had did not satisfy for the evening turkey sandwiches.
– Ice cream for the pumpkin pie.
A seventh would have been Kool Whip instead of the real whipped cream my wife bought, but the stores that would have Kool Whip were all closed by that point.
The irony is that my in-laws label me to be a picky eater. I have to be careful due to food allergies, and I have a very good sense of smell which has, on occasion, kept me from getting food poisoning.
Do it, NYFC, do it:
New York Moves to Allow 800,000 Noncitizens to Vote in Local Elections
Calling Snake Plissken, calling Snake Plissken: plugs' plane went down in Manhattan.
Oh, Canada:
'Pipelines will be blown up,' says David Suzuki, if leaders don't act on climate change
Have fun, yah.
Symbolism. Fundraising for 2022 starts this weekend in the suburbs of DC.
Brandon has already been selling petro out of the SPC to Asia.
50MM bbls at 20.5MM bbls per day usage rate. The impact will be YUGE.
None of it will make a difference before Christmas, and none of it will affect the Left Coast supply at all.
I didn't know this was happening:
DOJ to pay $130M to Parkland massacre families after FBI failed to investigate tip off that student Nikolas Cruz was planning a mass school shooting
Apparently, we the taxpayers, have to pay for any goobermint fcukups. This doesn't seen right. Is every LEO now required to pay for missing something?
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/11/joe-biden-agenda.html
This is what passes for analysis in the blue-shiite-hole centric Democrat Party.
I really like the "or too far right" thrown in there for no actual purpose.
Well unfortunately around here my MIL (who lives with us) has a tradition of pickled peaches. Not my thing, or most other peoples' either. Cranberries are no better in my book, yet we have both every damn year.
Also not a fan of dressing. The bland bread, celery, onion mash my wife's family makes is only saved by the gravy which my wife does a very good job of. I want turkey, mashed spuds(real), gravy and candied yams. Top with pumpkin pie and real whipped cream. Pre-dinner appetizers needs all the cheese, crackers, olives, pickles, deli-meats and a run over to Caesar’s Italian Deli for pickled tongue.
dkreck, it's too late for this Thanksgiving, but in the coming year try making chickens with any of the dozens of kinds of stuffing that have been developed. Wild rice mixed with dried pineapple and mandarin orange would be anything but bland. Or stir a lot of paprika or cajun spice mix into plain ol' bread stuffing; that would liven up the taste, not affect the texture, and should go well with the gravy.
SteveF – you make it sound like I get a vote. (and never say, "well my mom…")
>> Apparently, we the taxpayers, have to pay for any goobermint fcukups. This doesn't seen right. Is every LEO now required to pay for missing something?
Yup, they are, as long as you can find a lawyer to take your case on contingency and you luck out with a Lib judge.
@MrAtoz:
We pay for all goobermint activities, already. Especially the fcukups – twice, or even more. The fcukup, fixing the fcukup, and then compensation to the victims.
Goobermint, of course, are immune from consequence.
G.
To modify the old saying, "If stay-at-home mommy in Fairfax County with the G Wagon and McMansion ain't happy, no body is happy."
Pffft! I reserve the right to be happy, and don't give a flying fig about her.
Oh Turkey Day. Oh Turkey Day.
Such pleasure you do bring me.
For every year this Turkey Day
Brings to us the Marathon.
https://shoutfactorytvlive.com/mst3k-turkey-day-marathon-2021
(We’ll see about Jimbo’s tree on Friday. Maybe Saturday.)
Years ago, the Atoz family was in NOLA on a cross country vacation. We dined on the Robert E. Lee paddleboat and had these delicious mashed potatoes. MrsAtoz, using her gift of gab, got the chef to come out and give up his recipe. You use butter, sour cream, mayo, whole milk, salt, and pepper in the right proportions*. We've enjoyed spuds that way for decades now.
Now a family secret. LOL
Went to an actual book store. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid author owns a bookstore here. Neat store. 24ft of adult SF/fantasy. Mix of new and old. Odd mix.Butler, Liu, Orwell, Gaiman, Tolkien. 200 or more feet of young adult and middle reader, most of which is SF/fantasy. No where for the kids to go as they get older. Woke BS everywhere, but especially in kids.
N
If self-centered, loud-mouthed cow ain't happy … then to hell with her. I don't need her, the kids don't need her, and odds are we'd be better off without her.
Funky Winkerbean: Band Turkey for T-Day
https://comicskingdom.com/funky-winkerbean/2021-11-22
Ewww ! 25 years old !
From SRW in the Fort Bend Journal:
"Not even gonna try !"
"My kids believe I need a swear jar in my apartment. I told them I don't earn that kind of income.".
Scott Reese Willey is 60 and has three kids in their 20s. He grew up on a farm where he obviously practiced swearing at things. Including turkeys. At age 11, his stepfather gave him a hatchet and told him to go kill the turkey behind the barn. Two hours later, they drove into town to buy a turkey.
BTW, I actually received a lab order for a urinalysis yesterday from my potential new employer — the first in 30 years. Their offer is contingent on clean urine and a background check.
Any more hints on who it is ?
Speaking of masks, the daughter is undergoing her sixth iron infusion of the year today at the Sugar Land Cancer Center. She is not vaccinated for the koof so she has to change her cloth mask to a N95 mask at the door to the infusion center. The center supplies the N95 mask. Just about every other person in there is fairly sick, like her. My wife is vaccinated so she can wear her cloth mask in the center. Yes, she has to show her koof vaccination card each time.
My son is driving his sister's wheelchair and is unvaccinated for the koof also so I am not sure if he has to wear an N95 mask also. I suspect I will get an earful later.
"CVS, other pharmacy chains found liable in their first trial over U.S. opioid epidemic"
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cvs-other-pharmacy-chains-found-184134936.html
You have got to be kidding me. Hopefully SCOTUS will overturn this.
Nah. The pharmacy chains were culpable in theory. The Pharmacists are supposed to step in when they know a patient is doctor shopping or a provider is running a pill mill out the back door. And, yes, they know.
In Texas, the state has a shadow DEA that steps in when a doctor in private practice is too generous with things like pain meds or Adderall. Still, my wife figures she wrote at least an order of magnitude more Adderall prescriptions in private practice here than she did in WA State or Florida.
Different state, different fix.
The rust belt has a bad problem with opiate abuse. WA State was similar, even with legalization of weed.
And I’ve written before about the pill mill that ran in Tampa for a few months near the end of our time there. GE portable MRI machine out behind the clinic, independent pharmacy across the street open 24 hours, and plates from every state within two days’ drive in the parking lot.
Where were the Tampa cops? Directing traffic off duty, paid by the clinic.
The *only* reason the city intervened in the case of the pill mill was that a Lib professor living behind the clinic got tired of the patients climbing his fence to urinate in his flower beds so he called the big Faux News station in town during sweeps.
"CVS, other pharmacy chains found liable in their first trial over U.S. opioid epidemic"
Suit brought by two Ohio counties, including wherever Cleveland calls home.
The chains could simply put their pharmacies on vacation for a couple weeks, pending "procedural review". Then re-open with a couple additional layers of procedure to ensure scrip authenticity. I could see a secure messenger system picking up serialized triple-signed at the point of origin prescriptions once daily, feeding to a centralized clearing house where they are individually reviewing by a team including an attorney, and then authorized for dispensing within two days.
The new policy should have a clause "We reserve the right to not fill any prescription at any time for any reason."
ADDED:
It’s usually, “Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick any two.”
In this case, settle for one.
I got schooled on this several years ago. Yams and sweet potatoes are NOT the same thing. Americans just ignorantly use yam as a synonym for sweet potato.
That said, I'm not a huge fan of either. lol Though, I did eat at a restaurant specializing in West African cuisine last month and had fufu for the first time. It is made with yams (and/or cassava and/or plantains depending on the cuisine) and I thought it was decent as cheap starchy sides go.
Big. A place with a name big enough to solve my resume problems of the last decade.
I'm a little worried about what the report from HireRight will contain, and the offer is contingent on that being clean. I did not hide the termination during the application process since there was a question on the web form asking about involuntary dismissals, but God only knows what went into the private database beyond what a query to TWC about eligibility status will return.
TWC cleared me of wrongdoing in the termination and paid back unemployment.
The HR hierarchy at the last job is literally former Chipotle district manager in Austin and a former Walmart manager above him in … Chantilly? They aren’t the brightest bulbs.
I did give notice at my current job on Friday, even before the background check came back.
That place is going to be done in the near future, and I wasn't going to get the jab to make the yoga pants in HR happy without a confrontation they've been trying to avoid since the mandates were announced.
The C suites in Corporate America have sold us out whether or not OSHA gets to proceed with their rules, but there is the nasty business of actual enforcement, which falls on the 30-ish women in HR, mostly public university B-school educated, who get to work in their jammies a fair bit of time, even pre-pandemic, in exchange for doing the occasional dirty work.
MIL has seen empty shelves with her own eyes, even relates the story of going to the store and finding they had no chicken at all, AND YET….. Thinks the supply chain issues are solved, stores are now deeply stocked, there is an over supply of beef ( despite there being almost no beef at all in the weekly store flyers) and is tired of hearing about supply chain issues.
In other words, la la la I can't hear you!
N
On my Sam's Club run today, I noticed that the cooler for the fresh turkeys was completely full and beef prices drifting downwards, sirloins, while not cheap, were down from $9.99/lb to $7.99 lb.
Of course Texas has its own beef industry and slaughterhouses, and Arkansas supplies the turkeys. The Northeast cities eliminated their meatpacking plants in the rush to turn places like Tribeca into communities for the Locust Class.
The supply chain issue I am seeing is the one type of canned cat food that my cat will eat reliably, during a time where I just got ripped off at the vet for repeat blood work trying to figure out why my friend hasn't been eating much in the last few weeks.
They really take advantage. The cat endured Vantucky with me, and we drove down on the escape sitting next to me in a carrier on the passenger side of my car, not making a peep for four days, just as long as she went with us.
The vet gave me a $200 credit for the duplicate blood work once I caught the “mistake”.
Fido always got Purina Cat Chow. Once in a while a can of food and she didn't care about brand or flavor. I tried Friskies and others and nope, ain't eating that. The vet talked me into a bag of Eukanuba or something else that was $20 for a bag the same size as $3 Purina. She would not eat it. Beau dog grudgingly ate the stuff if I added some canned Alpo.
My cats get what they get. Currently the cheap stuff at Tractor Supply. They were out of the "good stuff" that is 36 pounds for $20. 44 pounds for $22 works for me. As far as cat food goes, it smells pretty good. Penny and Buddy like the stuff.
The cats seem to like the stuff. All (close guess because they keep moving) 26 of them. Outside cats.
Temp when I dragged my lazy self out of bed this morning was 32F. It dropped to 31F while I was brushing my teeth and back to 32F before I left the bathroom. Seeing frost on the grass was interesting. On the walk to the gate, no frost until we reached the gate. Much more frost on the walk back to the house…. I don't think it was angle of sunlight. Almost 70F now.
When Fido got old she started to get skinny and didn't eat much. Thyroid pills pretty much cured her as much as you could hope for a 13 year old cat.
Almost four years of giving the cat her pill. 🙂
Made it to Atlanta. GDOT had one lane of I-75 closed. That resulted in a 10 mile backup that took almost an hour. Grrrr.
Chattanooga was not too bad except for the truck drivers who are unable to comprehend “No Trucks in Left Lane”. The driver either does not know the left from the right, cannot read, or is a rectum orifice.
Did stop at Buc-ee's for gas. Went inside to use the bathroom. Bathrooms as usual, clean, well stocked, and really private stalls. This was before encountering the backup so turned out to be a wise decision. Looked around, bought nothing. Place was crowded with people six deep at the main registers. No one at the side register where all the merchandise is located.
Then north of 285 junction there was a minor wreck in the middle lane. No one was willing to move the vehicles off to the shoulder, which is the law. That backed traffic up for three or four miles.
Then the I-285 interchange. All the through trucks have to use I-285 due to the narrow lanes (10 feet instead of 12 foots) on I-75 through Atlanta. Trucks jockeying for position, attempting to move over four lanes, then jockeying for the correct lane as I-285 west you have to be in the east lanes. Then there are the cretins that stay five feet behind the rear bumper. Gack, I despise Atlanta traffic.
May hit Costco tomorrow morning. I can get there using back roads.
And as a side note, on this trip I failed to see any shortage of truck drivers. I would guess that 50% of the traffic was trucks.
Our cat has been on thyroid meds for over a year. She's 14.
The latest eating issue seemed to coincide with a severe relapse of a rodent ulcer on her lip, but we have that cleared up now.
At this point, we've ruled out everything except kidney failure, and that would require a trip to the ultrasound specialist. $300.
And if it is kidney failure, what do we do? She isn't anti social like the last cat at the end of her time.
BTW, I don't ever recommend the radiation ablation of the thyroid the vets push for $1000 before trying the pills.
We obviously don't celebrate Thanksgiving, but I have had a tradition anyway of making a pumpkin pie. Start with a pumpkin, bake for an hour, peel, mash, and then add all the other stuff. It's so easy that – even if you could get canned pumpkin here – there's really no reason to do so. Fall is so busy in my schedule that I had completely forgotten this year. Have to do something about that…
Well, actually, there are a lot of screw-up cops out there, who get passed from precinct to precinct, never suffering personally from the consequences of their incompetence. Waco, Breona Taylor, Baby Bou Bou, Nicole Harper – those are the ones that come immediately to mind, but it's a long, long list…
There is a simple solution: anyone working in law enforcement should carry personal malpractice insurance, just like various other professionals. Screw-ups get paid out of their insurance policies. Payouts will raise their rates. If a cop (or his precinct) can't afford the insurance, then he won't just be able to precint-hop. It would also put serious pressure on stupid practices like "no knock" raids for non-violent crimes.
Improve the quality of personnel, and a lot of other problems will go away. Also: it shouldn't be the taxpayers paying these settlements. It should be the individuals responsible.
On another (mostly prog-infested) forum, I actually dared write: "If you don't take drugs, you won't overdose. Easy as that. Don't relieve drug users of their personal responsibility." Shockingly, my comment was upvoted.
Granted, it makes sense for pharmacies and doctors to report obvious abuses. But I don't see them having primary liability unless they are knowingly supplying drugs for abuse. Primary responsibility lies with the drug users, no one else.
– – – – –
And food for you vax-skeptics out there: There's a really odd situation in Germany/Switzerland/Austria just now. We are all seeing Covid case numbers rising rapidly in the 5th wave. In Switzerland, the numbers of people landing in the hospitals is relatively low. This is exactly what you (well, I) would expect, given the vaccinations.
Germany and Austria are both seeing hospitalizations rising in the same proportion as in previous waves, *despite* the vaccinations. Yet all three countries are in fairly similar situations. There is no obvious explanation for the difference. Odd…
One possible explanation is that Germany is more welcoming to immigrants and temporary visa workers than Switzerland. I don't know about Austria.
Diwali ended three weeks ago and everyone went home.
Big. A place with a name big enough to solve my resume problems of the last decade.
Microsoft.
BTW, I have had to do the physical and drug test for two jobs. Passed them both with no problems.
On another (mostly prog-infested) forum, I actually dared write: "If you don't take drugs, you won't overdose. Easy as that. Don't relieve drug users of their personal responsibility." Shockingly, my comment was upvoted.
Granted, it makes sense for pharmacies and doctors to report obvious abuses. But I don't see them having primary liability unless they are knowingly supplying drugs for abuse. Primary responsibility lies with the drug users, no one else.
I am of the opinion if you want to off yourself, go for it. We ought to hand you a bag of morphine pills and say go for it. Much better than driving the wrong way on the interstate
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/killed-students-school-band-bus-crash-81293239
or getting some poor police officer to shoot you.
https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2021/09/23/mckinney-officer-not-injured-in-afternoon-shooting/
@Greg
Pullin' for ya.
I didn't pass the coding challenge at Microsoft.
Passing a drug test is not an issue. I just find it interesting that I actually have to do one.
(We’ll see about Jimbo’s tree on Friday. Maybe Saturday.)
Jimbo ain't leaving TAMU. Everywhere else is a dumpster fire right now. TU (University of Texas) is looking for a place to lay down and die. LSU has got the NCAA sniffing all over the place and yelling about jerking scholarships away. Florida Gators are desperately trying to hire somebody to blame everything on too.
Jimbo is loved by the TAMU old army (former students). He beat Alabama when nobody else could (we Aggies like a good spoiler if you can't run the table). He has the number three recruiting class coming to TAMU next fall. Maybe number two by then. And people like him because he is doing right by his very sick son.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/college/article/Progressing-against-disease-Jimbo-Fisher-s-son-16151808.php
Please, Lord, just one sideways turkey bone sideways in the right place is all we ask
https://twitter.com/TPostMillennial/status/1463238217222832130
"A.F. Branco Cartoon – Turkey in Chief"
https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-turkey-in-chief/
"The Turkey in the White House continues to wreak havoc for Americans with his inflation-causing policies. Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021."
When Publix has supply chain issues, things are serious.
https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2021/11/23/publix-places-limits-on-gravy-cranberry-sauce-other-items-as-thanksgiving-stresses-supply-chain
Yeah, canned cat food variety packs. I'm starting to suspect arbitrage after visiting several stores today.
Pets are like kids to a lot of people, and my cat’s preferred food advertised during the NBA finals in June.
About 15 years ago, I suddenly got fed up with the rat race of continual, meaningless changes to tech. New libraries, new coding tools, trying to make every language solve every problem and support every paradigm. I used to think keeping up was fun, then – suddenly – it wasn't anymore. It was just a tiresome watching the same tired ideas be re-invented over and over again, because the current crop of 20-somethings haven't bothered to learn about the last five iterations, so they think they're doing something new.
I really enjoy coding, especially complex meta-level stuff. Why solve a single problem when – for not much more work – you can create a solution for a whole class of problems? But that's not how modern development works. Now, you are expected to paste together external libraries, which depend on more external libraries, which depend on… You wind up with lots of code that you don't need, that you have no idea what it does, what security holes it opens.
tl;dr: I probably wouldn't pass a modern coding test either. Not up-to-date on the latest reinvention of the wheel, and don't care about the most popular libraries currently in use. Also: I'm in the mood to be a grumpy geezer today, so…
"Tragic. Waukesha 11-Year-old Pom-Pom Girl in ICU After Demonic Christmas Parade Attack – Lost Kidney, Suffered Broken Pelvis, Lacerations on Lung and Remaining Kidney"
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/11/tragic-waukesha-11-year-old-pom-pom-girl-icu-demonic-christmas-parade-attack-lost-kidney-suffered-broken-pelvis-lacerations-lung-remaining-kidney/
"Jessalyn Torres is fighting for her life in ICU. She is a victim of the demonic Christmas Parade attack by monster Derrick Brooks.
Jessalyn lost a kidney, she suffered a broken pelvis, lacerations to her lungs, and a remaining kidney."
They need to have a fifteen minute trial for this animal Derrick Brooks and then take him out behind the courthouse with a firing squad. Instead they will probably say that he had a tortured childhood and was not responsible for his actions. Apparently he was out on a $1,000 bail for running over his girlfriend with the same car ?
tl;dr: I probably wouldn't pass a modern coding test either. Not up-to-date on the latest reinvention of the wheel, and don't care about the most popular libraries currently in use. Also: I'm in the mood to be a grumpy geezer today, so…
I've got hundreds of thousands of lines of code in F77 and C++ in usage daily around the world. Maybe a quarter million lines of code now out of our 1.3 million lines of code. Not too many complaints, mostly wanting more features, more features, more features.
I doubt that I would pass any coding test also. I've looked a couple of them plus the Microsoft book on programmer puzzles. Of course, I am an engineer, not a trained programmer. I did take a course on IBM 370 assembly language programming back at TAMU while I was there, otherwise I am self taught.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Would-Move-Mount-Fuji/dp/0316778494//p?tag=ttgnet-20
The full story at UT hasn't come out. Tom Herman is on the short list for the job at University of Washington.
@brad:
"Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it"
attrib. Santayana.
G.
"They need to have a fifteen minute trial for this animal Derrick Brooks and then take him out behind the courthouse with a firing squad. "
A waste of good ammunition. Use renewable resources, aka a rope and gravity.
Re coding, would it be too much to ask programmers to do a simple lookup before harassing me with reminders to "go paperless" or some such, when I already have. They already know my account and the options I have chosen.
Really, it's lazy spec writers and PHBs. Programmers can do almost anything if asked nicely, and given a decent budget.
A (motor) oil shortage here in the CA high desert?
I was talking to my neighbor, he mentioned that O’Reilly’s and Walmart were both almost out of motor oil. He was able to find enough to change his 2000-era Ranger, but…
I used to regularly utter imprecations against the bean-counters at my last job. The pressure to keep throughput up (counted as number of jobs completed) was extreme, and in one particular case, we could have doubled the number of jobs completed if they had just spent about £470 (not even plus tax because it would have been set off against other taxes) But could we convince the financial gurus of that? No, we couldn't.
Another case – for a period of several years we were hiring a couple of Sony DigiBeta video recorders, at £700 each, per week.. The particular recorder sold for about £40,000 each, new, at the time. So, it would have been cheaper to have bought them after about a year. But no, we hired for at least twice that long. Watertight budgets – capex was spent out, but opex had monies, and equipment hire came from opex. Add to that a mortal fear of having redundant, unused gear, and they spent at least twice as much as they needed to.
But then my bosses were convinced they knew how to do television, despite the fact that they came to UK because we'd been doing commercial TV for years longer than they had.
And they had a belief that all the videotape department did was take tapes out of boxes, and label them. They were disabused of that notion when they tried to outsource all the technical side of the operation when they did the big update in 1999.
G.
Most automotive fluids (engine and gear oils, trans fluid, antifreeze, brake fluid) store indefinitely if unopened, even in the modern plastic and cardboard contaIners. Buy 'em on sale, and keep several years' worth on hand. Same for all filters. Most (but not all) gaskets, too.
Oh, don’t forget I live in a dry climate. YMMV.
Who codes anymore? At my current job, not long after I was hired, the Devops guy talked the boss into abandoning our internal sourced project in favor of freeware stringing together Docker services written by further stringing together Node.js libraries no one truly understands.
Ah, the future is bright. Hot skillz!
The boss seemed unconcerned when I turned in notice.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/logic_and_data_weapons_to_defeat_the_covidians.html
Year-over-year, deaths up 14% in 2021 with 5 weeks to go.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/when-will-the-fda-approve-paxlovid?r=9m3vx
My local auction closed. A couple of things sold well but there were still far too many no bid, or$3 opening bid sales. Boxed educational kits and games did well, which I expected.
Wrt motor oil and other vehicle Expendables, we've been talking about stacking those for a while right here…. . Don't forget the stop leak products too.
N
Be careful about stop leak products in some modern models, particularly Honda. Research what fluids are appropriate for your particular vehicle.
New libraries, new coding tools, trying to make every language solve every problem and support every paradigm
Back in 1974-1979 when I was in the USAF we, as in the group of us 12, developed our own languages to solve very specific problems. There were no commercial languages. Our language would compile to pseudo code or machine code that was then run under the control of interpreters. The languages were designed to be used by personnel people, constructs that made sense to them. It was possible for these personnel analysts to completely change functions, flow, edits, outputs, everything, by changing their statements. We did not touch one line of the underlying code. A fourth generation system before anyone knew what to call such a system.
Four very specific languages were developed. Three of them created pseudo code, one created actual machine code.
The entire system bothered the masters at the Air Force Design Center as it was impossible for them to see the code statements created by the personnel analysts. Since these were separate languages they were not under the job descriptions of the design center.
The design center would only validate the control programs that ran the pseudo code and machine. These had to meet certain requirements. The actual personnel code statements were maintained in tables in separate files that we could send to the bases without going through the design center.
Since any patches to the code outside a normal release had to go through the design center this caused issues when an immediate fix needed to be made. Each program had a checksum that could be used to validate the executable. Any patches to the code would change this checksum.
Clever as we were we installed a special table that the design center knew nothing about. We could install code changes within this table. Each program when it ran would read from this table looking for code changes for itself. Any such changes found were then applied to the code in memory never touching the actual executable file on the computer.
This made it possible for us to send a code change to 130+ bases worldwide, overnight, without the three week delay caused by the design center.
We did not like the design center and they did not like us. We had long ago reverse engineered the calculation to do the checksum. We had figured out a way to permanently patch a program, store some data in unused spaces, and make the checksum what was recorded by the design center. But this failed when the executables were reloaded from tape so patching in memory was deemed a better solution.
It was a sophisticated system. It was modified to run personnel for the Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard; both civilian and military. Only the statements created by the personnel analysts in the languages were changed. The executing modules were the same for all branches of the service.
>> MIL has seen empty shelves with her own eyes, even relates the story of going to the store and finding they had no chicken at all, AND YET….. Thinks the supply chain issues are solved, stores are now deeply stocked, there is an over supply of beef ( despite there being almost no beef at all in the weekly store flyers) and is tired of hearing about supply chain issues.
As he has repeatedly told us, only Uncle Joe is intelligent enough to understand the supply chain issues.
Amusingly, the 'salad to go' place that recently opened uses orange as its signature color, including orange plastic forks. Lately though, my salad has been coming with a black fork. Yesterday I happened to see the manager and asked him about the forks, to which he promptly replied, "Oh, it's a supply chain issue." Good thing I hadn't started drinking my iced tea yet, otherwise I would have snorted it out my nose from laughing.
Bummer. Starlink just emailed me that they expect to expand service in my area by middle 2022.
>> Re coding, would it be too much to ask programmers to do a simple lookup before harassing me with reminders to "go paperless" or some such, when I already have. They already know my account and the options I have chosen.
Since it's a savings to the sender (paper, envelope, printing, sorting, inserting, postage), plus more opportunities to assess late fees when you miss the emailed statement in your crowded inbox, it's easier just to bombard everyone to 'go paperless' regardless if they've already made that choice.
My company still sends out payment envelopes with some of its paper bills even though many customers pay electronically. I reached out to someone senior in that division and asked him why not track payment type and save the money on envelopes and possibly postage and don't blindly send envelopes to everyone, as some competitors do. He said he's aware and has been trying to get the project approved but the business users keep insisting on other priorities. Sounds like a 'skunk works' project to me.
Got the bill for our corporate health insurance for December today from BCBS for our Silver PPO plan. The rate changed from $850 / month / employee to $911 / month / employee. An increase of 7%. Lovely.
A child died of injuries today, becoming the 6th fatality of this depraved racially motivated murderer*. Judge sets bail at $5 million.
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2021/11/23/darrell-brooks-bail-set-at-5-million-complaint-says-he-appeared-to-be-swerving-to-hit-as-many-people-as-possible-n431168
Note that the perp cried at the news. The libs will cite this as proof of genuine remorse. It's more likely evidence of despair at having to raise more bail.
The prosecutors are screwing up already. They should have analyzed the video and mapped the track of the vehicle and position of the victims. They should have argued that each swerve was a separate decision, and made deaths separated by decision points a separate charge. The first death came after two decision points described by the officer:
Bail $5 million for the first death, then double it for every decision point that resulted in another death.
*Using the same standards the left-wing press used in the Rittenhouse case, only with 10x the justification based on social media posts by the perp.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/23/dems-joe-biden-infrastructure-midterms-523194
Sheer clueless idiocy. Absolutely hilarious.
Most Americans can name what Biden and the Democrats have done but is nowhere mentioned in the article (or the polls):
–Stifled supplies and created conditions for gasoline prices to go up 50% in less than a year, with natural gas and heating oil poised to rape the middle class this winter.
–Opened the southern border to one-million alien invaders and flown them deep into the interior of the U.S. without testing for Wango-tango-kill-your-granny-o-flu.
–Weaponized the DOJ and FBI to counter an existential threat to the republic–parents critical of school boards
–Called back from the dead, gave oxygen and steroids to the inflation monster that had been mostly dormant for decades.
–Schemed with the LSM to lie to the American people, badly, so they keep getting caught in shiite-faced lies
And the ones that were really paying attention noticed:
–Passed an "infrastructure bill" that is 80% funding of liberal wet dreams and 20% infrastructure, much of the latter under the control of a clueless inexperienced born-male Transportation "Secretary" that stayed home trying to breast-feed adopted children while west coast shipping came to a stop.
–Biden himself continues to deteriorate, telling lies, making shiite up, fumbling his lines, and generally proving that he has the mental acuity of month-old chicken salad
The WP admin pages are very strange on Opera, as I've mentioned. And they are not accessible from older browsers. I hate it when the cool kids move on and break their toys when they leave.
Temp issue for me but frustrating.
Goodnight y'all
N
"…month-old chicken salad"
Shudder.
Away from home, using new phone, Android 11. I can't seem to get the editor to do quotes or even select more than one word. Worked a few days ago.
It's too late to fool with it. Maybe tomorrow.
You give him too much credit.
Post is up. Schedule function didn't work at 530 or at 930 when I tried again. Text too small on my phone to see any problem. Anyway, up now
N