Still cold. Still damp. Still windy. 26F when I went to bed, and likely still pretty close to that at the start of today. It did get above freezing, at least in the sun, for a bit yesterday.
We had some frozen pipes. Namely the cold water supply to the on-demand water heater, which we moved from inside the house, to outside when we replaced our tank water heater. All the lines were insulated at install, but for whatever reason, 8 inches of galvanized pipe coming out of the house and a valve were not insulated. The bypass valves at the heater unit were also not insulated. Predictably, that is what froze. It took a while to slowly thaw, using an incandescent light bulb applied to the big valve and cold water line, and then later adding a ceramic ‘personal’ heater under the pipes and the unit, but we escaped without damage to the pipes or the heater itself.
Some lessons were learned. I forgot about the hot water heater. I forgot it was hanging out in the wind on the side of the house, and I didn’t even check to see if the pipes were insulated. When my wife thought of it, I was already in my jammies ready for bed, and didn’t go out to check in the 17F wind. I decided to go to bed and let fate take its course. LAZY! Of course I woke up to no hot water. I don’t know if the additional insulation would have kept the pipe from freezing. I don’t know if the “skirt” I’d planned to build to enclose the lower half of the unit and cover the pipes would have been enough. The combination probably would have been, especially if I put a lamp bulb in there to raise the ambient temp.
So ‘prepper fail’ for sure. If the job of installing the heater had been properly finished, likely no issues. If I’d checked, no issues. We got lucky. Now, I did have the propane fired on-demand water heater we’ve been using for the outdoor shower at the BOL I could have plumbed in if the heater got damaged. Or I could have used one of the two used on-demand heaters I’ve got stored in the attic at my rent house, or even the used on-demand heater I’ve got stored at the BOL, because if the heater got damaged, there would likely be a lot of people with damaged heaters and zero in stock to buy. That happened last time. I didn’t want to be in that position, so I bought the used one at the BOL as a spare. NOT breaking the heater would be the best option by far. And I didn’t take the steps I should have taken.
I also have most of my plumbing supplies and tools at the BOL. I would be hard pressed to do more than very basic stuff here, and probably wouldn’t have the fittings. I certainly wouldn’t be in a position to help other neighbors like last year. Now my neighbors at the BOL- them I could help, and I let two of them know where the stuff was and how to get to it if needed. It’s clear that managing stores and logistics for this house and the BOL, making decisions about what and how much to stack at each location, is going to involve duplication and some compromise. I need to get more serious about equipping the BOL with its own set of tools and supplies. Can’t compromise the place we live most of the time, and don’t want to be moving stuff back and forth all the time.
That goes for food, water, meds, household supplies, etc. I really need to make a place for a lot more stuff to be transferred and stored up there. That is why I bought the shelving units from the circus estate. Need to execute on the plan…
The biggest difference between this cold snap and the last one is that we didn’t lose power. That makes all the difference. Also, it’s going to be a much shorter event. Probably. Touch wood.
Today I’ll be in last minute present wrapping and food preparing mode. Then we’ll open most of the gifts tonight. Some will be tomorrow morning. We’ll eat Christmas dinner here, then head to the BOL later Christmas day (probably.) Or we might just stay here, and mom will see the BOL next visit. Don’t really know. I might end up driving up by myself to unload my tower, and check on everything. It’s all kinda fluid at the moment.
Enjoy the days. I hope you get some good preps from the jolly fat man.
nick
I was going to argue, but yeah…… Embrace the artery hardening goodness!
Woke up at 5AM to beeping – power was out. After telling us rolling blackouts wouldn’t be necessary, we had a, well, you know. I got up and turned off the beeping units and flipped the breakers off for the big stuff -garage sub panel, HVAC, water heater, etc. I wait to flip those back on after power is reliably up, just in case. I fired up the gas logs, then went and shut down my VMware server.
Power was restored 30 minutes after it was lost.
Lessons learned? Small ones. I didn’t have my normal flashlight by the bed, but I did have one on my keychain. I couldn’t find the mini lanterns. We moved them when I redid the pantry, and now they are hiding somewhere.
I also need to bite the bullet and get a proper UPS. I have enough equipment to justify it. My UPS kept the critical equipment up though – Google fiber connection, firewall, and NAS, though the NAS did its job and entered it’s safe mode.
Added: I’m beginning to consider a whole house generator purchase, but I’m not there yet…
TVA mandated rolling blackouts. I got nailed this morning at 7:20, back on at 7:50. TVA cannot handle current load. Had the same issue this summer. And the PLT’s want to add a couple hundred thousand electric chargers to the grid. Imagine several multi-megawatt charging stations for trucks. Just the surge of restoring power to those things would strain the grid.
Is the future of power for homes only 12 hours a day? One hour on, one hour off? Except for the executive branch and legislative branch. They would demand they get all they want, 24 hours a day. Lording over us peons.
That’s a rhetorical question, right?
And do you think they’re worried about the power going out at John Roberts house?
We have Eddie Bauer and Lands End left from Vantucky, real down, not Thinsulate.
Thinsulate is synthetic, developed for the military. It works even when it gets wet, but the insulating properties tend to break down over time.
A quality down coat, taken care of properly will last forever. Just take it to the cleaners once a year and make sure they understand that they need to apply a down process and not a dry cleaning.
My Lands End down coat still looks new nearly a decade later.
Every year my coat got heavier living up there. The last one I found at the Sears in Vantucky on closeout sale of the Lands End specialty section, one department over from where Tonya Harding sold tools.
Yeah, we’re going to regret losing Sears before too long.
The base Ford Jesus Truck requires 8 hours at 17 kW on a 240 volt circuit for a full charge, good for about 150 miles or so of real world driving in ideal weather in nearly new condition. According to the reviews I’ve seen, the vehicle loses ~ 10 miles of range charge just sitting in the driveway overnight – again in ideal conditions — so everyone will want to charge while they sleep.
The dirty secret Ford is not disclosing outside of the owners manual is that the preference is for “slow” charging at 120 or 240 V at home. “Supercharging” will greatly shorten the life of the battery per their own testing.
100,000 Jesus Trucks — not an impossible figure for Texas — will completely blow the reserve number of ~ 2000 MW which ERCOT seems to try to maintain during times like this weekend. Again, I’m predicting this all comes to a head in Summer 2024, when this state has a million more people not counting illegals and international colonization efforts through legal means.
In non-political, non-Jesus Truck bashing news, I made dough last night for our new annual Christmas Eve tradition of deep dish pizza cooked at a precise temperature on the gas grill equipped with pizza stones. The slow chilled rising process for the dough is continuing as I type.
Now I need to find my pizza pans, sourced from a restaurant gear manufacturer in WA State.
And check in with a build process at work. The last time I wasn’t working was the trip to New Orleans in October.
Not any talk about Global Warming on MSM this week.
Ah, Stu, how many times must you be reschooled. Keep it up and it will be off the reeducation camp for you.
It is CLIMATE CHANGE.
Which is really stupid as the climate changes every day, every hour. Climate change is a fact of life, it has been for thousands of years.
FIFY
>> I was going to argue, but yeah…… Embrace the artery hardening goodness!
And there’s always Golden Corral as backup!
Short term variations are weather.
Longer-term variations are climate.
The thirty-year window that they like to use as a climate baseline is not long enough to include relaively short-term natural variability. Look at the solar cycle. The real climate deniers are the greenies and the communist-funded destroyers of western civilization, who ignore longer term natural variability so they can blame man-made causes.
As JEP used to point out, there is no method to measure the temperature of the earth, or agreement on what the ideal temperature might be.
Low atmospheric CO2 levels before the rise of forested ecosystems
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/12/22/low-atmospheric-co2-levels-before-the-rise-of-forested-ecosystems/
The normal state of the earth for the last million years is a glaciated frozen hell. During at least one of these glaciations the CO2 level dropped almost too low to sustain life on earth.
The global warming scam was based on a 30-year (short-term) trend that is arguably over, to be replaced by a probably symmetrical downward trend and a rear-guard green weinie action plan to blame everything–including cold waves and large snowfalls–on “climate change”. Again, climate is just a anthro-centric 30-year average and will always be changing. Also true for any time scale in earth geologic history.
If I live long enough I look forward to regular reports of the climate liars like Kerry, Mann, and a host of others being tracked and extracted from their hidey holes like WWII criminals, prosecuted, and sentenced to a life imprisoned, preferably in an uninsulated concrete block building somewhere in the Dakotas where the natural temperature variation has the highest variability.
Far West San Antonio: 7:30 AM today, 18 degrees.
11:20 AM, 34 degrees. MAYBE the ice on the stock tank will melt?
Well, still in pjs, but fed.
Mom made bacon and muffins when she got up. I slept.
34F at 10am, 42F in the sun – oops, just went to 43F – at 1140am.
Rent house still hasn’t thawed under the bathroom. They have water in the kitchen but no drain and slow supply in the bath. I have a bad feeling that when it melts there will be water running out from under the house…
Plan for today is presents and food, not crawling around in the muck, freezing, but I might have to get my kerosene construction heater out and point it under the house for my tenants. We’ll give it another hour.
n
Didn’t mention it yesterday but I noticed new license plate readers at the edge of our Business improvement district, on the main street that goes thru my neighborhood.
Same as the ones I linked and talked about previously.
so
who paid for them?
who is looking at them?
what data is retained and how long?
WHY was the money spent?
are they sharing with law enforcement?
n
Just plate reading cameras? Any hardware which looks like a camera but aimed at the road or vehicle interior instead of the plate?
Any directional RF antennas?
Re: DVD +DL size and Win Recovery ISO Disk.
+DL size is 8.5 GB. One of the recovery folders is over 10.5 GB and they total almost 12 GB. I did order a small spindle of them as I wasn’t aware of the size increase., but they probably won’t help with this problem.
@greg, it’s this one
https://www.flocksafety.com/products/flock-cameras
n
My 13yo is singing Pat Benatar in the shower.
All of musical history is available in one giant jumbled pile without any timeline* or context. It makes for some weird moments.
n
*until now, one’s experience of popular music was very linear, with it very much placed along a timeline. That changed a bit with wide availability of recordings, but the listener was still very aware of WHEN the recording was made, and how it fit into the musical landscape.
The tech for re-creating big in person events is really crazy now. Find the DVD extra for “Bohemian Rhapsody” featuring the complete re-creation of Queen’s Live Aid performance, complete with digital Wembley Stadium.
I’m curious to see how much money Sony finally spent to re-create this moment in Tampa at the “Old Sombrero” stadium.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg-O90NJ34E
A couple of months ago I downloaded a W11 recovery ISO and put it on an 8GB thumb drive without any issues.
You may be better off just installing W11 (or W10) like it was a new computer. I have tried recoveries before and it generally wastes times as it does not work. Out of about 5 attempts I have only had 1 work.
I just checked and the W11, 64 bit, multiple edition, download is 5.6 GB. Should fit easily on a DVD.
We have plate reader cameras at the two major entrances to my small town. The readers are used to scan license plates looking for wanted vehicles. They alert at the police dispatch office who then contacts a patrol officer. In the last year they have found half a dozen wanted vehicles. The information is only kept for a couple months (so they say). I find no real reason why the police would want to keep the information longer. Since when have police departments been reasonable with privacy intrusions?
BC: Santa’s Reindeer Have Kevlar
https://www.gocomics.com/wizardofid/2022/12/24
Oh my !
The version of WIndows 10 I was using started out as Windows 8, 8.5, and then 10. I really don’t want to reinstall it. (Might have been Windows 7.)
And I doubt if I can if I can find the documentation to support this. When I built the system I had an used a copy of 8 (7?) I had been given; I immediately upgraded to 8 (or 8.5) and then to 10 as it was available at very soon after I built the system.
Dilbert Crypto Meltdown
https://dilbert.com/strip/2022-12-24
Oh yeah, Adams has SBF pegged.
Might not be a bad idea to just install fresh after going through that many iterations of Windows. Lot of crud gets left behind, registry gets bloated, etc. A fresh install will eliminate that stuff.
Yeh, it is a pain to have to reinstall and reconfigure applications. My newest system was not too bad as it fast, W11 installed in 45 seconds. It was still a tedious process. I basically only installed when I encountered the need for the application. This also made me visit the vendor website to get the latest version if possible.
If you are concerned about data files install a new disc drive, SSD, no spinning rust. You may be able to extract your data files by connecting the old drive using a SATA to USB adapter.
The base Ford Jesus Truck requires 8 hours at 17 kW on a 240 volt circuit for a full charge, good for about 150 miles or so of real world driving in ideal weather in nearly new condition. According to the reviews I’ve seen, the vehicle loses ~ 10 miles of range charge just sitting in the driveway overnight – again in ideal conditions — so everyone will want to charge while they sleep.
My office building has a demand charge of 1.0 cents/kwh because it pulls 17 kw demand with my 400 amp service. All of these houses and residential neighborhoods are not built for 17 kw PER electric vehicle plus their regular electrical demand.
Rewiring all of these neighborhoods electrical service is going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars, maybe even trillions of dollars. And there is a worldwide shortage of copper. And transformers.
“Utilities sound alarm over distribution transformer shortage as procurement times surpass 1 year and costs triple”
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/distribution-transformer-shortage-appa-casten/639059/
“Here It Is: Sham January 6 Committee Recommends Banning Trump From Public Office in Final Report”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/sham-january-6-committee-recommends-banning-trump-public-office-final-report/
So an unconstitutional committee full of dumbrocrats and proto dumbrocrats thinks that it can ban a person from running for President. Amazing.
And Divemedic thinks that Trump will die in jail.
https://areaocho.com/show-trials-4/
I backed up my data last week also, so that’s not a problem. My mail is shared on my laptop so it should be OK also.
I’m not looking forward to reinstalling all of my software: the motherboard drivers, Video card files, Malware Bytes, Brave, Thunderbird, MS Office, Gimp, Audacity, Irfanview, Chrome, Firefox, 7-Zip, Arachnophilia, Java, Filezilla, FreeCommander, Speccy, PerformanceTest and probably some others I don’t recall at this time.
I have a clean install of Win11 Pro. Silly thing updated to 22H2 while I was playing and exploring. Which on a fan-less PC was a worry, sucker felt pretty hot to me. So it rebooted and ever since it just runs a bit warmer than my phone when it is charging.
I used Microsoft’s mediacreationtool.exe to make the ISO file. “Burned” it to a USB stick. Did it again a couple of days later and burned a DVD and I saved a copy on the PC. It’s 4.22 GB. You run setup.exe.
I also dug around to find my product key. That was another MS program. “ShowKeyPlus”? I forget the exact name, it came from the Microsoft Store. Pretty sure about that. That gave me the product key in use. There’s also a “BackupProductKeyDefault” in the Registry.
Anyway. It looks to me that if my system chokes and pukes, I run setup.exe and Win11 does its thing and repairs the problem. Or with a crashed HD, it re-installs from scratch. I don’t know for sure, it’s all hearsay.
I made restore discs with XP and Win7. XP used two CDs. The Win7 discs are in the old PC’s case, I think it was three discs. I never had to use any of them.
I forget how it worked with XP. With Win7 the directions talked like it can install or repair. No clue if it works. How it has changed from Win7 through Win10, I have no clue.
I know how to re-install Win98Se but…. I did that “a lot”. ( ←- notice please, TWO WORDS.) ( a peeve )
Win11 is fun. Yeah, there’s stuff I can’t find easily. But oh, hey, Disc Management for example, looks like they stole the code from WfW 3.11 with a slight re-skin. Ditto Device Mangler.
Just use “lotsatimes”.
Totally understand. With the new Win11 box I’m re-installing things I miss as I miss them.
Motherboard drivers? Video drivers? Nic drivers? All built into the OS now.
A PDF printer? PDF reader? Firefox does that. I don’t know when it started being able to do so, but it works quite well.
Then install PaintShopPro7. The Lexmark printer. FileZilla for updating my website. utorrent. The Dymo Printer craziness. The Office 97ish viewers for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. I’m cool with using WordPad, it does what I need, I don’t need Word.
There’s a lot more but they can sit in the corner until I need them.
I know people for whom Trump being arrested with be the red line. Jus’ sayin’.
Re-installing Firefox isn’t that big a deal. Just import your saved favorites. Tho if you have saved your current Profile, all of your browser add-ons come across.
T-Bird is a witch. Maybe because I’m using version 2.0.0..24. But Thunderbird and Firefox burrow into users / appdata / roaming and WTF. I might not be bright enough to have them save all of their stuff on my D:\ drive but it would make back-ups easier.
Merry Christmas Y’all. 🙂
Nick Flandrey says: 24 December 2022 at 02:23
Uh-oh. I am getting ready to buy my first “digital” TV. That’s right, I’m still analog. You see, my wife and I don’t watch much TV, and our old CRTs have been just fine for our needs. They get their programming from DirecTV through two of their DVRs and an analog video distribution system. One of the DVRs quit, and DTV said there are no more DVRs available through them with analog outputs. If we were to stay with DTV, we would have to tear out everything and start over. Good time to cut the cord and get our TV over the Internet. I recently had a local company activate our new Internet service. It is allegedly fast enough for TV, supposedly 100 Mb/s symmetrical, but most days it is down around 50 down and 30 up. There are other reasons why I am dumping DTV, but this is already too long.
I have a friend who did a similar switch from cable TV programming to Internet, and he has shared his fun with me over the last year, including demonstrations. My plan is to start with YouTube TV and add if we need programming I can’t get over that. No sports. He convinced me that Roku has a good enough streaming device, and not to bother with one built-in to the TV, mostly for easy upgrades. He also likes the Roku networking compared to others he has tried. I don’t find the Roku UI bad at all.
Now my question. I am attracted to a certain Samsung TV, and will probably get it, for several reasons. Seems like it can do what I want, but I am slightly paranoid about privacy. I plan to feed the Roku with Ethernet, but we do have Wi-Fi in the house. Seems like getting just a monitor or Dumb TV is not a good idea these days, and trying to isolate a smart TV is not very effective.
What are some thoughts? And, yes, I will probably put the Roku on a separate network segment to isolate it from the computers, just for a bit more safety.
Oh, my Internet speed might be a limitation, but Frontier is promising either 1 Gb/s or 2 Gb/s symmetrical fiber real soon. I will believe that when I see the trucks… Sheesh, I just moved into the 20th century, and now they are offering me a ticket into the 21st.
When I used T-Bird on Linux, my biggest complaint was that it didn’t work well with Google account contacts. I worked around it, but it drove my wife nuts. I was trying to get it to work with K-9 E-mail on Android, which worked quite well, but T-Bird botched contact sync in ways that weren’t obvious until we got new phones. Once again, my wife “lost” most of her contacts because they were stored on her phone and not in her Google account. Fortunately, I kept the old phones, and was able to retrieve all her contacts and get them on her new phone and into Outlook. Now, sync seems to work OK. My contacts were all OK, BTW.
I have never understood why something as simple as contacts hasn’t been standardized so they work seamlessly everywhere. What a goat rope. I don’t know if T-Bird for Windows works any better than on Linux. I like Outlook 365 almost as well as older versions, but Outlook for Android was obviously developed by a different team (probably from a different planet,) and is not good at all. The calendar and contacts are especially poorly implemented. The email part works fine. I have too much time invested in getting all this to work to switch any time soon.
We have several Samsung “”dumb” flat screen TVs, one which is nine years old and still runs like new.
Finding a 4k set without the “smart” features will be tough, but it is definitely possible with 1080p.
There really isn’t any point to worrying about the two way features coming with ATSC 3.0. IIRC, the new standard will not be backwards compatible an the government will not mandate converter boxes like they did with NTSC to ATSC. If you want broadcast TV, you will have to accept the new standard.
If you’re cutting the cord, I recommend an Antennas Direct aerial in the attic feeding the house coax which used to carry the cable signal. Mount the antenna on a stable tripod. I like Shure speaker tripods.
If you are unsure which antenna is right for you, call them. The girls who answer the phones will happily offer recommendations, and they will not oversell in my experience.
I still have a Sony Grand Wega tube set in my family room. I’m beginning to think that TV will outlive me.
>> What are some thoughts? And, yes, I will probably put the Roku on a separate network segment to isolate it from the computers, just for a bit more safety.
@JimB, recently bought a nice 55 inch LG “smart TV” from Costco. Definite improvement from 10(?) year-old 42 inch LG. Old one was “dumb,” new one runs WebOS which I ignored (ie didn’t give it my WiFi password). It put up one ‘are you sure?’’ screen telling me all the great things I’ll be missing, okay, sure, but no thanks. One HDMI input from the Cox modem router and another HDMI input from an ancient Roku box which connects over ethernet to the router. ‘Good enough’ for me given that for years I’ve been using Gmail, Chrome and Echo/Alexa, so my expectation of privacy is pretty low. If the new TV has some hidden camera and is watching to see what brand of popcorn I eat while watching Netflix, I say go for it. I’m not easily swayed by almost any advertising. Not to mention what info our .gov TLA agencies have compiled on many of us. Google is already getting nervous about Chat GPT and who knows what the internet will look like in 20 years, maybe I’ll be around to find out. But we’ve got much bigger problems in this country that we need to focus on (see D.C.) before there is no internet left. Just my two cents on Xmas Eve.
>> I have never understood why something as simple as contacts hasn’t been standardized so they work seamlessly everywhere.
It’s called software lock-in.
>> I still have a Sony Grand Wega tube set in my family room. I’m beginning to think that TV will outlive me.
We’ve been binge watching The Sopranos and for the first several seasons the TV product placement was all Phillips. Almost to the end and there’s been an obvious switch to Sony Trinitrons, which I remember my parents having several of them.
@nick
all of music history is available
Speaking of which. Recall one can access Tom Lehrer’s catalog online, free of copyright, since 2007.
https://tomlehrersongs.com
Uh, never had cable here, not available to me. We used to have OTA TV in the analog days, repeaters on a local mountain, but those went away when digital was mandated. The primary analog signals were converted to digital, but I can’t get signals from that mountain – signal is blocked by another hill. So… no OTA TV, period. That’s why I moved to DirecTV almost 20 years ago. I think it has lived past its usefulness, especially if I can get high enough Internet speed. I will buy a 4k set, but I might have to turn things down to 1080p if my speed isn’t enough.
I could test all this on my computer, but time is short. I didn’t say it, but I will have to remove our DTV antenna (parabolic dish) because of a deck renovation that hopefully will start in a week or two. Since we will lose DTV for the duration of that project, I thought it would force the issue to get something else. Will see how it goes. AFAIK, even a 1080p picture will be better than my old analog TV. Of course it will. If fiber comes to my site, I could go wild!
I am not exactly new to this TV thing, having worked in network TV decades ago. It’s just that I haven’t kept up. We used to visit my aunt’s home before she died in February, and had lots of experience watching cable programming on a pretty nice digital TV. What I am getting will be better. I also didn’t mention that I will replace my analog video distribution system with networked Roku boxen, tied together with Ethernet. Should work… uh, differently. With that, and the deck project, my posts might be more scarce than usual… Thanks for the advice.
Oh, forgot to mention that I have no other snooping devices in our home: just two Android phones (!) and a Windows 10 notebook with a built-in webcam that my wife uses. It seems able to be turned off positively. Tape also works. I don’t worry too much about microphones. Maybe I should. Although I don’t worry too much about snooping, it is everywhere, especially when we go our of our home. Cameras are everywhere.
@Alan, thanks for your TV experience. It is in line with my friend’s.
A few months ago, we visited family out of town. The first night, we were alone in their home… except for an Alexa. When we left for dinner, I told my wife I had noticed it, and it seemed creepy. I also wondered if there were any cameras around the inside of the house. When the family got home the next morning, I learned in a casual conversation that they are oblivious to all the security implications. No cameras, but smart TVs all over, including outside on the patio. They are nontechies, so I just let it all go. They were gracious enough to let us stay with them, but I still felt as if someone was watching.
Life will never be the same. I realize that we are escaping for now, but won’t be able for long. It makes me more careful. I dread the day when “they” will read our thoughts.
I knew a guy who had worked for one of the TLAs way back in the late 1980s. Of course, he wouldn’t tell much, but he did make implications. Back then, they were doing some wicked-smart stuff from a tech standpoint. Just imagine what they are up to now. Ted Kaczynski wasn’t wrong to live off the grid. (Otherwise, he was a thoroughly bad guy.)
Yes, but Rhino put out a really nice CD collection about 20 years ago which is worth the money if you are a fan.
Spring in Tampa always included Dr. Paul Bearer, the local horror movie show host, lip syncing to “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”. I was exposed to Tom Lehrer way too young.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu_wmomQeDU
I thought Dr. Paul was the only guest in the cornfield on “Hee Haw” who never wore the requisite overalls, but @Ray pointed out that there were others.
@jenny:
Tom Lehrer Songs has a notice on it now – “All my songs are now public domain. As a result this website will go away in a few months” or words to that effect.
G.
Understood. But something that probably should be accomplished considering your migration path. A clean install will be a much happier computer. No driver conflicts, no orphaned DLL’s, new network drivers, cleaned up printer drivers. There is a lot to be said for doing a clean install.
Reinstalling stuff is a pain. It will still clean up the installation and perhaps get software that is native to W11 and 64 bit if possible. In the process you may find stuff you no longer really need.
A few memes in search of laughter
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2022/12/memes-that-made-me-laugh-138.html
Merry Christmas
Wow, Divemedic was suspended without pay for nine days on the word of a insane patient in the ER.
https://areaocho.com/investigation-2/
“I was originally going to take a few days off, but felt the need to report this. Until this morning, I was the subject of a criminal and work related investigation. I have been suspended without pay for the past week. I got the call this morning and have been cleared of all wrongdoing, just in time to return to work on Christmas Day.”
Divemedic needs to file charges on the guy and file a civil case for lost wages against the guy at the JP. That way if the guy comes after him, there is a case already.
For me it’s not just the privacy issues, it’s the monitization of my life, without me benefiting.
FWIW, we cut the cable a couple years ago when ATT finally got fiber to the home in our neighborhood. The kids watch stuff on roku (separate box, not thru an app on the tv) and I watch youtube vids. Wife got Disney + but IDK if we still have it. We don’t watch it. We might still have a netflix account, and watch thru the roku, same for prime.
I finally got tired of the slow interface performance of the roku in the bedroom and put an amazon firestick on that tv. I had a kodi box for a while but it did youtube very poorly, and it turned out that I only watch youtube, and I’m the only one uses that tv.
We’ve got a couple of appleTVs but I don’t think any of them are connected to anything.
—-
kids are calling me back to presents….
n
AT&T didn’t require the Uverse boondoggle with the fiber data plan?
Nope, straight fiber to the home. no BS triple play, no directv, nothing.
———
Lots of good presents were exchanged here at Casa de Nick… kids were happy with their loot.
Dinner was a ribeye roast and came out great. All in all, a really great day.
n
Christmas morning here, so Merry Christmas to y’all.
With the kids grown, we don’t do much more than have a nice meal. This year, unusually, we’re going out for that – a local restaurant us offering a nice menu.
Otherwise, a lazy day with family…
Oh no, if a bird hits a wind turbine and dies, what would happen if other flying objects hit a wind turbine ? A picture taken a short while ago:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjCV9AOmIZ3nx-FKF9gfj7TaqUY51-ANPqqLSzpzf3nRJTsjDeAC-TMkRrNeR2JhgQWrv1RrlotufKb9LIJ7oyu-skkiEzRZ0kQKLm7BPRisyMhcTDOiMWHn_hdpMGMLYtE4tWDisPkVDw0DFquf3mva88ukkUDMGgmy9WEm9-zOVoe4ZgkBdsT_h2/s641/Santa%20and%20wind%20turbine.png
From:
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2022/12/christmas-eve-thoughts.html
Well the stockings are hung by the chimney with care, and there are hopes that St. Nick will soon be there…
Hardest part is getting the kids to bed.
The Elf on the Shelf left a retirement note. She’s headed to some other family. A jolly fat man will soon leave some extra presents for the good little girls and boys, instead of stealing all their stuff, and all for the price of some ‘nog and cookies. Pretty good deal.
Temps are back down to 25F and falling slowly. Fortunately the wind is much less gusty. I hope we can get thru another night without issues.
With that, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
nick
Still not Christmas here, but
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good Night!
Merry Xmas to all the fine ladies and gents who choose to spend some part of their day here bringing enlightenment and laughter to us all, and to their significant others that tolerate the occasional ‘staring at one’s phone’ to allow us to keep the “pipes” from freezing and the reservoir filled. It’s Bob’s memory, Barbara’s generosity and Nick’s and Rick’s valiant time and effort that is a wonderful gift to us all, so on behalf of the gang I say thanks to them, and so to all then, a good night.
Last NA post??
It is Christmas morning here in the Black Forest. Blessings of the day to you all.
We had German Christmas yesterday, with afternoon tea, Christmas carols, presents and a light meal (beef tongue for the others, Wiener Würstchen for me), home made potato salad and lamb’s ear salad, washed down with Tannenzäpfle https://www.rothaus.de/biere/tannenzaepfle
I got a novel, a beautiful cookbook about traditional baking throughout Europe, and my standard hunting calendar, with nice photos and the phases of the moon, some money towards my stalking trip to Scotland, and no socks, so I gave myself some!
Today we will have a late breakfast with Cuvée de l’écusson https://www.bernard-massard.lu/en/our-products/ , a walk in the middle of the day, and an early dinner of pan-fried roe deer backstrap with chestnut and mushroom, and cranberry and port sauces, mashed potatoes with scallions, and red cabbage, with some local red wine.
Then Christmas vespers in the neighbouring village this evening.