Cool to start, but warming all the way to hot, if I am guessing right. I just hope for clear and dry. Well, as dry as this part of Texas can be. Last night’s fireworks got rained out but rescheduled for tonight if it’s not raining in the afternoon and evening. Fingers crossed.
Yesterday was a mixed bag. No big celebration, but I did get the lawn mostly mowed. Not completely mowed, and I didn’t get the fire ants poisoned, but it should only take a short while to finish today. Also got the boat ready for the water, but then the battery was dead. Replaced the battery and it started right up, so if the weather is nice, we’ll take the boat out and try out the towed inflatable and maybe the wakeboard.
The evening had me making and eating dinner.
A pretty good family day, all considered, especially when other families are not whole and never will be again. Disasters happen. Some you can prep for, some you can’t.
Most of them, stacks will help. All of them, having people who love you and who you love will help.
nick
Locksmith.
If your parents bought the safe from a dealer, the owner probably has someone in-house or on speed dial.
Figured out some more stuff on the truck. Mr. Lynn corrected me when I said “junk of steel” when I really meant “hunk of steel”. The majority of the machine is now aluminum.
The Ford system connects to my iPhone nicely. I set up CarPlay but had to disable that. I figured out how to use Google maps and get that on the screen. I was also able to set up blind spot monitoring, which is not on by default. So many options and settings.
I figured out the massaging seats, both passenger and driver. Interesting. I will try it out when I get past Chattanooga on the way home. On my next trip to Texas it may help on that long drive when the muscles start getting sore from little movement.
I found switches to turn on floodlights in the mirrors that will illuminate the ground around the doors.
I will stop on the way home at Costco and fill up and see how much fuel I have consumed. That 36 gallon tank will take some getting used to. A driving range of over 500 miles between fill ups is a long ways. I liked the Highlander where every 300 miles it was necessary to stop. That was good for the legs and bladder. Massaging seats may make that better.
My old truck it was necessary to tell the vehicle to remember the seat, mirrors, pedals (yes, they move) and steering wheel position. This truck remembers the last setting. I have also connected the settings to my key so that everything will reset to my settings when I get in the truck.
Lots of prayers this morning.
Prayers for our friend Lynn, his father, mother, and family.
Prayers for the flood victims.
The Decline and Fall of Our Degreed So-Called Experts
https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2025/07/04/the-decline-and-fall-of-our-so-called-degreed-experts-n2659917
This is an enumeration of failures, not an examination of reasons in depth, although the obvious inference is that the mewlings of the expert class have been purposefully disconnected from any effort based in facts and analysis in favor of ideological pronouncements devoid of either.
The upside of 500 mile range is that no stops in Arkansas are necessary if you fill up in Memphis.
Buc-ee’s announced a West Memphis store, the first in Arkansas.
The Beaver knows, but he still likes his tax breaks.
In the CS program where I did my first pass at grad school, the faculty selected the undergrad Suma Cum Laude graduate who would headline at the commencement in the Fall of her – genetic female in case you are wondering – Junior year.
The other candidate for the honor, a girl with a Federal grant related to what I gathered was a severe learning disability, ended up graduating with a Psychology degree because she lacked the ability to pass the 3000 and 4000 level CS classes. She is now tenure track faculty in the Engineering Department of a UC system school.
At the school where I finally got my Masters, the graduate CS program was largely a L1 visa diploma mill, but, to be fair, that school with the mascot sporting the long-ish horns up the freeway did the same thing with their non-thesis Masters only much more quietly.
And, based on what I’ve observed from our designated Go “expert” at work along with several others over the last decade, the Stroustrup era out in College Station did as much damage in the CS department as Jimbo did to the athletic program out at the fancy new football stadium.
Now, Bjarne is wreaking havoc at Columbia, probably still trying to write a successful book without the Death Star logo on the copyright page, but I don’t believe they were insane enough to make him CS Chair.
Only in Texas.
Traveling through Arkansas the need to break out a headlight and two teeth to appear like a local is overwhelming.
Breaking out the headlight in any modern vehicle could be expensive.
Better to have a pole mount installed in back and buy a big Razorbacks flag if you want to blend in.
I can’t wait until winter and it snows so I can activate the 4WD. And stay home. I doubt I will ever use the 4WD.
My nephew had the A for Auto 4WD in his last F-150. He highly advises that setting in ANY inclement weather as it just works. He really misses it in his new used F-250 diesel plain jane 4WD.
I really need to read up on the A for Auto 4WD option. Sounds like a variable setting viscous coupling. Very neat.
Locksmith.
If your parents bought the safe from a dealer, the owner probably has someone in-house or on speed dial.
Yeah, I was afraid of that. Not much help in this little one horse town on Lavaca Bay. I might have to get one from Victoria, a three horse town that just got its second Chikfila.
I did fill up Dads car at the PL Buccees last night on the way to their home. You know, the place where my dad got hit by the girl in the Chevy Tahoe last Thanksgiving when he was walking into the store.
Speaking of the death and/or dearth of expertise, t’would appear that the desktop Linux “community” is committing suicide by ideology:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u70ayB6efRg
Nothing speaks of dedication to the cause of desktop Linux like driving away both your developers and users.
And then there’s this lovely little diatribe from yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzG100ycU5k
Many, many more examples of the woke rot running rampant in the world of FOSS at The Lunduke Journal:
https://www.youtube.com/@Lunduke/videos
Lots of prayers this morning.
Prayers for our friend Lynn, his father, mother, and family.
Prayers for the flood victims.
Thank you so much. You dont know how much this means to us.
We will meet again in Heaven some day.
Interesting. I currently have the setting in 2WH. I had not considered using the auto setting.
I would guess, in my non-expert opinion (although I did stay in a Holiday Inn), that the collision had a significant effect on your dad’s condition.
I will ask my group at church for prayers for you, and your family. In the coming days it will be tough.
“Israel Arms New ‘Anti-Hamas’ Militias In Gaza: Report”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/israel-arms-new-anti-hamas-militias-gaza-report
Brother against brother.
Brothers against the father.
Family against the tribe.
From “The Kite Runner” IIRC.
The gecko sent my dad a letter last week to file his claim as he is six months into the Texas two year claim period. Medicare needs to get part of it as they spent a lot of money on my dad. I have no idea where to start but we have a lawyer and six months.
And yes, my dad was not the same mentally after that even though the cat scan in Victoria said no brain problems.
Locksmith. A friend went through this with his deceased brother’s estate just recently. Dozens of guns, a little bullion.
A reputable one will require some sort of proof that you are authorized.
Don’t forget truck and bass boat “safes” while you have the locksmith out.
I give up. I went to bed about 3 am after destressing some by throwing out rotten crap in moms fridge. I guess that 6 hours of sleep is the new reality.
I am hoping to set up rides for Mom today from friends to see dad daily before I go home.
Good night, are we only two weeks into this craziness so far ? It feels like months.
Dad is in a special place, the Dornberg hospice in Victoria. They already had Dad comfortable and cleaned his airway when we got there. Dad cannot swallow anymore so they have to clean his airway.
There were three super nice ladies working the graveyard shift last night there.
Wayland.
I’ve recently noticed that the Unetbootin GUI has issues now that Fedora defaults to Wayland.
My prayers for your Dad, Mr. Lynn. It sounds like he is getting some great care in his final days. I went through this with my Mom. She went right from the ER into palliative care after many of her organs failed.
I hope your Mom moves to senior living by you. She will need you by her side. My best prayers for her, also.
Linux: Death by self-immolation.
Subie: All are AWD of course, but the adaptive cruise is awesome, especially in those crazy hills of CaCafornia.
Safes: I had to haul my Sentry fire safe to a locksmith after the mechanism failed. They ended up cutting it open 15 minutes after I got there. I use a lightweight, hardened steel gun vault these days. I bolt it to the stud behind it so it can’t be hauled out (easily), but moving it can be done with an appliance dolly.
Don’t stress about sleep, that is only natural. I went through it with my dad.
If it continues maybe try a deliberate split sleep schedule, 4 hours, & wake for 2, & 4 hours again, works for sailors and me.
Not worrying about being awake helps me sleep, if that makes sense.
Can you try Lyft or Uber for your mom? Find a driver that you like & trust (female, maybe)? Perhaps ask the hospice staff.
Linux will survive, but mass Desktop Linux remains elusive.
Apple has a low cost MacBook based on A series chips in the works. That will be an irresistable target for the developers attempting to port Linux to the Apple Silicon.
In the world of YouTube woodworkers, there is a niche exemplified by Rex Krueger, where he does everything using handbuilt tools and benches, or antique/replica handtools.
Other woodworkers build grand projects using expensive power tools, or mass produce small projects for profitable sales. Or they demonstrate the latest in easy to use power tools.
I like Rex, but his niche is a lot like the Linux desktop community. If you can’t assemble it all yourself, you aren’t worthy of being here.
The difference is, Rex actually believes you can do everything if you have a little help. The Linux community just tells you to FOAD if you can’t keep up.
85F sunny and a gorgeous summer day.
———–
WRT linux- iron law, plus every organization eventually turns left.
America has always been terrible?
– innocence until proven guilty in court of law
– miranda rights and the Bill of Rights
– telephones, AC power, Airconditioning, light bulbs, sewing machines, zippers, transistors, cell phones, integrated circuits, the internet, TV, teflon, microwave ovens, MS, Apple, Dell, IBM, HP
– cheap CT and MRI scans, vaccines, antibiotics, plastic surgery (with contributions, but made cheap and common by US companies)
– maybe? birth control pill, reverse osmosis water purification
– nuclear power
And that’s just off the top of my head. How hateful and ignorant do you have to be to say something like that in public?
————–
Flooding and rescue ops continue. 800 + saves including 8 kids, so far.
————
@lynn, on top of the rest, start looking into a caretaker or helper for your mom. It sounds like your dad did a lot of the day to day stuff, and she’ll need help, if only with cleaning laundry and shopping.
n
The woodworking subculture that is obsessed with using hand tools only got self absorbed and religious. Like any extremists, for some you can’t be religious enough…
The really funny thing is that people who actually were limited to hand tools abandoned them as quickly as possible for machines, or had slaves or apprentices doing the grunt work.
Modern zealots are telling the others they are enjoying their hobby in the wrong way… and getting a smug feeling by putting others down. Not fun to be around .
n
“…other than that, what have the
RomansAmericans ever done for us?”https://youtu.be/Qc7HmhrgTuQ
I’ve used Linux on and off since about ‘94 or ’95 but I’m not currently running it on anything. I’ve been convinced since the beginning that its greatest technical strength is also the major flaw preventing adoption: configurability. It’s great to be able to customize a system for exactly your needs, but having so many distributions with so many default setups means the available pool of experienced users willing to assist newbies is fragmented into dozens or hundreds of separate communities. And since no-one wants to be the expert that doesn’t know something, that fragmentation encourages the RTFM mindset.
The Benevolent Dictator has made sure that Linux stays on mission, but he won’t be around forever.
Torvalds is roughly my age.
Right now, the biggest immediate danger to the Kernel (what “Linux” is actually about) would be the feud over incorporating the Hot Skillz language runtimes.
The constant lurking threat which would end commercialization and paid developers contributing to the kernel is the possibility of courts deciding that an API can be copyrighted.
I used Ubuntu Linux for about two years prior to 2019, when I bought a Dell machine with Windows 10 preinstalled. Having gotten reacquainted with Windows, somehow I just never felt the need to set up the dual-boot Windows/Linux system as I had intended.
Windows System for Linux was one factor in my change of plans; another was that the application I use most on a daily basis, Ultraedit, although available on both Linux and Apple machines, was originally developed on and still works best on Windows.
It occurs to me that I may have left an impression that I dislike Linux and free software in general. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I remember a time when vendors charged you for hardware, then charged you for operating systems, then charged you for each and every compiler and tool. I even worked for such a vendor. And when I wanted to learn how to program in C, I couldn’t do it at work, because we didn’t have a compiler, so I bought the Mix Power C compiler for my PC.
This is after unsuccessfully trying to use Yggdrasil Linux, also purchased on CD. As bad as support for Linux is now, it was way worse before the commercial internet existed. I couldn’t get it to work with my hardware, so I couldn’t use 1990’s era gcc.
My problem is the attitude of the Linux community, not the idea of open source software.
Having said that, I’ll admit the model isn’t perfect. Forking products and orphan projects are a thing. I don’t need 20 different products that do nearly the same thing in nearly the same way, with no idea how to choose the best one.
I don’t need 20 different products that do nearly the same thing in nearly the same way, with no idea how to choose the best one.
– that’s a problem in every space, windows, chrome, phone apps, etc.
With all the spying and AI built into windows, I see a real opportunity to steal market share. there isn’t much money in it though.
And it will be moot when everything moves to phones for 99% of users.
n
We had some rain on Thursday. It cooled off enough to open the house. Humid but not too bad. It rained almost all day Friday. Just a steady soaking rain. After the bedtime dog walk I checked the gauge. 4̄½ inches. I didn’t empty it. I went to sleep listening to a light rain on the metal roof and a few distant fireworks. Pretty nice.
Penny woke me up this morning. Four AM. She’s not a fan of thunder anymore. But she’ll be 14 this October. I tried to lay in bed, maybe go back to sleep while listening to the rain. But no, Her Highness had other ideas.
It then proceeded to rain like crazy. Plenty of awesome lighting and thunder. Some thunder was loud enough to shake the house. The power went out a couple of times long enough I had to set the clock on the range.
The rain dropped to a drizzle a bit after seven and Buddy was acting antsy. Buddy hates being rained on but he had take care of some paperwork. The gauge had 7½ inches. I emptied it. The back yard had enough water to look like a shallow lake.
Then it rained some more. Buckets. Two more inches.
Nine and half inches in that one tiny 1¼ area of the rain gauge. It looks like it’s going to rain some more.
My driveway is trashed. One of the tractors has the blade mounted. I might have to charge the battery a bit. Tomorrow. After the water drains off.
Starlink went wacky. I unplugged it for a moment and then it was fine. I ran a speed test during the two inch storm. 70 down 20 up. DirecTv would just be static with a much light rain.
Good times.
The early 90s Gcc was rough. Gnu, ironically, did not get its act together until the commercial Linux distributions began to appear.
Commercial C compilers on Unix were terrible in general, and C++ required a license for STL to be usable in developing a paid product.
I’ve decided I like the new flooring. I may decide I hate it come Winter. For all I know it might be cold, like walking on ice. I’m not a fan of how it shows EVERY white Buddy the Beagle hair when the afternoon sun is lighting the room. I mean, it’s pretty in a way but so much hair and I vacuumed just yesterday. But the stereo sounds excellently (that’s a word, I say so) great!
I just called the flooring folks to find out about having the hallway done. For a couple of reasons. I have a box of the flooring minus one piece. That bugs me. Waste not, etc. Plus the hall rug is always sliding to the right. It has forever.
So maybe I can get just the hallway done. They have various “deals”. Cough cough. If I have to I’ll have this 10×11 library/office done. It would look nice but I like the carpet. I like the room just the way it is. I’ll know more on Wednesday.
What’s the latest in Linux for retards that use Windows? That have used Windows since win2, way back when a 286 was Super Duper, when a mouse was novel and 1200 baud modems cost almost a months pay.
I had a box running Ubuntu several years ago. A near lighting strike zapped the nic. Ubuntu seeing a 3Com card? A 3c905. I think. Nope. So I shoved the XP disc in and that machine ran for another 6 years with nary a crash.
I don’t want a lot. I want to share Desktops with all permissions granted. Share the Music folder but just read only. It has to be able to run SlimServer.
Not a big list.
I am no expert, but I have Linux Mint on my two old personal PCs and an old laptop. I find it does pretty much everything I need right out of a fresh install.
I do miss my ancient copy of PaintShop Pro, but if I messed around a bit with Windows emulation, I could probably get that to run on the Linuxen.
We keep one Windows PC, and two windows laptops* in the household, mostly for W1’s use, but sometimes also for mine, when I need something specific, like true MS Office compatibility, or Adobe Acrobat. I have PSP on those.
* Which reminds me, W1’s fancy Asus Zenbook needs fixing. Windows on it has gone into a death spiral in which it puts up an out of focus “enter pin” prompt upon boot, but then accepts no input. I fear I will have to wipe it and reinstall, because none of the alleged remedies I can find online seem to work. Of course, W1 doesn’t know if there are any important files on it, and backup, what backup?
Today is Schützenfest in the village. The local band will be around with the wake-up music soon. The weather forecast is not looking great – rainy and windy. It would be nice if the rain would hold off, as the festivities are nicer if they can happen outdoors, what with the beer tents and bouncy castle.
Had a very nice night. Great fireworks, and essentially a front row seat. We had several neighbors and friends on our dock to watch the show. Temp is currently 73F and it has been nice and cool since afternoon. Wet as the inside of a lake, but nice and cool. Dunno what the dew point really is, but it feels like it must be 74F as everything is damp.
Spent some time chatting with my next door neighbor over a tiny little fire. He’s usually too busy working on his house to chat.
There was a little rain, just spatters really, in the late afternoon, but it cleared up pretty quickly. I did manage to finish my mowing, and get the string trimming done too. Then a quick shower, dinner, and a 35 minute long fireworks show.
I’ll shower before bed to get the smoke off and try to sleep in a bit tomorrow.
All in all, a nice day.
n
@denis, no way to boot with a live distro and copy off W1’s home directory? Or boot to a windows install and try the “repair” functions? Or pull the drive and mount it in another machine? Maybe do an “upgrade” install of windows and choose not to replace user data?
All those would have worked at some point, but IDK if any of them are actually possible with current windows…
n
Thoughts and prayers continuing for MrLynn and family. Especially his mother and father. It is a very distressing time and many of us have experienced this as we get older.
Also prayers are going out to those affected by the flooding. News services here are leading with the devastation and deaths..
About to go to Mass for the Schützenfest. Will remember Lynn and family, and those affected by the floods. The flooding made the headlines of the German radio news just now.
Nick, thanks. Just used a working lappy to download Win11 install/recovery media to a bootable usb stick. Will see if I can use that to recover W1’s Zenbook without having to wipe and reinstall, or at least to get her files onto another medium. That’s a job for day-after-tomorrow Denis, though. Today is Schützenfest and tomorrow is clean-up from that…
Wishing everyone a good Sunday.