Maybe not so cold today. It did get into the 70sF yesterday, and it was 60F at 10pm, the last time I looked. Overcast and kinda dreary for much of the day though. Hmm, today, mid 70sF, overcast, threat of rain. That’s my guess.
I didn’t get a lot done yesterday, but I did get another load from the storage unit to the shop. Spent some time talking to a friend on the phone. Did some non-prepping hobby tasks. I’d been putting them off for a while so it was good to get a few done.
One thing that ate far more time than it should have was that I filled up the internal storage on my phone. I thought both my internal and SD card were being backed up to my google account online, so I weeded and deleted a bunch of stuff. Didn’t matter. Even after I dealt with “unresolved conflicts”, I hadn’t cleared any pics off my internal storage. Couldn’t move them to the SD either, because no working space… no messaging, no opening the camera to tell it to use the SD, lot’s of stuff broke when the internal storage filled up.
So I tried connecting to the pc by USB cable to move files. Nope. Tried a half dozen cables, none did anything but charge. I think the USB-C port on the phone must be buggered. Lots of time spent and I couldn’t text my wife, so I found and deleted all the pix the ebay app stored when I used the visual search function. I wanted to keep them, because it was every album and pokemon I’ve looked up, and a nice record of purchases, but with the USB not working, I was kinda stuck.
Anyway, deleting the ebay photos cleared enough space I could use the phone again. But it does have a lesson. The camera was storing to internal for some stuff, and that stuff isn’t being backed up. And I haven’t backed up the phone itself or connected by USB in a LONG time. I’ll spend some more time dealing with that later.
Today, I might do a pickup in The Woodlands. I’ve got a couple of other errands to run too, like picking up an Rx and dropping off a check. If it’s not raining, I am hoping to get another load to the shop.
It doesn’t sound like much when I lay it out, but it is keeping a couple of things moving forward, and it’s picking up some things that have been back-burnered for too long.
Maybe when I pickup the Rx, I’ll check the meat cooler and finally be able to stack some more meat. Hope springs eternal… Stack!
n
Good for her. Pushing kids to do irrevocable damage to their bodies should be punished. At a minimum, the docs should lose their licenses.
Mint is good. I used it a few years back with (iirc) the Cinnamon desktop. For the past several years, though, I have used Xubuntu. My only objection to it is the integration of snaps, meaning that there are two completely different ways for software to be installed. Unnecessarily confusing.
Thunderbird is good! I have to use Outlook for work, but for private mail, definitely T-bird.
There’s really no choice: it’s going to be Gimp. There is a learning curve, just take it slow.
Both exist under Linux, no problem…
@paul, when you’re playing with Linux mint you’ll only rarely need to go to the command line to install stuff, there is a very good ‘software manager’ which let’s you find and install 1000’s of packages.
You shouldn’t have any trouble with mint and device drivers, I help out with a group who repurpose old PCs for disadvantaged folks and in our experience pretty much anything made in the last 12-15yrs will just work. (Our record is getting it working on an ancient celeron machine with 2Gb ram! We did need to add a wireless dongle as it didn’t have inbuilt wireless)
Good morning. Tuesday morning coffee (actually porridge) break time.
House still cold. Still no gas. I called the propane company and indicated my plight. They are “doing their best”.
I suspect what is going on is partly mismanagement, and partly a scam to “encourage” some customers to order gas more frequently. Usually, I wait until the tank is down to 25-30 percent to order, this time we were away, and it got down to 15. If they deliver within the week, as should be the case, that is no problem. Now we’re into the third week. That is a problem.
Why do they want me to order more frequently…? My contract stipulates that over some given number of litres delivered, I get the “bulk” pricing discount (on the order of 5-8 p.c.) and they waive the delivery fee. If, as now seems to be the case, I need to order while we are at or above 30%, and they deliver expeditiously, the volume will be below the bulk threshold, and they will charge for the delivery. That is a couple of hundred bucks’ difference, all of it pure profit for the gas co.
I can’t just order gas from another supplier, as neither of them will deliver unless I take out a delivery and maintenance contract for the tank with them, for “safety” reasons.* That would require me to break the existing contract, which is a p.i.t.a., and I would end up paying double for the annual maintenance.
* Anybody else smell a cartel?
Anyhow, have a good day. Stay warm!
Linux on old PCs.
My work laptop was swapped out yesterday for a new unit. The tech told me the retired units get the disks wiped and are donated to charity.
It was a good machine (mid range Lenovo Thinkpad), five years old. I think I will pass by or call the Oxfam shop and see what they are charging for them. It would be a good candidate for Linux.
Misquote, albeit a very common one, so common that the misquote is probably quoted more often than the quote.
William Congreve, “The Mourning Bride”, 1697.
You never know what you will learn here.
——-
At the BOL we have a contract with the local mom and pop propane company to check when they drive by and top up as needed. It’s worked so far, and our usage is fairly low.
——-
Sky is brightening, and it’s 61F. Time for some coffee.
n
Thanks, SteveF. I would have guessed it was Shakespeare, possibly the most misquoted author ever.
No, but you know you will learn something, which makes it interesting.
That’s what I would like to have, but there are only two propane firms, both large ones, serving this locality, and they certainly seem to have agreed not to poach customers from one another, so there is no true competition. I think I need to catch the tank-truck driver and have a chat with him about the importance and utility of of 50 euro notes…
The lightening sky was a lie. It looks grey and threatening out there.
n
I have a T412 and T417. Both run Linux without a problem.
The T417 is fast enough to run Windows 11 but it just misses the cutoff in Intel CPU generations due to lack of security features.
Millions of very capable PCs are out there in the same situation. Microsoft screwed up trying to make Hollywood happy with Windows 11.
The Hecho en Vietnam build quality on my new T14 Gen 6 leaves something to be desired, but I keep one machine around with current Windows just in case I need the latest from Redmond.
When the warranty is up on the T14, I will open it up and see what I can do about the creaky plastic.
Laptop discussions: I’m using a laptop from my school, but I’ll stop teaching for them next Fall. Unless they give it to me, I’ll need a new one. Linux is a given, but it also needs to support VMs (so: good CPU and lots of memory) as well as gaming (good GPU). All that while not being a behemoth – a 14″ screen would be ideal.
Oh, and here’s the rub: trackpoint. I have used trackpoint for years, and don’t want to give it up.
Plenty of time to shop around, but the choices are likely to be pretty limited…
Malign the Apple ecosystem but some things are done correctly. I pay $2.99 a month for 200 GB of storage shared with my spousal unit. She saves a lot of pictures, and the images are automatically backed up to Apple’s servers located who knows where.
I take pictures with phone when traveling and those images get stored in the cloud. I can then access the images on my Macbook and export the images to my PC where all my pictures are stored. Those images are backed up weekly to different locations, about every six months to two external drives that are kept in a drawer.
I guess if the house burns down, I will not have any images left as I don’t keep any of the images offsite. Not a big deal. When I die the kid will not keep the images and the images will be lost anyway.
My wife’s PC was in the same situation. I could not install W11 because of missing the security chip. The CPU was one generation behind. So, we got rid of her Windows machine and got her an iMac.
And I have been giving serious thought to abandon the PC entirely and get myself a beefed-up Mac Mini to replace the PC. What is stopping me is that there are a couple of applications that will only run on the PC and will not run under Parallels on the Mac.
And then there is Quicken. The Mac version is missing some critical (for me) features. The interface seems kludgy and some of the interface decisions seem stupid to me. Maybe it is muscle memory. Quicken started out on the PC as a DOS application, then Windows 3.11, then finally Windows only with WXP. The interface moved along and did not change much along the way. The Mac version was completely changed and, in my opinion, sucks.
My solution to that is migrating digits to my NAS. The NAS is backed up to Backblaze each night. It is cheap for the “bucket”. About $7/mo for 2+ TB.
I’m like you Mr. Ray. When I croak, nobody will care what’s stored digitally. I’m making a paper book of critical info that the kids will need when I croak to cash in any remaining assets.
Looks like the Artemis II wet dress rehersal ran into problems yesterday with fueling, specifically the hydrogen lines, same as last time.
Poking around this morning I don’t see pictures or a description of a booster fueling test article or iron bird.
It seems unlikely that there isn’t something they roll out to test with, there is probably a weird NASA acronym I need to search for, but Google has gotten so bad that I can’t find it.
I am doing the same thing for my son. He already has access to Bitwarden for my passwords. The difference document I am creating will contain bank account information, investment advisor information, computer passwords, bills that come electronically that must be paid, veteran information, vehicle information and information about the house.
He would wipe the computers, maybe sell them, most of the stuff in house in a dumpster.
My Roborock robot vacuum has expired. I was getting a warning about a filter being blocked, even with a new filter. There is something wrong with a sensor. Then the battery is failing. The vacuum would rub 10 minutes and die wherever it was. It is not worth replacing the battery.
I ordered a new Shark robot vacuum from Amazon for $299.00, normal price $649.00. A good deal. Amazon now has the price for $499.00, a $200.00 increase. The price went up after I ordered the vacuum so I got the good price. Was the price a mistake on the part of Amazon? Or just a special sale?
I like Shark as they don’t use a bag. I have one already for the lower floor.
The UPS for the TV, router, Apple TV, Sony BlueRay, and clock has a bad battery. Off to get a new battery, recycle the old battery and the battery out of the Roborock.
The Child and I have Lenovo Thinkpad T480s, purchased at the same time. She needed a Win11 computer for school and I needed a laptop because they do wear out no matter how good care you take of them. Mine runs Ubuntu 25.04 and hers is Win11, as mentioned.
In five and a half months, her computer has worn out the internal battery and two external batteries. Mine has just continued to chug along. To be fair, she uses the laptop on battery power for hours every day, while mine seldom goes more than about an hour on battery and I also use it a lot less; my desktop machine is the all-day-every-day box while the laptop is for when I’m not at my desk. It’s also possible that there’s some kind of hardware problem with her laptop or that it was shipped with defective batteries and that the no-brand cheapie replacement from Amazon was junk. (On the plus side, she opened the shell and replaced the internal battery herself, so now she knows that she can do it. On the minus side, my credit card is what paid for the new batteries and the computer toolkit. Wah.)
I can’t help but suspect that Win11 is the problem, though. For one thing, the batteries lasted barely longer when the laptop was suspended than when it was running. For another, “shutdown” doesn’t seem to do much; she reports that “cold start” booting takes only a few seconds, not much longer than opening the lid. For a third, there sure are a lot of complaints on the internet about Win11 machines running at full blast even if they’re just sitting and waiting for you to type something into a document window. I asked The Child whether the laptop was suspiciously warm when removed from the backpack but she hadn’t paid attention.
I guess we can swap computers as a test, next time she comes here. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to swap the SSDs, which is almost all that distinguishes the two computers. (Other than the sticker she put on the lid of hers, but she can deal with it.)
Had a brief burst of rain to get everything wet, then it stopped.
My Toughbook is all I need for computing out of the office. It’s not the old win7 one, although I still have that for work stuff at my client’s house, it’s one I bought in the returns auctions. Not even sure of the os version…
———
Had something else to say but forgot.
n
Do you use Notepad++ ? (Great open-source text editor for Window OS, been around for a long time.) Their updates have been hacked for over 6 months: (link)
@SteveF, swapping SSDs might not work, because M$ is locking down the hardware configuration for improved security XXXX being a snot.
I don’t really know, as I haven’t yet done anything with W11. I discovered I can stay with W10 for a while longer. Jerry P expressed his frustration by saying that software never wears out. He was right. I wonder what he would say about W11. Ah, “I do these silly things so you don’t have to.”
Probably
”sucks dead bunnies through a straw”
Notepad ++ is very handy. It has built in syntax highlighters which can be useful. I used to use it mainly for outlining before writing reports.
I haven’t updated in 5 years because I don’t update unless there is a real reason to, so I guess I missed the malware. Did they say they have control of the servers again?
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Sun might be poking thru… maybe it’ll ‘dry up all the rain’ so the spiders can come out again.
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Time for some lunch and a trip to the woodlands for a pickup.
n
@Nick: sez the Notepad++ guys:
TIL there is a fish you can put in your yard water feature called a Mosquitofish.
It eats larvae and some states give them away for free as part of mosquito control.
So I got a couple of these for next to nothing in an auction.
https://www.amazon.com/Projector-Lights-Compatible-4-Pack-Welcome/dp/B0G24CL6GR?tag=ttgnet-20
Took one apart last night. They are a really shockingly high level of sophistication for the money.
There’s a board to drive the led, a bright led, and an optical module with three lenses and the projection logo pattern. The lenses are quite high quality.
They’re cranking these things out for probably less than a dollar each.
Amazing.
n
Upstream and supply chain poisoning is a thing now. The CCP is an international criminal gang.
I can recall trying it, thinking it was OK, but then going back to Vim and Xcode a few years ago.
Back in the day I was a vi guy, then vim on linux stuff so there was muscle memory. But I am sadly out of practice, for the life of me I probably couldn’t do a column block edit now w/o looking it up first.
Jill Biden’s ex-husband charged with MURDER after wife found dead at their home in Delaware
Former First Lady Jill Biden’s ex-husband has been charged with the murder of his late wife. William Stevenson, 77, is facing first-degree murder charges in the death of 64-year-old Linda Stevenson. Linda was found unresponsive at their home Delaware home in December, and on Monday William was taken into custody at the same address.
– what the actual…
n
I am a person who is occasionally troubled by earworms, those musical snippets that play in your head over and over and over again. ( SWIDT?).
The two main ways I’ve heard of dealing with this and making it go away are to listen to the song, or chewing gum. I never know when it’s going to happen, or which genre or era will hit me. It’s been serious music from Bach through Gershwin, show tunes, music hall, 40’s through 80’s pop. I don’t recall country or jazz, but I won’t rule them out.
It’s been a whole week. I’ve chewed a whole pack of gum and listened to 3 different performers singing the song. Including Fanny Bryce.
And still, I wake up in the morning hearing “even Jake the plumber, he’s the man I adore” in my head.
An email from Apple:
“Introducing agentic coding in Xcode. With Xcode 26.3, you can harness coding agents like Anthropic’s Claude Agent and OpenAI’s Codex directly in the coding assistant to build and test projects, search Apple documentation, fix issues, and more.”
Oh boy, I can hardly wait.
About Buddy seeming big, maybe. If I remember correctly a purebred beagle weighs 35 pounds. Since he arrived already fixed, I’m not sure if he’s pure and if he is, what’s the defect?
The last time I weighed Buddy he weighed 36 pounds. But my scales vary a couple of pounds +/- by where I stand.
I never thought to weigh him when he arrived. But I could carry him with one arm. He was real skinny. I’d guess 20, maybe 25 pounds.
He can curl into a tiny area. Like in The Chair. But on the sofa/loveseat, he stretches way out. Precious Princess Puppy Penny is the same way.
Hey, there’s a diet thought! Eat acorns and leaves and whatever. Worked for Buddy. I don’t know what the “whatever” part was. But I do know that for the first three weeks, after feeding the dogs, I had at most ten minutes to get him outside. And it looked like chewed acorns and oak leaves for about a week.
I laugh at the directions on critter food….. the mix the old with the new so they don’t get an upset tummy directions. No, I’m not going to collect acorns and leaves.
I need to see what I have for hard drive sticks. I know Moa and Kiwi have 1TB sticks. Why I stayed with the factory’s half TB stick, well, it made sense at the time.
Add to the fun, I have the older M.2 style. Might be why the machines were inexpensive. Because I just checked on New Egg and the 1TB that was $52 is now $574.
All three PCs are the same. So perhaps the simplest thing is to see if there is anything on Kiwi, which has been turned off for almost a year, to save other than his e-mail (which I’ve had no need or desire to look at) and toss that and whatever else onto his original M.2 stick and then wipe the 1TB to install Mint.
Plans. I have one. Might not be a good plan. But it’s a plan.
And since Win11 has messed up file sharing, hey, maybe I’ll actually read up how to install SlimServer on a Pi. That’s really all Moa does anymore. Sometimes I Google something. Sometimes I tinker with the router. Most of what Moa does on the ‘net is talk to MS servers.
Thunderbird is good! I have to use Outlook for work, but for private mail, definitely T-bird.
I have been using Thunderbird at home since 2000 ??? and at the office since 2004 ???. I have 70 GB of old emails stashed in it at the office. It just works and does not crash unless you have hardware issues.
“It’s Time to Accept That Civil War 2.0 Has Already Started”
https://discernreport.com/its-time-to-accept-that-civil-war-2-0-has-already-started/
“(Alt-Market)—In July of 1917 as the fires of WWI raged across Europe, the Russian city of Petrograd was facing its own special turmoil in the form of a large scale Bolshevik insurgency. Up to 500,000 protesters, agitators and provocateurs had entered the city from across the country, many of them armed. They took over large swaths of the metropolis, hijacked private vehicles and confiscated private buildings.”
“Some soviet leaders including Vladimir Lenin called the event “premature” and did not publicly endorse it, which may have been a calculated attempt to avoid direct blowback. The official historical explanation is that the insurrection had taken on a life of its own, but the stage had been set and the communist agitators got exactly what they wanted, what their strategy demanded:”
“Human sacrifice.”
“Clashes with government authorities led to hundreds of protester deaths and a handful of police casualties. The Russian government surged military forces into the region to arrest Bolshevik captains and the movement had to pull back. In the end, though, the primary goal of the insurgents had been achieved. Whether spontaneous or planned, the point of the communist methodology is always to trigger government violence which can then be used to create public sympathy and bolster the revolution.”
“The majority of “normies” don’t need to join the revolution, they just have to be convinced to stay out of the way. And that’s largely what happened a few months later in October of 1917 when the Red Terror began. What followed was five years of civil war.”
“The communists, who had long claimed to be innocent victims of the Tsarist “imperialism”, went on a murder spree as soon as they solidified their political power. Their ideological opponents were systematically rounded up and eliminated. There are no exact numbers on how many killings occurred because records were destroyed, but estimates suggest the revolutionaries and secret police arrested and executed around 1 million political dissidents in the first few years of communist rule.”
“This genocide, though, would pale in comparison to the 10 million deaths caused by the Russian Civil War. Not to mention the imprisonment and mass murder of millions of Christians by the atheist regime over the course of the next couple decades.”
“History rarely “repeats” but our modern political dynamic rings rather familiar. Many of the tactics used by the leftists in Russia in the early 20th Century are being used today in the US. In fact, I would argue they are almost exactly the same and that a Bolshevik-style revolution is happening right now.”
Woof. Not good.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
We are probably at the stage that ICE and other federal agents need to start shooting anyone who touches them or gets in their way. It will remove future soldiers from the oncoming civil war.
Otherwise, we freedom loving conservatives will be purged.
Good for her. Pushing kids to do irrevocable damage to their bodies should be punished. At a minimum, the docs should lose their licenses.
Call the kids what they are, “The Mutilated”. Their cut off body parts are being burned on the altars to Baal.
“Gov. Abbott praises student arrests during anti-ICE walkout in Central Texas”
https://www.chron.com/news/article/abbott-students-ice-protests-21331474.php
“It’s about time students like this were arrested.”
The students need to be taught that they do not model this behavior.
Earworms are fun. Because I say so.
Currently I have Bryan Adams and Tina Turner screeching snippets of “It’s Only Love”. I actually like the song. Why is my brain playing it, that’s the mystery.
Sometimes the play list is the Carpenters. Or K. T. Oslin. The Ohio Players doing “Jive Turkey” for hours on end does get old.
“Taxes in California”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/02/taxes-in-california.html
“Payroll taxes, Building Permit Tax , CDL license Tax , Cigarette Tax , Corporate Income Tax , Dog License Tax, Federal Income Tax , Federal Unemployment Tax, Fishing License Tax , Food License Tax , Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon) , Gross Receipts Tax , Hunting License Tax, Inheritance Tax , Liquor Tax , Luxury Tax, Marriage License Tax , Medicare Tax , Personal Property Tax , Property Tax, Real Estate Tax , Road Usage Tax , Recreational Vehicle Tax , Sales Tax , School Tax, Social Security Tax , State Income Tax , State Unemployment Tax, Telephone Federal Excise Tax , Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax , Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes, Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax, Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax , Telephone State and Local Tax , Telephone Usage Charge Tax , Utility Taxes , Vehicle License Registration Tax , Vehicle Sales Tax , Watercraft Registration Tax , Well Permit Tax , Workers Compensation Tax.”
“Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago and our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.”
Something is wrong with our nation.
Interesting post from Clayton Cramer on using ChatGPT to figure out a weird car problem that puzzled even the experts at the dealer:
https://claytonecramer.blogspot.com/2026/02/why-ai-may-be-useful-for-skilled.html
There is a place for AI, as our systems grow beyond the ability of any human – or even any human organization – to comprehend.
And even if TBird crashes and pukes, your mail is stored as plain text. You might lose the folder structure of your Inbox. But that can be fixed.
Now, an Outlook .pst file getting corrupted? Everything is gone.
Hey, remember “in the old days” of 28.8 dial-up when it took a while to download a .jpg and then the file wouldn’t open because it was corrupted? Or if it did open (usually) the top of the picture was static, like messing with the tracking on a VHS machine. Good times.
Now, an Outlook .pst file getting corrupted? Everything is gone.
This is why I ran away from Outlook after it cratered the PST file on me one day.
I tried to get my Dad off Outlook but he kept on swearing that it worked just fine. Then he called me a couple of years ago and asked me how to recover his PST file. He did not like my answer of throwing the computer in the bay.
Sometimes the play list is the Carpenters. Or K. T. Oslin. The Ohio Players doing “Jive Turkey” for hours on end does get old.
Wild Cherry, “Play That Funky Music, White Boy”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHcYFxU4fMo
I think that the number one product coming out of the AI machines is targeted spam email. I run all of my corporate email through the gmail filters and I have suddenly increased from 20 spams a day to 50 spams a day. I do not like this trend.
Well, I didn’t want to share the specific playlist, for fear of infecting others.
I’m thoughtful like that. Although I did post snippets of 2 of the songs, so that’s a little out on a limb.
It’s usually music I like. I just get tired of the repetition and the incompleteness of it.
Thanks. Wild Cherry is jeeeebus, I didn’t think you were so hateful.
But hey, how about “Thriller” with Vincent Price talking and the lyrics playing relentlessly?
The proliferation of taxes, regulations, and government employees didn’t really pick up until after Ray was born. Just sayin.
Xcode has “gone Microsoft”, with the recent versions almost unusable in 8 GB RAM on my M1 MacBook Pro.
Back when iPhone development was my job, 6 GB was sufficient to run Xcode despite the burden of emulating the iPhone ARM CPU on Intel for debugging.
I’ve been seeing comments in various places from folks that hate Big River. They never give a reason of why, they hate Amazon and don’t want anyone to buy from Big River.
Yeah. Much like folks hating on Wal-Mart.
Out here, Wally World was an improvement. They sell stuff that I’d have to Austin to buy. Sure, lots of shit but hey man, those $8 plastic patio chairs look real nice. (Still do after 20 years.) Wal-Mart sells stuff that NO local store sold. I looked, I shopped, I’m into “buy from local folks”. Uh, yeah, so 15 miles to Wal-Mart versus 60 miles and the traffic to Austin? Wally World is giving local folks a job…..
So. The hate for Big River…. I have an example. Ever hear of “Durkee Famous Sauce”? It’s an odd mix of mayo and mustard and something else. Maybe pickle juice or caper juice. I don’t know. It’s kind of like using Deviled Eggs as a sandwich spread.
So. The local HEB use to sell it. I worked there, I bought it there. They don’t sell it anymore. Nor does the larger Marble Falls store. The HEB Plus in Leander sells it. Ok. Let’s work on the Big River thang.
The HEB Plus in Leander is a nice store. I like it other than the stench of the seafood department. Freaking huge store. It’s also about 45 miles away.
I can go to the Plus store and pay $4 or buy from Big River and pay $5. And yeah, it takes several days to arrive. And yes, I have to order $35 plus for free shipping. But, truck says it gets 13.5 MPG (no highway, all local, 50 MPH is fast).
Ok, six gallons of gas at about $3 per plus drive time to save a buck or pay Big River an extra buck wait a few days?
Gee. Decisions, decisions.
Paul, you crack me up.
MrsAtoz and I binged His & Hers on Netflix yesterday. Highly recommended if you like murder mysteries with twists and turns.
The latest entry in the “Knives Out” series is a real mystery and not as “woke” as I expected.
We actually saw all of those in a theater despite the series being a Netflix exclusive.
It is safe to pass on “The Thursday Murder Club” unless you are in need of a Pierce Brosnan/Helen Mirren fix before “Mobland” returns.
Alamo Drafthouse had a decent pre-show in front of “Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man”.
Unfortunately for “Knives Out” director/writer Rian Johnson, the pre-show included clips from “Evil Under The Sun”, a much better mystery film even 45 years later.
“Evil Under The Sun” is another one of those flicks which are huge because they aired on HBO endlessly in the afternoons in the early 80s thanks to the PG rating.
One word, MANDY. You have all been infected.
Yeh, well, yeh, well. I seem to remember campaign buttons that said “I LIKE IKE”.
I don’t hate Amazon, it’s been a huge convenience and a savings, but there are dark corners.
To name one: “buy again”. I mentioned buying dried fruit. I started with “buy again” but realized that the 3lbs was now $26, instead of the $21 I’d paid before in November. A very short amount of searching found the same product at the old price and with Prime delivery, so that’s what I went with. Had I not checked I would’ve paid 25% more for the product.
I do have a couple of monthly “subscriptions”, so far I haven’t seen that behavior with them, but I plan to keep an eye on it.
That Simulator is one impressive beast, a fully featured emulation of any version of iOS on any model of iPhone/iPad/AppleWatch for the past 5 or 6 years, including the apps running on it.
I would unsurprised to discover that it, alone, takes as much inhouse development effort as the OS proper.
Here we go again:
Judge Blocks Administration From Ending Temporary Protected Status for 350,000 Haitians
Activist fukstik judge says wut? Haitians have been a drag on the FUSA for 15 years thanks to liberal extensions of their “temporary” protected status. From my reading, the latest extension ends tomorrow. What is this nutroot saying? Can she just say it is a permanent status that never expires? SCOTUS will overrule this.
None of these judges will be impeached because the Redumblicans are spineless and fractured. They can’t even vote lockstep on simple bills anymore.
When I was touring, often times walmart was the only store open late, that carried a lot of different stuff. The one in Vegas saved my azz on a number of tradeshows when I needed something before the next morning.
That said, I’d pick almost anywhere else first.
—
Amazon is definitely playing games. A generic search might find an item, and then when ‘sort by price’ instead of ‘sort by relevance’ or ‘sort by featured’ is picked, the item isn’t found.
Even today, I found the link on google to the product on amazon while the amazon search failed to find the item. Ebay was the same.
And amazon has poisoned the well by allowing all the chinese fraud…
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Enshittification of everything.
n
I use amazon all the time. I guess it’s safe to say I like it, on that basis.
Bezos, on the other hand, is an evil turd PLT who has damaged America..
I could boycott Amazon to spite Bezos. He’d never even notice.
Ah, Durkee’s. That was the name of a peculiar product that I haven’t seen in ages. It was their Olive Butter, minced olives and pimento in a vinegar (?) sauce. The internet says it hasn’t been manufactured in a good long time, but the recipe is:
DURKEE OLIVE BUTTER
1 cup regular green olives with the pimentos
1 tablespoon dry bread crumbs
1 tablespoon oil
3 teaspoons white vinegar
1 teaspoon of parsley flakes
1 teaspoon dried chives
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
Combine all in mini food processor and blend until smooth.
Mars candy company drove out Zagnut (a coconut Butterfinger) and Clark (Butterfinger clone, almost but not quite) candy bars. Amazon still carries Zagnut but Clark has been reformulated as a chunky Reese’s clone. <sigh>
Well that’s not my case. The Wally’s Neighborhood Market is really ok. Course it’s mostly middle to upper middle housing around here with a mix of the older large rural country living. I could go up the street a little to Albertsons but now we’re talking 10-20% higher and not much improvement in quality (ex produce). The Super Wally a couple of miles away, yes I try to avoid.
Oh and home delivery is pretty good too.
“Walmart Reaches $1 Trillion Market Cap as Its E-Commerce Booms”
https://finance.yahoo.com/m/e8384a56-54de-3930-9d0f-7942ce1ebf69/walmart-reaches-1-trillion.html
“Retail behemoth Walmart has hit a market capitalization of $1 trillion, becoming the first traditional retailer to reach the milestone. In trading on Tuesday morning, Walmart stock passed the $125.47 a share needed to reach a trillion-dollar valuation. Shares closed up 2.9% at $127.71, giving the company a market cap of $1.018 trillion.”
You know, they say the first trillion is the hardest.
I need to figure out how to get my process simulation software on the intertubes. There is gold in them thar tubes.
My local Walmart and the Publix store
next doorblock awayget their produce from the same supplier. Guess who has the better price.And my taste buds are shot so it really doesn’t matter for most items.
The hack in Notepad++ was only deployed to Taiwanese PCs, as part of a CCP attack. If you’re not in Taiwan, you’re probably safe.
But download the latest version to be safe. And yes, it’s a MAGNIFICENT text editor; I use it all the time. One of the nice things about it is you can open several tabs of text files, and if you close the program, you can re-open the program and have all the same files re-opened automatically.
if you close the program, you can re-open the program and have all the same files re-opened automatically.
– yeah I love that, and the tabs. And the [tab] for indenting.
I do very little anymore, since I’m not employed, but I had it open just a day or two ago…
n
Try turning off the backup of the user folders to the hive mind in Redmond, and avoid the built in browser and mail tools if possible.
My one year-old work laptop’s fan runs all the time, and my regular applications during work hours are Putty, Outlook, and Teams. i7 Ultra and 32 GB RAM. Of course, my employer has lots of spyware installed.
My personal laptop running Windows 11 is fairly quiet and seems to have decent battery life, but the CPU is recent. I also avoid Microsoft software as much as I can.
If I cared, I’d be laughing and pointing…
– if she just wanted to visit, she could rent, lease, or leach off a friend. She’s a lying hypocrite piece of …
n
Why the scare quotes around “rape” DM? is it that boys can’t be raped? or that it isn’t real rape?
n
Started raining again. It was raining in various parts of Houston today as I drove around. The stuff I picked up got a little wet, but not soaked.
n
Saints and begorrah that’s a fine Irish name in the byline.
Why do I get the feeling that the perpetrators of the “rape” have similar national backgrounds to the “reporter”.
“Left-Wing Rage: They Call Black ICE Agent “House N*gger” After He Asks Simple Gender Question”
https://rumble.com/v758vwy-left-wing-rage-they-call-black-ice-agent-house-ngger-after-he-asks-simple-g.html?mref=1wxk5&mc=ehuil
A black man is doing his job and a bunch of white people (sounds like one is a man masquerading as a woman) start calling him a House N*. Unreal.
Sounds like someone’s understaning of African American culture came a few too many screenings of “Django Unchained”.
“DHS in Limbo as President Signs $1.2 Trillion Spending Package”
https://patriot.tv/dhs-in-limbo-as-president-signs-1-2-trillion-spending-package/
“The specter of a prolonged government shutdown lifted on Tuesday afternoon when President Donald Trump put pen to paper on a $1.2 trillion spending package, restoring operations to key federal agencies after a tense four-day lapse. Yet, this resolution carries the weight of unfinished business, with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funded only through February 13, setting the stage for what could be another bruising confrontation over immigration enforcement and the recent deadly encounters in Minneapolis that have ignited national fury.”
“The shutdown began just after midnight on Saturday, following the expiration of temporary funding on January 30. It stemmed from a deep partisan divide, with Democrats in the Senate refusing to back full-year funding for DHS without stringent reforms to agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).”
“Their stance was supposedly driven by two fatal shootings of American citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis last month, but many speculate this is just a smokescreen to take attention away from the massive widespread fraud being uncovered by citizen journalists and local investigators, particularly in Minneapolis itself.”
I have the feeling that Trump has a trump in his pocket. He has the tariff money at $50 billion per month. That should be enough for DHS.
Same. Although I did notice I could taste better a few months after I quit smoking. Didn’t have any better taste, so I still shop at Walmart as the cheapest option for meat, produce and other not-formulation foods.
New Poll Shatters Narrative: Voters Overwhelmingly Back Deportations and ICE
The poll also shows:
I expect all news organizations will report that accurately.
Ok, that’s just weird.
As far as I know, nothing in my pc setup changed (I don’t allow updates without approval) and I didn’t get any notifications of updates on the wordpress site software or plugins… but suddenly check marks are showing up again when I select a check box.
It was weird when they went away, and it’s weird that they came back.
Weird.
n
WordPress might have updated. I fixed the issue that was keeping it from automatically updating, and it might have just done so, and fixed the check mark thing.
Hmm.
n
Hah, our school district just sent out an notice that they are aware some students might be planning on a walkout or other disruptive protest, and reminded parents and students that there will be consequences if they do.
n
@gavin, how are your allergies? Do you have sinus congestion? Deficiencies in smell can lead to reduced sense of taste too.
And some of it could be learned. If you haven’t been tasting your food, you may have trained yourself not to.
I grew up eating what was put in front of me, whether I liked it or not, so I learned to not really taste stuff that I didn’t want to taste. I can also slow down and focus on the food/drink/smoke/whatever to perceive and identify more of what’s going on in my mouth. It takes some intent on my part and remembering to do it.
You might want to try relearning to taste things, maybe start with single strong flavors and focus on all the aspects of the flavors?
Or it could be you just don’t have a strong sense of taste. My father in law claims to have no sense of taste at all.
Taste and smell enrich even our ordinary activities though, so I’d make sure there wasn’t a physical reason, and then see if you could make any improvements. Assuming you want to .
n
I’m headed to bed. Suddenly it’s late.
n
Like you, I was required to eat what was on the table, without the traditional 2nd option; I wasn’t allowed to not eat. I was never able to not taste things I didn’t like, just got used to eating it, mostly. I did inherit what my father referred to as catarrh, or post nasal drip, but I don’t think it interfered with taste. I detested brussel sprouts due to the heritable taste gene, so I think taste was working as advertised, at least until I started smoking in my late teens while in uniform. I didn’t notice the diminution of taste over time, just the restoration as it was quicker and more noticeable early in the quitting process. I’m still trying to lose the weight I gained then. As for allergies, I have a pronounced allergy to some scented candles, determined when an ex wanted a romantic evening and lit some after the meal. Unfortunately I don’t know what the specific scent base or formulation is, and I also learned just about a year ago I’m allergic to an ingredient in some Walmart bakery cookies that I’m fond of. I miss them.
In any event, I taste things well enough to enjoy my food, and I think that will have to do
and I’m back up out of bed because the glucose monitor alarms when my level drops below 70. Which it’s never done before in 5 days. Heck, until today it was rarely below 100 and never below 90.
So I’m laying in bed reading the latest and last Transdimensional Hunter book, and this really piercing and loud alarm noise starts up from my phone. Turns out it’s a low glucose alarm.
So I’m eating a meat bar and some cheetos and then I’m going back to bed.
Maybe being a cyborg isn’t super fun time.
n
Still up. Reading might not be helping. But I had a donut and I’m going to put down the kindle.
Wide awake though. and sugar of only 100, so back to normal.
n
When my son goes low, it drops to 40-50. That is why we insist on being able to receive his data. I can at least call 911 if he doesn’t respond to us.
It would be worthwhile to do a manual check via a finger prick to verify the reading. I would wager 25% of the low readings my son gets are false alarms. Usually due to the sensor shifting a little while he is laying down. Amazing tech, but it isn’t perfect.