Another beautiful day to go with yesterday’s eventual niceness. That’s my hope, that’s my dream… and if not, it’ll either be hot, moist, and windy, or cool, moist, and not as windy. It’s March and March can’t make up its mind.
I did very little yesterday morning. Too much sugar, too little caffeine. I did get the kid and get to the dentist on time. She will need a filling soon, and I need to not let so much time pass between cleanings. Whole lotta scraping goin’ on.
Between getting the kid, getting to the office, having the work done, and getting home, the afternoon was pretty much gone so I decided to spend a bit more time on dinner. I had started some meats thawing so I had chicken thighs that were mostly soft and ready, and I’d been craving some fried chicken, and I found myself with the time I needed…
Pan fried the chicken in the 10″ Wagner “Chicken Fryer” cast iron in lard and a bit of bacon fat for flavor. Quartered some heirloom baby potatoes, tossed them with oil, salt, crushed pepper, and rosemary then roasted them in the oven. Threw a loaf of shelf stable bread in the oven too, along with a peach cobbler. Same brand mix for the cobbler and the coating on the fried chicken, although different flavors. Peaches from a can. A bit of leftover corn to add some color to the plate. Delicious. Chicken was crunchy, juicy, and tasty. Potatoes were just right. Cobbler was the right mix of crunch, chew, and soft gooey. W and D2 enjoyed it too. Sometimes it’s worth it to spend a little extra time on dinner, just to prove you can.
And everything came out of long or medium term storage except the potatoes. Although it’s been weeks since I bought them, I don’t keep potatoes or apples all winter like my parents did, because we have them in the stores. And the purple potatoes don’t last as long as the red and white. They do taste like baked bread though, and that makes it worth having some go bad every once in a while.
Today I’ve got a couple of pickups to do, and I’ll likely move some stuff around at the shop and maybe at my storage unit. I’m still not out of there and another month passed. Dang.
If muzzie terror attacks at home, and hot war overseas doesn’t motivate you to put a few things back, IDK what would… stack something.
nick
Short answer: no
There is some fuzziness about the Takings clause and a few other areas, but few of them apply to an item which isn’t owned yet.
Tuesday. Good morning!
Nick, that sounds delicious. Mmmm.
I did venison with oyster mushrooms, chestnuts and egg noodles last night, but I took my eye off the ball and overcooked the carrots and kohl rabi. The rest was nice, though. Leftovers for lunch today.
Sunny and blue skies today. I guess about 17-18 C. Hazel and alder pollen are “high” according to the weather liars and my allergies. My sinuses are stuffy and my eyes sore.
The reaction yesterday evening after coming back from the relatively pollen-free BOL was severe. I had to take two lots of eye drops before my eyes calmed down enough so that I could sleep. Still, I am neither in a trench in Ukraine nor trying to depose a regime in Iran, so no more complaining.
A long list of honey-do things today, so time for a quick breakfast before attacking that. Lidl carries a clone of Special-K cereal that is very good. I think I even prefer it to the original. Might have to do a blind tasting for fun.
Possible pepper fail: if there is any Dettol in the house, I can’t find it. I know there are a few bottles at the BOL, but there should be some here too. Easy to remedy, but it made me postpone doing my pedicure. Talons it is…
Have a beautiful day!
Election Day in Texas.
If the new Chosen One emerges from the US Senate race in Texas this year, Republicans will have no one but themselves to blame.
With the polls showing no clear choice on the Republican side, I’m keeping out of the Dem primary so I can hold my nose and vote for Cornyn in the runoff.
“Well I am.“
—Vinny Martorano
https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2026/03/02/every-now-and-then-someone-stands-far-from-the-maddening-proggy-crowd-n3812451
He should have told the camerman to back off half a block and not crop the shot of the little group of self-important shitheels doing their protest thing.
70F and looks like we’re starting the day with light overcast.
I’m trying things for sugar management. Last night, I had half a can of HEB apple soda before bed. I expected a big spike but didn’t get one. Odd.
This morning I’m having a small coffee and a grain and fruit energy bar (typically the “energy” comes from carbs and sugar) and I’ll have my normal coffee and egg breakfast later. I’m hoping for two smaller peaks instead of one big one. Also it would be nice to eliminate or smooth out the caffeine crash in the afternoon. I know it’s the caffeine and not sugar from lunch thanks to the monitor.
—-
Time to take a quick look around the web and get these kids out the door.
n
Math major here!
I ended up in the “pure” math track. After Calculus III, you would normally take DiffEQ, but us “pure” math trackers took lovely courses like “Geometry From a Non-Euclidean Viewpoint”. Entirely useless. But us “pure” math-ers never use math for practical purposes.
One of my graduate courses was so bizarre it took half the semester to just develop the lingo. We did stuff with that advanced “pure” math that you could do on a scientific calculator in minutes. LOL. Luckily, the Army sent me to grad school for an ORSA degree, so most of the courses were on the practical side so we could actually do something with it.
I tell people math is the Language of God (hi, Mr. SteveF!). All the practical and useful stuff we have need math, but math itself is more of a thought experiment.
P.S. Now that I’m retired, family members are always asking me to tutor their kids in math. My standard answer is: kiss my big White arse. Teach your own kids, I taught mine and now am done.
Math major, enough computer classes and engineering classes for a minor in either (but the school of Arts and Science at Oklahoma State did not allow minors).
College Alegbra or Statistics or Probablity Theory as minimum to get a BA or BS.
My BS was in Electrical Engineering, which requires a lot of math by itself. I took enough extra math courses to get a minor in Math, but I didn’t actually get a minor in math because RPI charged a graduation fee. Not a fee to attend graduation, not a cap and gown fee, but a separate fee to be granted the diploma. Presumably this was mentioned at some point but it took me by surprise. Getting the money together took some scrambling and I couldn’t come up with the additional money for the minor by the deadline.
I wish to point out that I am not the god, just a god. Furthermore, as the God of Good Parking at the Mall, I don’t even create the parking lots or the malls or even the cars that are necessary for my domain to have any meaning. This means that I’m dependent on humans to create the things that I need in order to give my blessings to humans. I’m pretty sure that makes me the lamest god around.
I think that applies only to actions. If you _did_ something that was legal, the government cannot retroactively declare it to be illegal.
For objects, the government may have to offer compensation. The obvious example is eminent domain: You own land, the government declares that you cannot own it any longer. They then have to pay you for it.
I have the next round of the International Math and Logic Games next Saturday. I always compete, along with younger son. Once upon an accident, I got 3rd place in the international final. I’ve never come close again. It’s 50/50 whether I make the national final, and I’ve only ever qualified that once for the international final.
Still, it’s a lot of fun, if you like that kind of thing. If anyone is interested, you can find archives of past contests here: https://www.fsjm.ch/en/archives/
I wondered if Teela Brown thought she was lucky, or if she’d have preferred to be somewhere else, doing anything else.
I loved the Ringworld books and even used Louis Wu as a pen name in high school. Big space opera. It’s what I grew up with.
n
James just trashed the Ringworld sequels:
On 3/1/2026 8:10 AM, James Nicoll wrote:
> The Ringworld Engineers (Ringworld, volume 2) by Larry Niven
>
> The Ringworld is doomed! Doomed to subpar sequels!
>
> https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/cold-equations
I had enough CS credits to get a minor, but my college didn’t offer one. The year after I graduated, they did offer the minor. Sigh, but no one would care but me.
“Witkoff says Iran negotiators started talks by claiming to have materials to make 11 nuclear bombs”
https://justthenews.com/government/diplomacy/witkoff-says-iran-negotiators-started-talks-claiming-have-materials-make-11
“”They were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs,” Steve Witkoff said”
When negotiating with a stronger power, be careful that you do not overstate your abilities. The stronger power may decide to eat you.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
I don’t recall the branch of math, nor the principal actor, but I once heard a story somewhat like this:
An eminent mathematician, lets say Gauss, was tired of Math being used in applications by engineers and physicists, and wanted something pure in its own right, without practical applications. So he invented an entirely new branch of mathematics, let’s say vector calculus, with no utility beyond being a thing of beauty.
He was soon disappointed when some physicist figured out that these math techniques were a perfect match to phenomena he was studying, and it became a standard application in the field.
As an undergrad, I got permission to take a graduate course humorously named “Applied Modern Algebra”. In reality, it was number theory. Starting from the concept that there is this thing called a number, and we’ll name it “1”, and posit that any number N has a successor number called S(N). It was considered boorish to call S(1) “two”, but a convenience.
From there we eventually ended up with arithmetic, primes, sets, groups, rings, fields. I remember about 10 years later finding my notebook for the class. I couldn’t understand any of my notes. Even the notation looked strange.
Anecdote: First day of that class, in 1976. 12 students. The prof walked in, wearing a pullover sweater and sandals with socks. He surveyed his victims, and polled us for our majors and status.
8 were Math graduate students. 3 were Math undergrads. I was the sole Engineering student.
He said, and I quote: “Ok. Try and keep up.”
I got an honest B in the class. As an undergrad, you don’t get the courtesy B that grad students get.
A few years later, I read Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter and actually understood all of the math in it. I thank my time in that class.
A CS Masters from a US program without a thesis and a GPA below 3.5 is a sign that the degree holder did very little in class.
That makes you exactly equal to every other god in every pantheon. And entirely human, as Man created God in his own image.
Read “American Gods” if you haven’t already.
“Beast Business (Hidden Legacy #8) by Ilona Andrews
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1641973722?tag=ttgnet-20
Book number eight of a six book and two novella (eight books total) paranormal romance fantasy series. I read and reread the well printed and well bound novella POD (print on demand) trade paperback published by the Nancy Yost Literary Agency in 2026 that I bought new from Amazon in 2026. There are also six short stories appended to the book. This was a totally unexpected new book in the series and I hope for more.
Totally cool series for me. This makes the fourth series that I have read from Ilona Andrews, a husband and wife writing team based here in Texas. The Innkeeper, Kate Daniels, and The Edge are the other series of books. They are now starting a couple of new series of books. In fact, I am wondering if The Innkeeper, The Inheritance, The Edge, and the Hidden Legacy series are all in the same universe ???
The Hidden Legacy Universe is a complex place. The Osiris serum that induced magical powers in humans was released to the general public in 1863 and the world was never the same. The Osiris serum has three results: death, paranormal powers, or paranormal powers with a warped human body. The serum was banned after a while but the world was irreparably changed since the paranormal powers are inheritable. Families starting breeding children for strength in magical powers with breathtaking results. Magic users are segregated into five ranks: Minor, Average, Notable, Significant, and Prime. The Prime families operate mostly outside the Federal and State laws since they are so powerful and incredibly dangerous.
Diana Harrison is a Prime Animal Mage who can control and converse with almost any animal. She was raised by her parents in a black panther crèche, she is not what we think of as a human. Her middle brother was raised with wolves and her youngest brother imprinted on a timid raccoon before their parents managed to imprint him with a bear. Diana is head of her House since deposing their parents and forcing them to retire.
Augustine Montgomery is a Prime Illusionist and the head of his House since his father, brother, and aunt were brutally murdered by another family. Augustine has hidden powers that no one knows of that he has killed to keep secret.
Diana finds and grabs Augustine one fine day in Houston and persuades him to join her in a search for a precious and incredibly rare cub who has been stolen from House Harrison using magic and murder. The cub is still nursing from the mother and cannot live on its own yet.
Arabella Baylor is Catalina and Nevada Baylor’s younger sister and a Prime Beast that is mostly unknown to the general populace. She can transform to a 65 foot tall beast and she now has control of that transformation along with total reasoning ability. The only other recorded person who had this power could never control their transformations or reason while in beast form so the populace is incredibly scared of her.
The authors have a very active website at:
https://ilona-andrews.com/
My rating: 6 out of 5 stars (I read it three times, I never do this)
Amazon rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (2,678 reviews)
Lynn
Today I found out that Mint will wake the Lexmark printer. To print a text file. Windows did no such thing…. you had to go push a button to wake the printer.
So, that’s nice.
I’m trying to scan. \\192.168.0.1\paul\Public is the path in the printer’s settings. At the printer, I don’t have permission.
Maybe the slashes lean the wrong way? Nope. That didn’t work.
I’m overlooking a setting somewhere.
xkcd: Electric Vehicles
https://www.xkcd.com/3214/
Me too. Not until the batteries can go a few thousand miles in my F-150 4×4 truck.
Where are my Heinlein Shipstones ? We need these desperately.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3214:_Electric_Vehicles
Lynn’s six star list in March 2026:
1. “Mutineer’s Moon” by David Weber
2. “Citizen Of The Galaxy” by Robert Heinlein
3. “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” by Robert Heinlein
4. “The Star Beast” by Robert Heinlein
5. “Shards Of Honor” by Lois McMaster Bujold
6. “Barrayar” by Lois McMaster Bujold
7. “Jumper” by Steven Gould
8. “Reflex” by Steven Gould
9. “Impulse” by Steven Gould
10. “Exo” by Steven Gould
11. “Dies The Fire” by S. M. Stirling
12. “Emergence” by David Palmer
13. “The Tar-Aiym Krang” by Alan Dean Foster
14. “Under A Graveyard Sky” by John Ringo
15. “Live Free Or Die” by John Ringo
16. “Footfall” by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
17. “Lucifer’s Hammer” by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
18. “The Zero Stone” by Andre Norton
19. “Going Home” by A. American
20. “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card
21. “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline
22. “The Martian” by Andy Weir
23. “The Postman” by David Brin
24. “We Are Legion” by Dennis E. Taylor
25. “Bitten” by Kelley Armstrong
26. “Moon Called” by Patrica Briggs
27. “Red Thunder” by John Varley
28. “Lightning” by Dean Koontz
29. “The Murderbot Diaries” by Martha Wells
30. “Friday” by Robert Heinlein
31. “Agent Of Change” by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
32. “Monster Hunter International” by Larry Correia
33. “Among Others” by Jo Walton
34. “Skinwalker” and “Blood Of The Earth” By Faith Hunter
35. “Time Enough For Love” by Robert Heinlein
36. “Methuselah’s Children” by Robert Heinlein
37. “When the Wind Blows” by James Patterson
38. “The Lake House” by James Patterson
39. “A Soldier’s Duty (Theirs Not to Reason Why)” by Jean Johnson
40. “Human by Choice” by Travis S. Taylor and Darrell Bain
41. “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir
42. “Agent To The Stars” by John Scazi
43. “Starter Villain” by John Scalzi
44. “The Inheritance (Breach Wars)” by Ilona Andrews
45. “Burn for Me (Hidden Legacy, 1)” by Ilona Andrews
46. “White Hot (Hidden Legacy, 2)” by Ilona Andrews
47. “Wildfire: A Hidden Legacy Novel (Hidden Legacy, 3)” by Ilona Andrews
48. “Diamond Fire: A Hidden Legacy Novella (4)” by Ilona Andrews
49. “Sapphire Flames: A Hidden Legacy Novel (5)” by Ilona Andrews
50. “Emerald Blaze: A Hidden Legacy Novel (6)” by Ilona Andrews
51. “Ruby Fever: A Hidden Legacy Novel (7)” by Ilona Andrews
52. “The Armageddon Inheritance” by David Weber
53. “A Matter For Men (The War Against the Chtorr, Book 1)” by David Gerrold
54. “A Day for Damnation (War Against the Chtorr, Book 2)” by David Gerrold
55. “Ariel” by Steven R. Boyett
56. “Perilous Waif (Alice Long)” by E. William Brown
57. “Clean Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles)” by Ilona Andrews
58. “Sweep In Peace (Innkeeper Chronicles)” by Ilona Andrews
59. “One Fell Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles)” by Ilona Andrews
60. “Beast Business (Hidden Legacy #8) by Ilona Andrews
Somebody told me that these are a bunch of young men’s adventure stories. Being an old man, I liked that.
Lynn
If I remember correctly, there’s supposed to be a lunar eclipse on the morning of March 3. Between 5 and 6 AM Central time.
I might be up to see it. But odds are that it will be cloudy. Like most mornings.
The full Moon was beautiful last night here in south Texas.
What does the law say bout existing systems? Isn’t there a law that you can’t just make something that was legal, illegal w/out a grandfather for existing formerly legal things?
Every tv, set top box, apple product, cars, all the new smart washing machines, fridges, even toasters with wifi have an OS.
It should just mean that not one single new thing gets sold in Cali again, kinda like Cuba.
n
Yes. Section 9 of the USA Constitution says “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”
https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text
SCOTUS has interpreted this to mean that no one can make laws that apply to things or events that happened before the law was passed.
Pearls Before Swine: Poor Pig
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2026/03/02
English is such an expressive language but many phrases do have many meanings.
BC: We Are All Going To Die
https://www.gocomics.com/bc/2026/03/03
And if you run that stop sign, it may be sooner rather than later.
@Nick
“After being out of school for a couple decades, suddenly I was aligning physical things in 3d space for my job. Lots of circles and segments of circles, lots of triangles and pyramid sections…
I knew I could do it with math and measuring tapes, string lines and laser levels, but I needed serious refreshing or my trig skills. With a little practical application, I could do layout faster and better than guys with theodolites and total stations.
I ended up doing a lot of drawing review too, and would find so many errors in the guys’ calcs based on their computer models and 3d simulations that they never caught because they never got out in the real world and had to measure anything.
Trig, geometry, simple algebra and basic circle math covers almost everything you run into in the real physical world that most tradesmen or technicians will run into . Engineers need more. Scientists need more. Everyone else only needs to KNOW there is more, so they know to go up a level when they need to. And so they can understand why the upper level has authority.
There are a lot of formulas to apply in the skilled trades once you are journeyman or master level.
Being able to do the math is important.”
Being able to visualize in three dimensions and choose the tool you need to get the job done is a part of the art of application that is increasingly rare. Cheops had good men.
Ordinary human beings have been capable of understanding and applying pretty complex math for centuries. When I started going to estate sales in the1970’s I was fascinated to find the various textbooks by Audel and other publishers that taught people math and engineering to advance in their trades. No college men in sight. A hundred years ago people were filling the reading rooms of the day to study and get ahead. There have always been bullies that tear people down for trying to learn, but now we’ve had more than two generations of public school teacher’s unions tightly coupled with the Democrat Party, and defiant ignorance is fast becoming the norm.
We are black-boxing our technology by making things small and large impossible to repair. And we are doing the same with our knowledge by putting it in a box that delivers answers when we turn the crank. I like calculators and I don’t miss interpolating sine tables at all, but doing and understanding basic “mathy” things is part of climbing the ladder, and we have busted out the rungs and made it much more difficult for people to learn. Some of the truly gifted will climb past the break somehow. Others will not. But the greatest loss is the ones who were able to climb that far in the past and stand on that rung and have some pride in getting that far–they now have nowhere to stand.
The enscript command is cool for converting text files to postscript files suitable for printing.
I used that one a lot in grad school when generating 500 page reports which no one read.
LaTeX and Python were my two big takeaways from grad school.
I also did three semesters of this class across two programs, covering the same sections of the lecturer’s book.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9syvZr-9xwk
When we went to Boston in 2024, I sat in on a live lecture and got Dr. Sipser’s autograph for my textbook.
Totally impractical for most purposes unless you are putting together a compiler.
However, having been through the material I view the Monkey Trick as a DFA with some randomness.
Granted, it is a BIG DFA, but still a finite node count.
For now, my employer has ordered us to use the AI to produce all code by the end of the year.
I’m not enthused, but I will play the game and go along with it. I’m too young to retire, and bad things happen at our house when I don’t work.
“Austin Officers Who Stopped Terror Shooter Now Facing Grand Jury Review”
https://resistthemainstream.com/austin-terror-attack-takes-jaw-dropping-turn/
I believe that the Texas Governor can remove an elected official from office for incompetence. If so, this is the time, the Travis County District Attorney needs to go away. Or else have the Texas Rangers go in and investigate him and arrest for any penny that is missing.
I used four eggs this afternoon. Brought the shells out to my chickens. They were very enthusiastic about their treat, the little cannibals. (This is on top of a whole egg they got because I dropped it when collecting eggs a few hours before. Little cannibals.) There were enough half-shells for each bird to get one but of course they didn’t each take one and nibble on it. No, there was grabbing and chasing and stealing and squabbling, while several of the halves sat in their treat dish. Sometimes I suspect that chickens lack either intelligence or civility, or possibly both. However, when I closed the coop a few minutes ago, I saw not a trace of eggshell anywhere, suggesting that they were at least intelligent enough to figure it out.
“Developing: Texas AG Ken Paxton Projected to Win Texas Republican Senate Primary”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/03/developing-texas-ag-ken-paxton-projected-win-texas/
Paxton is projected to get 81% of the vote. One can only hope.
No runoff would be preferable. Cornyn just needs to take his hundreds of million of dollars and run away to his Virginia mansion.
For now, my employer has ordered us to use the AI to produce all code by the end of the year.
I’m not enthused, but I will play the game and go along with it. I’m too young to retire, and bad things happen at our house when I don’t work.
This is just foolish.
Observations from my primary voting experience:
The number of people in line for the Dem primary outnumbered Republican voters ~ 20 to 1. Granted, the Dems had three times as many precincts voting at the location than the precinct count for Republicans, but the Republicans don’t have the new Chosen One running. Lots of WFH Mommy Mafia in line to vote Dem.
The Republican primary did not use machines to scan the ballots. All ballots went into sealed boxes after the voter filled in their choices.
Cell phones are not allowed within 100 feet of the voting locations under Texas law, but the precinct workers simply had everyone put their portable dopamine hit away once inside the room.
Be careful what you wish for. I saw a lot of Mommies lined up for the Dem primary, and Talarico will open his shadow Senate office in the morning if he prevails while Paxton wins the Republican primary without a runoff.
I wonder of Talarico will use one of the empty storefronts next to the Specs like “Doors” did running against Cornyn six years ago.
I can’t decide if it is Kabuki for Wall Street or management quaffing hard from the Kool Aid vat.
What was the Powers Booth as Jim Jones money line from “The Guyana Tragedy”?
“Come to me my babies let me feel your pain.”
This seems bassackward to me. The directions for scanning, the Window kind, don’t work. Of course not.
I played with stuff like \\192.168.0.1\emu\paul\Public. With or without the IP address. Change the slant of the slashes. I added emu because that’s the machine’s name. Password? Sure, lets try.
To me, it’s Address/machine/user/shared folder. I’m sure I have it wrong. I know Windows, since the days of Win2 running on top of DOS4.
Nope. No mater what I do, printer says I don’t have permission.
I found this: https://support.lexmark.com/content/support/guides/en/v47614902/scan/scanning-to-a-computer-v58947404.html
Scroll down. Directions for Macintosh. What the heck. “Open Image Capture”. On my version of Mint it’s under Graphics and called “Document Scanner”.
So….. I can’t figure how to Push to the PC from the printer, but I can Pull from the printer. Sort of backwards to me but I can scan stuff.
Ok. I voted early. Maybe it’s a Burnet thing but there is just one line. They scan your d/l. And give the usual lecture because my Voter Name doesn’t exactly match my Driver License Name.
Pick the primary you want to vote in, scribble your sig on the screen, and the printer prints your ballot. Special paper, it has one corner rounded. Off you go to sit at a table with a ballpoint pen to fill the little boxes. ALL ballots go through the scanner into a locked box when you are done.
It’s uh. Different. More like the old days, 30 years ago. I never liked the voting machines we had here. Now we have a paper trail.
Do you have Samba running on the Mint system?
I only use Ubuntu/Mint systems as clients. I’ve never tried setting one up as a server.
I don’t know the convention about the Public folder in the user’s home directory. I thought that was for web documents.
Mint may have some kind of admin tool for setting up SMB shares. I’ll poke around on one of my Mint systems and see what I can find.
If you’re searching online, Mint is essentially Ubuntu so you want to look for configuration instructions to put your user account’s home directory on the network as a Samba share.
If you already have Samba running, older printers/scanners with the network folder capability may want to talk SMB1, which is considered “insecure” but perfectly fine for a home network behind a firewall. I’ll dig into my server’s smb.conf file for the magic incantation to activate SMB1.
If you’re lucky, it may just be a commented out line in the configuration file.
Scanning to the network folder from the device is really handy. I keep the same share mapped as a drive on all of my laptops, and my scanned documents are always available.
Texas was heavily invested in Dominion technology for 2020. Now it has all quietly gone away.
I think I have Samba running. It’s like “file sharing” isn’t it? I think it installed when I shared the paul/Public folder.
I’m not pretending to know I know what I’m doing.
My Lexmark machine is like 13 years old. So maybe activating SMB1 is the cure.
Will do.
Thanks for the clues and hints. 🙂
Welp. It’s suddenly almost pitch black outside. 7PM. 77f. Seems early. Maybe because it was sunny today.
Buddy is interested and getting antsy. Penny will come along. Of course she will. She follows now. She’s not as fast as she was. Use to always lead the way and zig zag a hundred feet or more in each direction from the driveway. Yeah, I’m walking 1000 feet and she was running 4000 feet.
But she still leads the way back to the house. And she still knows “I’m gonna get your tail!!”. It’s a game we play. Sometimes she trots faster, sometimes I get her tail.
A beautiful warm calm day after a mid-30s night with associated windstorm.
I pulled weeds from flowerbeds, carted tumbleweeds to the pile in back. Still more to do, but 50% of the FY done.
Ordered an electric mower. My two gas mowers that I brought from the old place are kaput (one two years ago, one last year), and honestly I am tired of fluids and gas. Plus I would have to drive to Nevada to buy one.
Stuff in the back 40 can be done with a mower deck and tractor, but the 1/4 acre inside the fence needs a smaller unit.
At 730 pm, the polls closed at 7 pm, the line out the door to vote was still a 100 feet long at the little SBC church down the way.
Big pale orange color moon rising just above the trees. It’s the color of a 7 inch headlight when the battery is too dead to start the car. Guessing a 12 volt head light running on 4 volts.
On the plus side, you will have plenty of moon light for your walk home. Been there, done that.
I had an HP all-in-one which dated back to when we moved to Texas in 2010, and the scan to network folder feature needed SMB1.
We ditched the all-in-one in favor of a newer HP model last year when Nebraska Furnitre Mart had a deal on one for the Geico Gecko shareholder weekend coinciding with the gathering in Omaha.
The scanner still worked fine, but the print head was done. HP doesn’t sell new print heads.
We rarely use the color print feature, but it is nice to have the option. Plus, we don’t have another fax machine beyond the all-in-one.
I Ducked a bit. I have Samba installed.
Part of the connecting to Win boxes is needing a password, etc. I don’t have any of that. I’ve never needed or wanted to have passwords. I’m too dumb and perhaps there is a lot of FU to find how to make passwords and such. And that’s why I’m now running Mint instead of Win11.
Moa is next. All I want is to share Desktops with all permissions. That’s all. I’ve done this since 3.11 Win95 made it easier. WinXP for sure. Just the Desktop. No passwords, peer to peer.
It’s not a big deal for security. Of course I’m behind a router. I just look stupid. What do expect? I cut my own hair and well….. It’s just sharing the Desktop, not root of the drive. MS broke it.
The polling place around the corner from my house showed 0 wait, reported at 6:14pm. It lied. The line was out the door and 100 yards long. OK, so I went to the other nearby place, a school. Got in and the line was down the hall 100yrds… but a poll worker asked if there were any Republicans in the line and pulled us up to the short line. I think it was much higher ratio than 20:1, maybe 40:1. Dems to ‘pubs.
It still took far too long to vote, as the machines lost their connection, and intermittently didn’t work. It had been that way all day according to the lady at the table. And it was a long ballot, 105 questions. I finally did my thing, with dozens of positions running unopposed and thus wasting my time. The props were interesting.
No chance to vote against Crenshaw this time, redistricting must have moved him out of our district.
There was still a long line of Dems waiting at 7:15 when I finally left. Mostly ‘no hablo’.
It was the same machines that let them ‘re-elect’ Lina Hildalgo, the most hated woman in Houston last time. big “H” on the cases. Actually, a stylized lower case ‘h’ but large.
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Took some stuff to the shop and came home to baked chicken thighs. I had breading left over, and no room in the frying pan yesterday so I took a bag of thighs and put them in the oven with the potatoes. Ate them today and they were delicious too.
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Voted in support of banning sharia law in Texas. Should already be illegal, but might as well have a law.
n
Well, since my Lexmark CX410de is 13 years old, it’s not feeding paper like it should. I guess the rollers are whatever, they feel good to my fingers, but they don’t feed the paper. I have fanned the paper. I opened a new ream of paper. Nope,. No joy.
I had a Xerox color printer. Pretty much did the same at 11 years old.
So. What are y’all using? I want color. I want a copier. And a scanner. Duplex printing is a nice bonus. Speed is well, 5 pages a minute is plenty fast. Oh, and it’s on the LAN, not connected to a PC of any kind.
Open source intel, watching the watchers
Interesting
n
It looks there is going to be a runoff between John Cornyn, the gun grabber, and Ken Paxton, for the US Senate seat from Texas.
https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2026/primary-election-results-2026/
X tells me that eyepatch McCain lost to Steve Toth.
No chance to vote against Crenshaw this time, redistricting must have moved him out of our district.
Steve Toth is thumping Dan Crenshaw like an old drum, for US 2 at 57.6% to 39.2% with 57.7% of the votes in.
https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2026/primary-election-results-2026/
You really should not upset your voters, they have long memories.
Unfortunately, it looks like Tony Gonzales is leading Brandon Herrera. But it’s close enough there’ll be another runoff.
Maybe Brandon will slay one of the RINOs.
Crenshaw got borged by the establishment, and instead of a friend of the 2A, he turned out to be an ‘only ones’ in favor of restrictions and nope for thee and yes for me…
I wanted to believe.
n
Suspected Drone Attack on Sanctioned Russian LNG Tanker Sparks Serious Concern
https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2026/03/03/suspected-drone-attack-on-sanctioned-russian-lng-tanker-sparks-serious-concern-n3812492
Look up “Texas City disaster”. Multiply by about 15 on a per ton basis, multiply by about 40 on a ton basis, multiply by a conversion efficiency less that 1. How much less than 1? This is a case where modeling would be useful. The fuel will mix with a volume of air, ignite and explode before the stoichiometric fuel/air ratio (see FAE aka “thermobaric bomb” is reached, so bang>fireball. Small nuke without the bad residue. Shock wave probably killed fish for miles.
The Russians certainly modeled the effects of an LNG tanker explosion in port a longtime ago. Detonating one at sea was a demonstration.
“Crenshaw got borged by the establishment, and instead of a friend of the 2A, he turned out to be an ‘only ones’ in favor of restrictions and nope for thee and yes for me…”
If you’ll lie to get elected you’ll lie about anything, and probably have a lot of practice at it already.
The big plate of peach cobbler with ice cream took me out for a couple of hours, then I was wide awake. I really need bedtime.
Plus my hands are swollen and stiff like Mickey Mouse hands and typing is a chore.
Bedtime it is.
n
Wow, that’s gotten longer since I last looked at it. I have some catching up to do.
BTW, thanks for the list, I’ve found some great stories because of it 🙂
Well, they *are* dinosaurs.
During the exam I gave yesterday, I was sitting in the classroom bored, just occasionally walking around. For grins, I gave ChatGPT the exam to solve. It’s fairly basic stuff: code a couple of HTML pages and CSS to make them look just like the screenshots in the exam. A few hints in the text.
I figured that would be difficult for an AI. HTML and CSS are easy enough, but it would have to parse the PDF, extract the screenshots and understand them, and then figure out how to reproduce the appearance.
While the result wasn’t absolutely perfect, it was darned good. AIs are getting incredibly good.
Wow, that’s gotten longer since I last looked at it. I have some catching up to do.
BTW, thanks for the list, I’ve found some great stories because of it
I have been rereading a lot of books. If they stand a reread then they are a six star book. Mostly Ilona Andrews books which I find awesome.
You are welcome. Glad to be of some use.
During the exam I gave yesterday, I was sitting in the classroom bored, just occasionally walking around. For grins, I gave ChatGPT the exam to solve. It’s fairly basic stuff: code a couple of HTML pages and CSS to make them look just like the screenshots in the exam. A few hints in the text.
I figured that would be difficult for an AI. HTML and CSS are easy enough, but it would have to parse the PDF, extract the screenshots and understand them, and then figure out how to reproduce the appearance.
While the result wasn’t absolutely perfect, it was darned good. AIs are getting incredibly good.
What grade did you give ChatGPT ?
The solution wasn’t perfect, but the problems were incredibly minor, so it would be a top grade. Here, that would be a 6, which is an “A” in US terms. And we don’t really have the kind of grade inflation that the US has.
“James Talarico defeats Jasmine Crockett in blockbuster Democratic primary for U.S. Senate”
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/03/03/texas-jasmine-crockett-james-talarico-us-senate-democratic-primary/
It is Camelot all over again !
Within narrow bounds and only so long as there are plenty of examples of good code to use as baselines. The problems that you described fit that criterion. If you had asked the students to design a domain specific language for controlling monitoring equipment, to justify their design decisions, and to implement a DSL parser in Python to read a data file and send the control codes through a serial port, the LLM most likely would have face-planted. I speak with some authority on this subject because pushing LLMs until they fail is a large part of how I earn my living lately.
That said, they are getting better, dramatically so in the past year. Not there yet.