Cool and overcast but hopefully not wet. Yesterday was supposed to be sunny and clear, but turned out to be overcast and cool in Ft. Bend county anyway. Which was nice. I still managed to get some sun color as I was in it for 11 hours… nothing like if it was sunny though.
Had a successful hamfest swapmeet. Grossed about the same as last year, but sold completely different stuff. Got rid of a few flip top bins. Everyone seemed pretty happy with pricing and several guys came back more than once. I had a good day.
D1 had a bad day. She woke up puking and ran a fever all day. Missed her “color run”. She’s feeling better today, but I haven’t checked her fever yet. I thought it might be food poisoning since none of the rest of us are sick, but the fever suggests otherwise. Hopefully it will resolve today.
W and D2 should be home in the early afternoon. It will be good to have the pack together.
Today I still have to return the trailer and put some unsold items back in storage. That needs to happen in the late morning. I’d rather sleep, but needs must…
Then it will be on to the list of stuff…
Like always.
Still, turned some stuff into money that will be better spent on different stacks. Take a look at your situation, and if you are thinking about selling stuff, do it. People are definitely running out of money.
Stack while you can.
nick
If she was puking, she could have gone on a technicolor run.
Yesterday, each of my hens laid an egg. First time in the seven months since the first egg was laid. I celebrated the milestone by giving them some round, orange crackers.
They were out only an hour or so yesterday because of the rain. This restriction of their freedom annoyed them and they tried to sneak past me every time I opened the run to fill the water tank or whatever.
The hen which was attacked by the hawk is doing fine after a little over a week. I’ve been keeping gauze wrapped around her neck mostly because the feathers were all pulled out. The wounds are still there but scabbed over and don’t look infected. She’s doing all the usual chicken things, including running around, scratching for grubs, laying eggs, and stealing treats from other birds if they let their guard down.
I plan to take The Child out for a driving lesson today, part of the whole “get the brat to take the steps toward adulthood even if she wants to be a lazy brat and lounge around all day” agenda.
This trailer ran in front of “Dune Part 2” yesterday at our local theater.
George Miller wants that Best Picture Oscar. The studio does too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJMuhwVlca4
Not to drop any spoilers, but Anya Taylor-Joy does show up in “Dune” with a flash forward cameo which teases her casting in “Dune Messiah”. Someone at Warner remembers that show business is a *business*.
“Dune” fans can probably guess her role in the series moving forward. Beyond “synergies”, it meant that the director didn’t have to find the right child actress.
Up. Moving. Slowly and stiffly. Man I’m beat up. Gotta return the trailer though, and I’m late. Wasnt’ thinking straight last night, so I put stuff inthe trailer. I need to drop the trailer FIRST, so Ihad to move that this morning.
Gah. On to it. At least there is coffee. SO Tasty coffee.
n
D1 is feeling much better, no fever.
n
I find it hilarious that tRump might win not because he is great, but because plugs supports, check notes, aid to Israel? The PLT Dumbocrats could elect Donald J. tRump.
Did my returns. Time to take some meds and lay back down. Holy cow, I hurt. I’ve got to start doing something to get back to where I was, and slow down this nonsense.
The joke is that “if I’d known I was gonna live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself…” but of course, I wouldn’t have. No one does.
And I’m in a lot better shape than a lot of people, so it really doesn’t profit me to whinge.
Part of the human condition though.
n
Yep, I see that a lot in the VA clinic. Some of those guys are 60 years old and look like one foot is in the grave and the other stepping on a banana peel. I don’t know if it was due to combat experiences, drug abuse, invincible syndrome when younger, booze, cigarettes or a combination of all of those. Heavy drinking and smoking will really take a toll on the body.
I started going to the gym 3 times a week back in October, and I’ve kept with it.
It’s amazing how much time that takes away from my life. Between getting ready, going, exercising, sauna/spa and showering, all prescribed by my doctors (both real and YouTube), it basically eliminates any productivity at all on those 3 days. When I get home, there’s not enough time or daylight or focus to work on projects.
OTOH, weight remains stable at the low end of my range (still 40+ pounds high), and blood pressure is well controlled with minimum medication. I’m getting stronger and my sleep is good. And I get to listen to my old-time-radio shows on demand while I do the boring exercise and boring sauna.
I can’t imagine doing that while working for a living or running a household or side hustle.
@Nick, Pournelle used to talk a lot about the Five Tibetans, and I’ve also flirted with X3 as a simple home exercise regimin. Except, I cobbled together a set of bars, bands, and platforms for 10% of the cost of real X3.
There’s a couple that runs the restaurant in our town. The guy was medivaced out with a helicopter a couple of months ago. He’s back now, with a better pacemaker. Still smokes like a chimney…
Meds onboard and I’m going to have a bit of a lie down…
W and D2 home from GS camp and settled.
Time for me to lose some productive time.
n
First, I’ve never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer.
I swapped out my two switches. Rebooted the two wired PCs for “because”. Looked at Network Settings on Moa and yep, connected at 1000. To the switch at least.
Tossed that 10 GB folder to Emu’s desktop and wtF? Same speed pre-gig switches. Hey, I think the whole point of “switch versus hub” is you can have different speed things on a switch. That old and slow 10Mb thing isn’t going drag the entire LAN to the same speed.
Oh. Emu shows it’s connected at 100 speed. I guess I need to replace at least one wire. I might as well go further.
The NanoBeams say they are talking to each other at 550 to 650 Mbits. That doesn’t mean the cables are good enough for GB speed to the switches.
Ditto for the Router. If the wire is iffy, ain’t gonna get the promised 110/110 Internet speed.
Looks like I need three 25 to 30 foot cables Toss in a 15 foot cable for the UniFi, might kick up wi-fi speed with any luck. Plus short cords to go from the Ubiquiti power supplies to the switches. Add another 5 or 6 foot cable for Emu.
Time to shop on Big River.
There’s Cat 8 cable? That’s better than 5e? Ok, Price looks ok.
Cat 8 is Special. I guess.
What was fun was clicking “free shipping” and the total dropped from $105 to $55. That was exciting. No, fools, do not use my gift card balance, ok?
Anyway. All from the same seller. Arriving Friday but who knows.
I might have just bought the equivalent of Monster Cable speaker wires.
“My Real Children” by Jo Walton
https://www.amazon.com/My-Real-Children-Jo-Walton/dp/076533268X?tag=ttgnet-20/
A standalone alternate history fantasy novel about a 90 year old confused woman. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback published by Tor Books in 2014 that I bought on Amazon in 2017.
Patricia Cowan is 90 years old and living in a nursing home in England. Her daily status chart differs between “confused today” and “very confused today”. Some days she remembers having four children and some days she remembers having three children. Some days she remembers the bomb that killed President Kennedy in 1963 and some days she remembers the nuclear exchange that destroyed Miami and Kiev in 1963.
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.2 out of 5 stars (489 reviews)
Lynn
D1 had a bad day. She woke up puking and ran a fever all day. Missed her “color run”. She’s feeling better today, but I haven’t checked her fever yet. I thought it might be food poisoning since none of the rest of us are sick, but the fever suggests otherwise. Hopefully it will resolve today.
Sorry to hear that, hope she gets better quickly.
I gave this cold to my wife and daughter so they have been both blaming me for their misery. No puking though so that is new. I am still coughing and fighting congestion but I am slightly better after over a week.
@paul:
Cat 8 (if that’s actually “Cat “8”. Big River is notorious for inflated ratings) is overkill. Cat5e (or, for safety, Cat6) is more than adequate for gigabit wiring. Here at Semi-Detached Bedlam, I’m using Cat5e for all the fixed wiring. Tail cables are increasingly Kenable-brand gigabit flat, with the 4 twisted pairs needed for gigabit laid-up side-by-side in an oval sheath. This fits better under doors.
You’re right, switches will speed-change, so if you have 10MBit kit, only links to that will be held back. Back in the day, it was possible to get dual-speed 10/100 hubs, which would also do speed-change, which requires buffering, but they weren’t common, and were spendy.
You can, in fact, use short runs (on the order of units of metres) of Cat6 at 2.5GBit. I don’t, none of my kit can run at that speed, not even the new-ish fibre ONT (optical network terminal).
G.
“HughesNet Lost 200K Satellite Internet Users Last Year Amid Starlink Competition”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/hughesnet-lost-200k-satellite-internet-users-last-year-amid-starlink-competition
“The company is now focusing less on consumers and more on serving enterprise customers.”
I am amazed that anyone would still be on Hughes with Starlink available.
The Child oozed out of bed this morning, not feeling good. Got another cold, most likely from a classmate. Again. -siiiiigh-
“Amazon Will Soon Start Testing Hundreds of Prototype Dishes for Project Kuiper”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/amazon-will-soon-start-testing-hundreds-of-prototype-dishes-for-project
“The FCC grants Amazon subsidiary Kuiper Systems a temporary license to operate up to 1,000 prototype dishes for the satellite internet system, which aims to rival Starlink.”
“So far, Amazon has only launched two prototype satellites for Project Kuiper. But the company plans on sending up the first production satellites for the internet system in the first half of the year. The fact that Amazon plans on testing the prototype dishes starting in April suggests the production satellites will go up soon.”
Can Amazon build a competitor to Starlink without a seasoned lift system ?
The Child oozed out of bed this morning, not feeling good. Got another cold, most likely from a classmate. Again. -siiiiigh-
Hope she gets better soon. So are there multiple versions of the same cold working their way around the petri factories known as schools ?
Pearls Before Swine: Nightmare Crusher
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2024/03/03
And another superhero that I never want to meet.
“Replacement: Not Just a Conspiracy Theory”
https://areaocho.com/so-old/
“I’m so old, I remember when Jake from State Farm was white.”
Me too.
Yeah, Cat 8 may well be a scam for my needs. I’m sure it is a scam. Then again, I’m future proofed for the next twenty years. After that, well, do they have wi-fi for the inmates at nursing homes?
I really got to start clearing out my house.
Maybe they can pay SpaceX to boost their satellites.
“White” Jake has peeked over the cubicle wall in the commercials at least once in the last year or so.
They’re still using Barry Manilow’s jingle.
Aren’t they all Jake – with an odd accent. “Have I given you excellent customer service?”
“The company [HughesNet] is now focusing less on consumers and more on serving enterprise customers.”
Wonder why they are running lots of consumer-oriented tv ads for their new Jupiter satellite service.
@paul, I have a home gigabit Ethernet setup, and can pass on some wiring tips.
Most of my runs are Cat5e bulk cable. This cable is fast enough. I use bulk cable, and terminate with RJ-45 punch down keystone jacks for 22-24 AWG solid wire. Here is an example:
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=27556
These need a 110 style punch down tool, but the ones I bought came with a cheap plastic tool that I have used for years. The jacks are reusable if you ever have to remove one. Note the low price at Monoprice, my favorite supplier for almost anything they carry. They have some of the lowest prices, good sales, and I have never had a poor quality product from them.
I can use the punch down jack at the end of a cable, with just a lacing tape tie as a stress relief if that suits your setup. If you want to get fancy, there are wall plates and surface mount boxes, sometimes called “biscuits”. I have found this to be reliable and about as low cost as anything. You can even build your own patch panels.
Once you have the cable terminated, simply use a patch cable to go to the device. Check out Monoprice’s patch cables for good quality at bargain prices. Never had a bad one. Their products seem to be as good as any, regardless of price. If it seems like I like Monoprice, I do. They haven’t paid me to say this. I wish they sold more stuff.
With this method, you can quickly make a cable of any length inexpensively. You also don’t have to invest in crimping tools and special connectors for solid wire. Patch cables are inexpensive, and convenient.
I started with a 100 Mb/s small network, and later upgraded to Gigabit. This was easy, since I didn’t have switches to replace. My gigabit switches are old, but almost any major name brand (and some no names) seem to perform about the same. D-Link is favored by lots of people. I don’t have lightning here, so can’t recommend something that can resist it. IMHO, nothing can resist lightning, but some brands seem better than others.
I don’t want to dig out my logs, but going from 100 Mb to 1000 Mb will only get you something like 3x the speed increase. There are reasons for this, but I don’t remember them just now. Several people here could explain why the overhead is so high. Also, IIRC, a switch can support multiple simultaneous streams on the same net with very few collisions. And, as someone else already said, the streams can be different speeds. Ethernet sure is flexible.
Hope this helps.
Yes. Amazon may not have the satellites, but they have lots of devices deployed which can supplement bandwidth provided by an MVNO agreement.
Maybe There’s an Explanation for Plummeting NYC Subway Ridership After All
https://hotair.com/headlines/2024/03/03/maybe-theres-an-explanation-for-plummeting-nyc-subway-ridership-after-all-n3783994
How do you make a blue state blue shiitehole worse?
How about importing between 1,000,000 and 2,000,00 illegal alien invaders from third-world-shiiteholes?
AoSHQ’s Saturday Night Joke:
Several men are in the locker room of a golf club.
A cell phone on a bench rings and a man engages the
speaker function and begins to talk. Everyone else
in the room stops to listen.
MAN: “Hello”
WOMAN: “Hi Honey, it’s me . Are you at the club?”
MAN: “Yes.”
WOMAN: “I’m at the shops now and found this
beautiful leather coat. It’s only $2,000.Is it OK if I buy it?”
MAN: “Sure, go ahead if you like it that much.”
WOMAN: “I also stopped by the Lexus dealership and
saw the new models. I saw one I really liked.”
MAN: “How much?”
WOMAN: “$90,000.”
MAN: “OK, but for that price I want it with all the options.”
WOMAN: “Great! Oh, and one more thing. I was just talking to
Janie and found out that the house I wanted last year is
back on the market. They’re asking $980,000 for it.”
MAN: “Well, then go ahead and make an offer of $900,000.
They’ll probably take it. If not, we can go the extra
eighty-thousand if it’s what you really want.”
WOMAN: “OK. I’ll see you later! I love you so much!”
MAN: “Bye! I love you, too.”
The man hangs up.
The other men in the locker room are staring
at him in astonishment, mouths wide open.
He turns and asks,
“Anyone know whose phone this is?”
Who want to turn their new home into the same shirthole(-r) that they left.
Ok, feeling a lot better at the moment, although my typing skill is still a bit sketchy. Take a while to flush out the meds, I guess.
Really helps me to get a jump on it if I can stop the spasms and get realigned before a lot of temporary damage is done.
————–
WRT ethernet and cat cable. I still run cat5e from reputable manufacturers-ones who sweep test the cable. I have been checking my installs with an Agilent cable certifier for almost 2 decades and have no trouble at all, with all of them certifying to gigabit speeds and meeting cat 6 spec. There is a lot of chinese counterfeit cable in the marketplace that won’t meet spec.
One thing I found when trying to chase down my slower speed when I did my upgrade to fiber, is something installed by Dell to limit rate and traffic shape your networking. It was from Digital River, or Blue River or blue digital… Something like that anyway. It was damn hard to kill but eventually it stopped coming back. Look for it in ‘running services’.
————–
At my secondary I had a brief exchange with my neighbor’s workers. They build bouncy houses for the hispanic market. We usually moan about the economy, prices, slowdowns, etc, but I usually find them there working on Saturday and Sunday… so they are making ends meet. This time he mentioned that his customers are afraid Trump will win and send them all home, so they are laying low and hiding. Not having as many parties with bouncy houses…
—————
n
Tell him not to worry, nobodies going back to mowing their own yard.
(the real reason for the slow down on bouncy houses is inflation is cutting into frivolous expenses. Have you priced a cake lately?)
Adam Sandler has made a science fiction movie for Netflix, “Spaceman”, watching it now.
No one in Beverly Hills wants to pay full price for their fax machine landline.
The landline always goes in the housekeeper’s name.
D1 just issued a “nerd alert” for D2 because D2 has admitted to liking musical theatre… Which D1 deigns to acknowledge is “ok for the kind of people who like musical theatre…”
Kids.
n
Gotta say, I’m with D1 on that, Nick. Not that there’s anything wrong with liking musical theater, but maybe the kind of people who like musical theater should have their own schools, to keep them away from normal people. Their own cities. You know, giving them their own country wouldn’t be going too far.
It’s kinda ironic, since both W and I have degrees in theater… and musical theater put food on our table, and bought my wife her house…
But yeah, it’s an acquired taste. Uniquely American art form too, although others can and do do it… like jazz and blues music.
It used to be solidly “pop” music, as in “popular” music, and much of the Great American Songbook ™ is from musical theater. Not so much anymore.
Just don’t ask me to sing Judd’s parts from Oklahoma! Unless you enjoy Vogon poetry…
n
Weirdness with Outlook (web app, not local) – maybe someone has a great idea. I cleaned up the calendars it displays, by removing some duplicated holiday calendars. Nothing else as far as I recall.
Now, it is the case that none of my Teams meetings show up, nor do any other appointments that accept by email. Only things I enter directly show up. Which is obviously…suboptimal…as it means that I have to manually enter every appointment directly.
For the moment, I am using Teams as my calendar, because everything does show up there. But that is not a great solution, because I have multiple Teams identities (3 different schools), and I’m not always logged into the right account.
Any ideas?