10:12 – Happy birthday to me. I turn 3F today. Only one more year until I hit the Big Four-Oh. A year after that, I’ll be eligible for Medicare, assuming it’s still around two years from now.
Barbara got me the perfect gift for anyone with an interest in science: Derek Lowe’s The Chemistry Book: From Gunpowder to Graphene, 250 Milestones in the History of Chemistry. Recommended.
Big article in the paper this morning about the increasing violence in cities. After peaking in 1990, violence in cities had declined significantly over the next 20 years, but now it’s started to increase dramatically in many (but not all) cities. Apparently, no one in authority can figure out why this is happening, or maybe it’s just that they’re not allowed to say. Hint: it has to with the large increase in the population of underclass scum. That, and forbidding the police to deal with them.
Back in the Good Olde Days, cops divided people into three categories: cops, civilians, and scumbags. They treated civilians politely, and never, ever beat or shot them. They treated scumbags as they deserved to be treated, and beat or shot them as necessary. In olden days, mistreating civilians was the fastest way for a cop to commit career suicide, while treating scumbags harshly was just another day at the office. Nowadays, the situation is, if not quite the opposite, uncomfortably close to being so. Cops now shoot more middle-class civilians than they do underclass scumbags. Killing a middle-class person has become almost a protected activity for cops, while killing an underclass scumbag invariably results in severe blowback, often career-ending. This has to change.
So today is the 72nd Anniversary of D-Day and Google has nothing about it on the home page. I thought that the Nazis were evil, and therefore the US, UK and others did a good thing by crushing them. Oh, wait we can’t say that, because it would imply the US and UK are good.
Many happy returns!
Thanks for the chemistry book link -definitely going on my Amazon wishlist.
A propos Chemistry… I had an interesting conversation over the weekend with a German pharmacist. I wanted to buy some Iodide tablets, to keep on hand in case of a radiological incident. He was perfectly happy to sell me what I wanted, but he unfortunately, didn’t recall the proper size of tablet or the dosage protocol.
I took a box of 200 microgram tablets, on the basis that having some is better than having none. However, I suspect the protocol for an emergency is probably one or more pretty massive doses per person, maybe 50 milligram or more… Does anybody happen to know for sure?
So I am increasingly fed up with Google because their ideology is in conflict with mine. So I guess it’s time to find a new search engine and a new web browser. Google Docs and Google Calendar and having the content on all my devices have been convenient. Time to replace all of them.
Along with The Chemistry Book are The Physics Book and The Engineering Book. I plan to get all three when I’m a little less broke. Thanks for the pointer, RBT. Small Fries’ brains need filling, and I’d rather my particular Small Fry’s brain be filled with STEM stuff than with MineFlix videos.
Bob, Happy Birthday you young whipper snapper.
“So today is the 72nd Anniversary of D-Day…”
My Dad flew 2 to 3 missions a day (for how long he would never say exactly, but more than a week) in his B-17 in support of D-Day. By the end his plane had to be decommissioned and used for parts due to all the damage. He and his crew got a 2-day rest while they waited for a new/”refurbished” B-17.
Denis, here is what the US CDC has to say.
I like DuckDuckGo for technical searches. It feels more like the old Altavista search in the answers it returns.
google is still the gorilla, so I use it by default, but I am mindful of both the tracking and the ideological bias.
I never used google docs, only use the mail for it’s integration with my phone, and only forward my business email to the gmail. I don’t use the gmail address for anything else.
Calender again,because of integration with my wife’s scheduling, and my phone.
Use it all as minimally as possible.
WAY back in the day there was a PIM (remember those? M$ killed off a whole category of software when they went after that market) called PackRat. It was awesome in it’s ability to combine and link your activities and provide time tracking. I used DeskTopSet (another PIM) for long after the developer went insane, and then stopped support. So much better than anything since.
In each case the data remained local, and under my control, and the programs had more features and were genuinely useful.
nick
Michael Bane has some advice if you find yourself in a riot, or incipient riot:
http://michaelbane.blogspot.com/
n
“Killing a middle-class person has become almost a protected activity for cops, while killing an underclass scumbag invariably results in severe blowback, often career-ending. This has to change.”
Don’t hold your breath. It’s yet another nasty manifestation of what has been called “Mirror World” or “Bizarro World,” where everything is topsy-turvy and the opposite of what it should be, akin to falling down Alice’s rabbit hole. In terms of, say, firearms ownership, it’s where they allow guns by default and neglect to fall into the hands of underclass criminal scum but bust my ballz with more regulations and ordinances and paperwork, all un-Constitutional. Like they’ve done to the extreme in Europe, the UK and the British Commonwealth of Nations countries. So I guess we’re supposed to be defenseless against those criminals and terrorists while relying on our warrior-hero cops to protect us, and when seconds count, they’re only minutes away. Plus they tell us straight out now that they have NO DUTY to protect us anyway.
And their training totally sucks; the default setting is immediate lethal or potentially lethal force and they simply MUST go home at the end of their shifts without a scratch or a bruise or having been “in fear for their lives.”
“Time to replace all of them.”
Indeed. I’m in the process of importing my two gmail accounts into FastMail and when that’s done, I’m blowing them away. This will also blow away the associated accounts, as with YouTube, of course. There are other alternatives to the Google empire; I also use DuckDuckGo and am playing around with learning EverNote for calendar, note-taking, etc., and syncing it other devices. But frankly I’m still using little slips of paper stuffed into my pockets and wallet for most things, and handwriting lists of things to do each day.
Already long gone from FaceCrack; won’t use Twitter or the other goofy social media stuff; and we’re behind a VPN while I’m gradually increasing my use of Tor and replacing the other browsers with it. Would like to ditch Windows on this machine at some point and have only wife’s work laptop running it (Windows 7) and frankly she could ditch it on that, too, and replace it with Linux.
The weather liars had said rain for today but it’s sunny with blue skies; wife off to horse riding lessons every weekday while she’s home; then we have to drive down to Great-Grandma’s this afternoon and she’s taking GG to pick up her new leased Subaru Impreza while I go to the beginners bike intro. Tomorrow I’m off to the VA again to see about my ongoing back pain and de facto crippling, three months of it now.
@Denis
The standard is 130 milligrams (=130,000 micrograms) of potassium iodide (=100 mg of iodine) per day for young adults and half of that for small children. The half-life of iodine-131 is about 8 days, so the threat disappears pretty quickly. KI is not recommended for pregnant women or adults older than 40 or 50 years because thyroid tumors are very slow growing and there are risks to taking high doses of iodine.
Here’s a pretty good summary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-131#Treatment_and_prevention
Incidentally, Derek’s chemistry book strikes me as a good candidate for a bathroom book. Each topic occupies one left-hand page, with an image on the right-hand page. Over a few months, you could learn quite a bit about the history of chemistry.
My dad was a navigator on a B-17. On one mission, they departed England in a brand spanking new B-17. When they returned, the crew chief counted 2,300 flak and 8mm/20mm bullet holes in the plane, which was a write-off after that one mission. My dad said the incredible thing was that none of the crew suffered even a scratch.
I’ve always said the B-17 is the reason I was born. They took a licking and kept on ticking.
“After the rains, summer comes to Houston this week”
http://spacecityweather.com/1865-2/
“Well, it’s been quite the start to the year 2016. We’ve had floods west of Houston, northwest of Houston, north of Houston southwest of Houston, east of Houston—pretty much all over the city. This most recent rain event, during the second half of last week, was enough to push the city above 1992 for the wettest year to date, through June 5.”
“The city has officially recorded 39.67 inch of rain at Bush Intercontinental Airport (blue line below). This is all the more remarkable because, only about six weeks ago, the city was actually below normal for total rainfall for this year:”
Yo, sportsfans, somebody say sumthin’ about Mirror World??
http://takimag.com/article/when_heroes_are_villains_gavin_mcinnes/print#axzz4AocGLqQL
Scott Adams endorses …
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/145456082991/my-endorsement-for-president-of-the-united-states
Wimp.
I think that he is messing with us again.
According to the CDC page I cited pregnant women can take KI. The Wikipedia page Bob cited is all about Iodine-131 which is both the dangerous isotope and used in nuclear medicine. I-131 is not used for children or pregnant women because of the real danger of thyroid cancer. I know because I have been treated with I-131, and was told to avoid pregnant women and children under twelve for a period of time after treatment.
Update: The chart in the Wikipedia is technically accurate, but does not note that Infants under 1 month only get one dose. Before giving KI to small children or pregnant women, please consult someone who knows more than I do.
All,
many thanks for the KI information. Living in a small country both nuclear power-stations of which are clear candidates for terrorist attack and/or simple old-age failure gets one thinking about KI and other essentials. I don’t trust the local authorities to have the stuff or to distribute it swiftly in an emergency.
My WAG about the proper dose was at least in the correct ballpark. Now to see if our friendly pharmacist can get the right tablets. Although, as everyone in this household is over 40, we could probably do without KI, according to the linked information. Any thoughts on Prussian blue and radiocaesium?
Yes, but note that CDC recommends that pregnant women take one dose of I-127 only after a known or likely *internal* exposure to I-131. They do not recommend it prophylactically.
It’s better just to have the gear you need to avoid inhaling or otherwise ingesting radionuclides.
Note that KI is recommended for adults over 40 if they are likely to be exposed internally to a heavy dose of I-131. I normally keep 5 or 8 thousand doses on hand in the form of reagent-grade KI, which I buy by the kilo.
If you’re really concerned, you can buy, say, 25 g of reagent or pharma grade KI, which should be pretty easy to obtain locally. 25 g is [25 / .13] = 192 doses. Dissolve that 25 g of KI in 960 milliliters of nearly boiling distilled water (to sterilize it), and label the bottle as containing 192 adult doses at 5 mL (one teaspoon) per dose. The solution is pretty stable. Over time, or even when you originally mix it, it may assume a pale yellow cast because a tiny amount of the KI is oxidized to iodine. That’s harmless, although some people may find the taste objectionable. That’s easy enough to fix. Just dissolve a vitamin C table along with the KI and store the solution in a sealed bottle. If it gradually assumes a pale yellow cast after that, just add another vitamin C tablet.
BTW, Happy Birthday! Sounds like Barbara got you just what you wanted. One wonders if you sneakily forwarded the URL to her. I have done that once or twice or fifty times.
To re-emphazize, the really important thing is to avoid inhaling or ingesting any radioactive contamination. The best way to do that is to have plastic sheeting and duct tape to seal the openings in your home, N100 dust masks for everyone, and at least a month’s supply of known good stored food and water.
It’s yet another nasty manifestation of what has been called “Mirror World” or “Bizarro World,”
I would add, if you ever have to call the police to your residence, and you have a dog, the cops will kill it. They will empty at least a full magazine into the poor canine “just to be sure.” It doesn’t matter if it is an 8-week old cute puppy.
If you’re really concerned, you can buy, say, 25 g of reagent or pharma grade KI, which should be pretty easy to obtain locally. 25 g is [25 / .13] = 192 doses.
Dr. Bob, will this kind of info be in one of your prepping books? Important stuff!
“One wonders if you sneakily forwarded the URL to her. I have done that once or twice or fifty times.”
I actually ordered it myself in April on Amazon Prime and then handed her the box when it arrived. It works just as well that way, because by this morning I’d completely forgotten I’d ordered it.
Incidentally, I was surprised that it was a hardback. I just assumed it was a paperback from the price. But it’s a very nicely done hardback that I’d have expected to cost twice as much as it did.
@RBT: “I’ve always said the B-17 is the reason I was born. They took a licking and kept on ticking.”
Me too. It was common for everybody to sit on the FLAK Jackets to protect the family jewels. My Dad took FLAK to his legs several times and carried the scares and some of FLAK for the rest of his life. He was always back in the pilots seat the next day. He never lost a crew member, however a couple were wounded so badly that they got a ticket home. He also brought back a couple of B-17s that could not fly again. He told me he had to sign a paper taken responsibility for each B-17 he flew so he made sure each one got home.
I buying this place for my retirement “retirement”, installing automatic gun turrets, and coming out to get food/water and shit.
Denis wrote:
“I don’t trust the local authorities to have the stuff or to distribute it swiftly in an emergency.”
Oh, you can trust them, if you’re one of the “important” people.
After Chernobyl the party members in Kiev were quickly told to go collect their iodine, which they did. The hoi polloi weren’t told.
I need a good waterproof backpack. Something I can carry on planes or on the floor of a small boat without fear of getting my stuff wet. Yet, not a $300 monstrosity that I can buy several copies of and throw in the back of trucks, trunks, etc. External webbing would be good also. I have been thinking about the following models:
http://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Ready-Waterproof-Backpack-Snowboarding/dp/B01BIN27SA
and
http://www.amazon.com/Voli-Dry-Bag-Backpack-20L/dp/B016A539IS
“…if you ever have to call the police to your residence, and you have a dog, the cops will kill it.”
Really? That’s all I gotta do to get rid of our dumbo golden retriever?? Uh-oh…one of the cats was looking over my shoulder while I was reading this…
(actually all three cats adore their doggie)
“After Chernobyl the party members in Kiev were quickly told to go collect their iodine, which they did. The hoi polloi weren’t told.”
Yes, we have our own Party members here in this country, too. They’ll get special snowflake treatment until the money runs out and the troops and cops go unpaid. By then it will be a total banana republic run by a criminal overclass that won’t bother pretending anymore.
“After Chernobyl the party members in Kiev were quickly told to go collect their iodine, which they did. The hoi polloi weren’t told.”
Yes, we have our own Party members here in this country, too. They’ll get special snowflake treatment until the money runs out and the troops and cops go unpaid. By then it will be a total banana republic run by a criminal overclass that won’t bother pretending anymore.
Too late, we are there already. The list starts with the executive branch and includes members of Congress, etc.
Except they’re still pretending we have a functioning, solvent and honorable “democracy” and everything is gonna be A-OK. They also still pretend to care about us out here and wish the best for us and are doing their best.
When in actuality, the tumbrils should have been rolling along steadily to the guillotines since the 1960s, at least, and more likely the 30s and 40s.
And most Murkan derps either in actuality or pretense themselves, go along with the program, watch tee-vee very night, and don’t mind trading LOTS of liberty for not very much security, if any. This is all wunnerful while store shelves are still full, the lights are on and the gas pumps still pumping.
“Q: What is the difference between Venezuela and the United States?
A: About ten years.”
i.e., what, 2026, tops???
http://blog.ushanka.us/
Robert,
thank you very much indeed. The very real threat to/of the Belgian nuclear plants is the hook I am using to get domestic approval for my preparednes activities and expenses, which approval already extends to stocks of food, water and KI. Small steps, but steps in the right dirrection nonetheless.
And I see that Princess Astrid was recently mugged and robbed over there, busted right into her car while she was in it. Don’t the Belgian royals have any security at all? Not that I give much of a rap about royals, when we’ve got our own in all but name…
…but it illustrates how not many of us are totally exempt from this kind of mayhem.
“Google Demonstrates Why Bringing Android Apps to Chromebook is So Disruptive”
https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/android/67746/google-demonstrates-android-apps-chromebook-disruptive
But, Chromebooks do not run Win32 apps like MS Office. And mine.
And a dozen other apps that I simply MUST have available. Vertical markets with a Windows presence don’t have the cash to rewrite everything for Android. Nor is there a market for it. I mean, for goodness sake, I still have a COBOL app running on a SCO box I haven’t been able to retire for the past 5 years, and it’s 30 years old as it is.
@lynn, why waterproof? better to put the stuff in it in stuff sacks and ziploks and get a more versatile bag, no???
I like the heavy duty laptop bags. Some have a bit of shock cord on the outside, they have lots of pockets, don’t look tactical, and are available cheap. The older ones especially are built to carry a ton of weight.
Take a look at your local Goodwill, and see if they have something cheap you can try. That way, you can get the size and weight carrying figured out without spending $100 on a bag.
Your other choice is head to REI and try some on. They have the waterproof sacks too.
nick
@lynn, why waterproof? better to put the stuff in it in stuff sacks and ziploks and get a more versatile bag, no???
So I can throw my backpack in the bottom of the boat when I am fishing. It rains / snows quite frequently and hard while we are fishing each year in Montana so I don’t want my stuff to get wet. And the boat’s cubbyholes are usually full of guide dude stuff. The ChaosBag looks quite good for $35 and has outside web pockets for drinks, etc:
http://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Ready-Waterproof-Backpack-Snowboarding/dp/B01BIN27SA
“…Chromebooks do not run Win32 apps like MS Office. And mine.”
To hell with Google and Winblows; get a Libertas tablet and run Android apps on it galore, in a VERY secure piece of gear. You can also connect a SDR dongle to it.
And a dozen other apps that I simply MUST have available. Vertical markets with a Windows presence don’t have the cash to rewrite everything for Android. Nor is there a market for it. I mean, for goodness sake, I still have a COBOL app running on a SCO box I haven’t been able to retire for the past 5 years, and it’s 30 years old as it is.
Wow, is that ever true about Vertical Markets. I call our market a mile deep and inch wide. Somewhere between 15,000 to 30,000 potential worldwide users.
You can port that Cobol app to Windows if you have the source code and a year or three.
https://www.microfocus.com/products/visual-cobol
“This country is at a crossroads, and there’s not a whole lot of time here between us and the edge of the cliff.” -Rush Limbaugh
@lynn,
I’d never do something like that. The last line of business on the SCO box is moving this year if I can, to a web-based app that will run on any browser (but Windows server…) It can be done in 6 months with less of my time.
The assumptions Tom made when he wrote the COBOL app make it nearly impossible to make any meaningful changes in, and I don’t want those constraints. (“If it’s Tuesday, and we’re at an End-of-month, let Joyce post to last month, otherwise post to this month” type of things. ) Joyce has been retired for a year. Tom retired 3 months ago, and will dial in to look at things, but I can’t count on him being in town all the time.
The other LOB apps are Windows based and not going anywhere soon. At the very least, there is a LARGE market for Windows yet, so I’m not losing support so long as I have my desktops reasonably up to date.
Wow, just noticed that Amazon has a waterproof container for cell phones on a “people also buy” for that Chaos Backpack. The wife puts her cellphone in a dogpoo bag when we go out walking. This might be much much better.
http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Waterproof-JOTO-CellPhone-Motorola/dp/B00LBK7OSY/
Man, I love Amazon.
run Android apps on it galore,
Some of the shittiest apps I’ve seen are Android. Give me Apple or give me death. Sniff.
The other LOB apps are Windows based and not going anywhere soon. At the very least, there is a LARGE market for Windows yet, so I’m not losing support so long as I have my desktops reasonably up to date.
LOB = Line of Business ???
Initially DOS was a business operating system. Then DOS transitioned to Windows and it became a consumer operating system. Along the way it picked up 100X more users playing games and crawling the intertubes.
Now, Windows is transitioning back from a consumer operating to a business operating system as those consumers move to “mobile” solutions. I am wondering if Windows will lose 99% of its users ? What else it will lose? Maybe the business operating system market?
Microsoft of tomorrow will not equal the powerful Microsoft of today.
Without a doubt it will change. Many things will become web based, and I can deploy web servers and browsers. Then Windows won’t matter. But that’s not what I’m dealing with today.
Today I have to deal with Windows desktops. I’m getting too old to tilt at Windmills. I had enough of that with OS/2.
Back in the Good Olde Days, cops divided people into three categories: cops, civilians, and scumbags. They treated civilians politely, and never, ever beat or shot them. They treated scumbags as they deserved to be treated, and beat or shot them as necessary. In olden days, mistreating civilians was the fastest way for a cop to commit career suicide, while treating scumbags harshly was just another day at the office. Nowadays, the situation is, if not quite the opposite, uncomfortably close to being so. Cops now shoot more middle-class civilians than they do underclass scumbags. Killing a middle-class person has become almost a protected activity for cops, while killing an underclass scumbag invariably results in severe blowback, often career-ending. This has to change.
Scumbags used to be 10% of society. They are now 30% ??? of society. And most of the growth is in that segment.
This problem will get worse. For example, drugs are slowly being legalized since the number of users has grown so much.
Wait, I know how to fix the problem. More jobs for the under educated and non mainstream underclass.
Good luck with that as those business owners are tired of dealing with them and automating their jobs as fast as they can. See Wendys, GM, Ford, etc, etc, etc.
Here is a picture that is in the Air and Space Museum in D.C.. Shows my Dad (on the left) with one of the waist gunners on his right and look carefully below the waist gunner and see the bottom ball turret gunner’ head, yes it is still attached. Oh and notice the rather big hole. They had completed dropping their bomb load otherwise things could have been worse.
When using my Chromebook I have half a dozen Win boxes I can RDP to. If I’m near wifi or even have my phone where there is data coverage I’m good to go.
Of course there will be situations where that isn’t possible
FIFY
Sugar Land finally getting the attention it deserves.
“Today I have to deal with Windows desktops. I’m getting too old to tilt at Windmills.”
Ditto, and then some. I learned that a year-and-a-half ago at my last full-time job in IT, which lasted all of six weeks. The job was NOT advertised as desktop support; it was posted as a network admin gig. Assholes. When I got there it was 90% nonstop Winblows desktop support, mainly for the two-dozen or so office drones and manglers, who constantly moved around to different offices and/or had multiple devices to sync. Never again.
“Scumbags used to be 10% of society. They are now 30% ??? of society. And most of the growth is in that segment.”
I dunno what the exact percentage is of scumbags in the general pop but it’s gone up considerably during my time on the planet; another larger percentage is the one of all the clueless, lazy and stupid derps who sit on their couches night after night staring at the tee-vee pixels while their kidz do the same thing with their phones and tablets, nearly 7×24. Will they even hear the gunshots down the block? Or notice that there are bodies lying around the landscape? Half of them cling to whatever blather Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity or Limburger are spouting and the other half are glued to Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews, he of the thrill tingling up and down his leg when Obola was first uncoiling from under the rock.
“When using my Chromebook I have half a dozen Win boxes I can RDP to.”
Perish the thought.
“…such a blatant failure that its cost in money, lives, and freedom can no longer be covered up by even blatant lies, nor can its illusory benefit to society be used as a justification for the costs.”
So the thing to do, of course, is to double-down on it all and keep it going. Too much dough involved, too many peeps getting rich off it or at least hanging on to jobs with it, and we have our wunnerful industrial prison gulag in full swing, too.
“They had completed dropping their bomb load otherwise things could have been worse.”
Cool pic. I’ve been inside renovated WWII bombers and it was striking to see how cramped they were and how vulnerable.
“Sugar Land finally getting the attention it deserves.”
“… selfies have become a powerful tool for women seeking to control their own images, a desire that men have typically greeted with contempt.”
Gee, this looks like some micro-aggression stuff going on here…
…and naturally written by someone educated in PC- and SJW-speak in the last twenty years or so. I’m guessing an English major, too.
Mr. RBT and Gentlemen…
I have been lurking for far too long, and I think it’s
time for me to contribute to the discussions, if I may,
with the hope that I can be useful.
I really have nothing for the politics issues.
I did vote for Al Gore, that one time I ever voted,
and I’m sure enough that was the right thing to do,
and I’m sure enough now that voting and most
political action (other than grass roots neighbor
input) is useless. I hope that this can be my last
comment on politics & such…
I have some credentials in science and such, but I
think that mostly we need to use “scientific method”
rather than alleged credentials in our decisions.
Argue with me, please, but with rational stuff…
Now… What do I use for a “handle” ?
Co-workers once told me I was “The Spook” in
the “Wizard of Id” comic… Had to do with hair
or something.
Spook has espionage contexts; I wish.
Spook has racial slur contexts; none of mine.
The Spook was a political prisoner, mostly.
Manly hugs for everybody.
— Spook
How do we know that’s HIS real name?
In any case, I’ve forwarded it to the Authorities for further investigation.
If you see something, say something.
That sugar land selfie article sure is a mess o word salad….
n
The bracken short story at WRSA is starting to get interesting…
n
Sugar Land finally getting the attention it deserves.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/06/02/a_defense_of_the_bronze_selfie_statue_in_sugar_land_tx.html
I was really hoping that no one would notice that. You would think of a city with 200,000 people in and around it, that they would do a reality check on something like that. Just about anyone over the age of say, 17, would say “Hell No!”.
That sugarland selfie article sure is a mess o word salad….
Dude, you live here! It is “Sugar Land”. And yes it is.
The bracken short story at WRSA is starting to get interesting…
This one? “Bracken: Piss Christ? Piss Koran!”
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2016/06/06/bracken-piss-christ-piss-koran/
WRS usually has a bunch of good stuff, as does/did the Sipsey Street Irregulars. For mil-spec stuff, Brushbeater, WeaponsMan, et. al. And AMRRON for the radios. Straight Line Logic nice for mostly economic stuff but also the Ongoing Situation. Appalachian Messenger and Woodpile Report for scads of more interesting stuff.
Thanks @nick, my bad, your good. That link should not work now.
Here is a link using Dropproxy:
http://dropproxy.com/f/E1C
@RBT, is possible you can replace my original link with this one? Thanks
@lynn, yup, fixed the land o sugar, and the Piss Koran story is the one.
n
@RBT if you can’t replace the link in dadcooks comment, delete my comment pointing it out. It was strange, I should have had at least 30 minutes more to edit or delete my comment but the edit and delete buttons disappeared after only ~13 minutes. Never seen that before…
nick, considering the zeitgeist, perhaps you’re just a sweet transvestite from Transexual Transylvania and you did the Time Warp again.
It’s awfully suspicious that my comment outing someone became uneditable with 30+ minutes left on the clock. One might almost start to gin up conspiracy theories about ‘hidden hands’ altering the post to preserve the comment…..
Or just put it down to sweet transexual, transvestites from Transylvania, whichever seems more reasonable.
n
Or it could be a glitch in the matrix…
n
Or a “random” error….
n
Buncha wiseacres.
And haters.
I gotta finish reading the piss Koran story later. Looked like a real pissah, as we say up here; or “wicked pissah.”
Belated Happy Birthday to RBT before the day is over; Princess b-day is Thursday, the 9th.
RBT is a whole six weeks OLDER than me.
From the Revisionist History Department:
http://takimag.com/article/the_greatest_anti_white_boxer_of_all_time_jim_goad/print#axzz4AocGLqQL
He said bad things.
Or it could be a glitch in the matrix…
I am in favor of that one. I see glitches all the time. Of course, they could be all of the floaters in my eyes.
Mrs. OFD has those floaters, too; her vision is roughly 20/800 uncorrected while mine is 20/400. She may have to have cataract surgery in at least one eye at some point.
Just migrated my two gmail accounts to fastmail and now doing the Yahoo mail account; I’ll keep those previous three accounts up for another week or so and then I’m blowing them away for good. FaceCrack long gone, never got the Tweet thing or SnapChat crap. Will stick to DuckDuckGo and Tor thereafter.
Oh goody, the Yahoo email migration is done; just a couple of minutes, while the gmail accounts took hours.
Back to yard work as I can get to it tomorrow before and after VA med appointment, ditto on Wednesday. Wife going to a Bela Fleck and the Flecktones concert with Princess on the latter’s b-day on Thursday; I’ll be going to a local history lecture/Q&A with an archaeologist for the Champlain Maritime Museum at the Saint Albans Historical Museum that night, covering the Saint Albans Bay history, economics, etc. And will be kicking off more town meetings this month, too. Meatspace, baby!
Congrats RBT.. Hope your day has been a good one.
Thanks to Mr Nick, I’ve been using DDG for a while now. Does the job quite well for my purposes. The days of google being the “good guys” have lost since past..
Also thanks to Mr DadCooks for the photo.. amazing.
Eons ago I attended a training session in the UK and there was a quiet old chap tending the bar. Remembered everyone’s name and their beverage of choice.. The quintessential barman. Years later I found out that he was one of those soldiers that was part of the D-Day landing and fought through Europe until the end of he war.
Yet from the few chats I had with him, you would never have known..
Bloody cold and wet in the land of sand today. 13C (55F) @ 1.50 pm.
Greetings, Spook… if that’s your real name.
It’s awfully suspicious that my comment outing someone became uneditable with 30+ minutes left on the clock
I blame it on the Spook. He/She/It/Shim/Sher shows up and strange things start happening. Coincidence? You be the judge.
She may have to have cataract surgery in at least one eye at some point
Do it, now, don’t wait. Let me repeat, do it now. You too OFD. Both eyes.
The results are so remarkable, the vision so much better. Procedure is trivial. They can correct your vision for distance but you would still need reading glasses, which you do when you get old anyway. The technology in replacing the lens, the surgical procedure, is just HPFM (Hocus Pocus, Fucking Magic). Once you have one eye done you will want the other eye done as soon as possible.
Let me repeat, do it now, don’t wait. No need to suffer when there is viable, easily accomplished, solution.
Generally the surgery will be covered by your medical insurance. However, the lenses may not be covered. My wife’s lenses will be $900 each as they provide vision correction thus considered cosmetic by the cretins at the insurance company.
As for the floaters they can be corrected with a vitrectomy. Not as trivial as cataract surgery. They knock you out to deaden the eye, then wake you up so you can watch. Three instruments in the eye, one to suck, one to replace, one for light. Even so, after recovery the results are dramatic. I had a problem in one eye where it hemorrhaged. I was stone cold blind in that eye the next day. Surgeon said it was OK and in a couple of weeks it would be OK. He was right. I would do it again in a heartbeat if the need arises. Wonderful not having floaters.
If your uncorrected eyesight is that bad, then your eyes are worse than mine, and for my the lenses of my glasses I choose the thinnest material available.
Eye doctor just told me I had cataracts and that I should be okay for several years. My eldest sister told me that she had been seeing stars around lights at night for several years before she found out, and has had both the vitrectomy and cataract surgeries.
I’ve been seeing the stars around lights for several years. When it starts to affect my ability to read, drive, or hits my night vision, I’ll see about scheduling the surgery. Not worried about it at all. I LIKE to see, and I believe that the methods and doctors we have today are top notch.
But I’d better plan to do it before Obamacare cripples the system.
@MrK – thanks for taking the time to look at my Dad’s photo. He did not start to really talk about WWII until 2-years before his death at 94. This was common, these guys went and did a job and then came home to really earn the title “The Greatest Generation”.
Thanks again @nick for pointing out my :face palm: error, I was not paying attention. For you other folks that might want to post a Dropbox photo, you should take a look at http://dropproxy.com/. It can take a while to load, but loads quicker in Firefox if you use a “Private Window“. You also have to set up a “Private” folder in Dropbox as the current version doesn’t automatically create one. You’ll have to Google (or whatever you use) “create a private folder in dropbox” to find out how to do it.
Yesterday, Monday 6/6/16, it hit 114.8°F (new record) on my weather station and today is supposed to be about the same. Knock on wood, we have a very good Lennox heat pump system, that handled the job very well.
“Generally the surgery will be covered by your medical insurance.”
What is this insurance thing you speak of? We don’t have any. Wife just paid cash for her general MD visit the other day. I get treated at the VA med centers. Wife can’t even enroll in ObolaCARE until next January, and then the monthly premium will be $500-600+. And so far scheduling MD appointments up here has to be done MONTHS in advance.
Now the push is on just to get a full-time job doing ANYTHING so as to have medical insurance for both of us. She’s an independent consultant/contractor working for an organization that has ZERO bennies for her and can’t even be trusted to pay her on time. And a lot of employers nowadays won’t offer med insurance or they have a very watered down version that requires minimal contributions from them.
Those days of yore when OFD worked in IT for big companies that paid for med insurance tuition reimbursement and/or training, retirement plans, and offered regular boner checks are long gone.
Have Mrs. OFD go to http://www.ehealthinsurance.com and sign up indicating she doesn’t have a qualifying life event, and she can buy the “crappy insurance” that existed before the Unaffordable Care Act. There will probably be preexisting condition exclusions and she’ll still have to pay the penalty for not having Obama approved insurance. But at least she’ll have insurance. We are fortunate enough to have great insurance through my wife’s employer, but I checked out. For us, crappy short term coverage and the fine would be much less expensive than the Obama approved stuff.
Once I quit working my taxable income will less than $12K a year. That puts me well below poverty and I should qualify for the maximum subsidy therefor keeping premiums for the spousal unit fairly low.
I have to do some planning on this whole issue. I am rethinking my original plan to delay SS. I may start taking it when I get to be 66 in about 7 months. The break even point is 87 and I doubt I will live that long. Having an extra $2200 a month will shorten the draw down of the investments. May even have the wife start drawing when she gets to be 62 (uncertain about that age, but as soon as she can). I don’t trust Kankles or the Trumpster to keep the programs alive.
@Ray, your “income” may be less than $12K/year, but I am sure you have lots of assets. Be aware that that may count against you getting a subsidy. Obola-no-care is full of traps for folks who have assets (Medicare and Medicaid are too). It takes a skilled person to navigate the bullshit regulations so be careful. And I can guarantee you that however many people you call in gooberment bureaucracies is the number of different answers you will get. The private “retirement” planners are only out for their own gain so again be very very careful. I recommend you visit this page https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/?topic=Medicare and download all that may apply. Plus you have to keep going back here because these publications are constantly being updated/revised. You also should look here: https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act
YMMV, but the better informed you are the less likely you are going to end up like @OFD and have the IRS cease your assets.
And @OFD, @Dave’s advice is worth heeding. The penalty for being without insurance this year is going to start to hurt and it gets exponentially worse each year. Yes, either way you are going to be paying thousands before getting 1-cent of reimbursed health care. Time to self-identify as a particular “class” of person 😉
Yes, I’ve got the page open for that site that Mr. Dave put up and I’ll run it by the “spousal unit” when we have time tonight and the day’s various capers are finally over today.
“Time to self-identify as a particular “class” of person”
This may be stretching it but conceivably I could ID as a disabled American Indian veteran, lol.
Be aware that that may count against you getting a subsidy
My research has indicated that it is taxable income on your 1040 is what is used. But that was several months ago and as you indicated may have changed. I do know for a fact the Medicaid looks back five years for any assets. Just am not sure about obuttwadcare.
The entire system is designed to screw those that have saved and done without to build a nest egg and reward the lazy losers who have done nothing but consume oxygen and have spent every dime they ever earned.
“The entire system is designed to screw those that have saved and done without to build a nest egg and reward the lazy losers who have done nothing but consume oxygen and have spent every dime they ever earned.”
Oh my goodness, so many micro-aggressions, let me count the ways:
Let’s see, yeah, about ten or so. Check yer privilege.
But true.
Again, a recipe for eventual civil war: half the country is supporting the other half, who expect and demand it, and spit on us for it and revile us. The first half is outraged and the other half is outraged at our outrage.
As for the floaters they can be corrected with a vitrectomy. Not as trivial as cataract surgery. They knock you out to deaden the eye, then wake you up so you can watch. Three instruments in the eye, one to suck, one to replace, one for light. Even so, after recovery the results are dramatic. I had a problem in one eye where it hemorrhaged. I was stone cold blind in that eye the next day. Surgeon said it was OK and in a couple of weeks it would be OK. He was right. I would do it again in a heartbeat if the need arises. Wonderful not having floaters.
My retinal surgeon said that he would do the vitrectomy if I insisted. But he begged me not to do it as the potential damage is so devastating. My wife’s cousin’s husband had it done last winter and had his retina detach the next day. He spent three weeks on his stomach with an air bubble in his eye hoping that the retina would reattach. It did thankfully. I am at least going to wait until the eyeball detachment process finishes when I am sixty or so. BTW, if you have a vitrectomy then you will probably have to have cataract surgery in a year or so according to my retina surgeon.
I’m lucky on health insurance. Tricare retired will keep the family going until Medicare age. MrsAtoz is 8 months older than me and will hit Mcare first. The Twins turn 21 this month and will hit 26 around when I hit Mcare age, so they are on their own then.
I got a flyer for a SS “maximize your spousal benefits” seminar. I may take it to look at all the options for drawing SS. What a frickin’ maze. SS, Medicare, Medicaid. You need a PhD to get it right. Now Obolacare. Even harder. The young productive citizens are going to take it in the shorts. Why even try. Just move to the PRC for your soy ration and TeeVee.
I don’t trust Kankles or the Trumpster to keep the programs alive.
I don’t trust Kankles at all. Fixed that for ya.
I don’t trust the Trumpster further than I can throw him. He is walking into the snake pit without even the torch that Indiana Jones had. And he knows it is the sad thing. Congress is waiting for him with baseball bats and nickles in socks.
I’m lucky on health insurance. Tricare retired will keep the family going until Medicare age. MrsAtoz is 8 months older than me and will hit Mcare first. The Twins turn 21 this month and will hit 26 around when I hit Mcare age, so they are on their own then.
If the Trumpster wins in the fall, I view the entire healthcare system of the USA up in the air. The USA heathcare system itself is awesome and leads the world. Paying for healthcare in the USA is a freaking disaster and trails the world. Single Payer for All ™, Medicare, could fix this OR, make it far worse. I just do not know.
Ray wrote:
“Let me repeat, do it now, don’t wait. No need to suffer when there is viable, easily accomplished, solution.”
I can’t be bothered, although my opthamologist has told me that one or two cataract operations are likely in my future.
Today I was in downtown Adelaide and a young woman appeared to be calling to me from the other side of the road (across six lanes). I think it may have been my younger neice but I couldn’t see her well enough (even with glasses) to be sure.
“Getting old is hell.” ™
Lynn wrote:
“My retinal surgeon said that he would do the vitrectomy if I insisted. But he begged me not to do it as the potential damage is so devastating.”
Thanks for the warning. I am convinced that hospitals are places you go to get sick.
But he begged me not to do it as the potential damage is so devastating. My wife’s cousin’s husband had it done last winter and had his retina detach the next day
My surgeon lasered my retina the day after the surgery for one eye, the day of the surgery for the other eye. People with extreme nearsightedness tend to have more problems. The process of breaking up, and sucking out, the vitreous fluid, which tends to gel in older folks, pulls on the retina. Thus the lasering in my case, the caution in you case.
BTW, if you have a vitrectomy then you will probably have to have cataract surgery in a year or so according to my retina surgeon
I was told the same thing and that is indeed what happened. I don’t regret any of the procedures and considered the risk worth it. The vitrectomy in my one eye was required because a blood vessel burst. I had thousand of tiny dots in my visual field that did not go away. Thus the replacement of the vitreous fluid with saline. Cataract surgery about a year later with remarkable results.
I don’t trust Kankles at all. Fixed that for ya.
I stand corrected.
I don’t trust Kankles at all. Fixed that for ya.
I stand corrected.
I figure ol’ Kankles is going to setup a booth on the White House lawn labeled “Favors for Donations to my Charity”. Of course, the checks will go through Bill as usual.
I don’t trust the Trumpster further than I can throw him. He is walking into the snake pit without even the torch that Indiana Jones had. And he knows it is the sad thing. Congress is waiting for him with baseball bats and nickles in socks.
I forgot about the cattle prods in addition to the baseball bats and nickles in socks.
Please, Dear Lord Above, don’t let Cankles win the election. Not only is she an insufferable fukstik, it will set up her spawn for a political career. Maybe if I call Glen Beck he will pray with me. I just can’t image 4-8 years of Cankles and BJ.
I just can’t image 4-8 years of Cankles and BJ.
I can. It will be Obama’s third and fourth terms. With more bribery and more favors.
I can just see it now, the the Clinton Foundation celebrating getting its first one billion check. Two weeks later, the USA gives a used nuclear aircraft carrier to a new “friend”.
WRT Medical Care and Insurance: ObolaNoCare is so full of poison pills that our Medical Care and Medical Insurance systems are doomed no matter who gets in the White (Black) House. That was Obuttwad’s intent from the beginning, to destroy the system and force a single payer (read gooberment) system based on Medicaid (do not dream for a minute a Medicare System, that is way too good).
More good news, just because you may have a doctor now does not mean you will still be able to see that doctor on Medicare. It would be wise to ask him, and be prepared for the answer. There are not enough doctors participating in Medicare today and the number is decreasing daily.
Also, do not think that if you have money you can “hire” a doctor. ObolaNoCare has that covered too. No pay to play like is allowed in Canada and England. All doctors will work for the gooberment and any caught moonlighting will be dealt with harshly.
Yes, I have downloaded and read ObolaNoCare years ago. It is a masterful document. It will take a Wizard to unwind it.
For you Veterans, remember Sick Call? Well what is coming is going to be 10-times worse.
Or, you know, a couple guys with knives or an angry mob with torches and nooses.
More good news, just because you may have a doctor now does not mean you will still be able to see that doctor on Medicare. It would be wise to ask him, and be prepared for the answer. There are not enough doctors participating in Medicare today and the number is decreasing daily.
My GP has a large sign in his waiting room, “No Medicare” or something like that. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that he does not take Medicaid either. Medicare supposedly pays $22 for an office visit here and Medicaid pays $18. He charges $65 for an office visit and BCBS limits him to $59 or something like that. But I copay $35 on that and BCBS supposedly pays the $24 balance (yeah right).
My specialists are hit and miss on Medicare. Skin doctor, no. Heart doctor, yes, but he is in a big group of cardios with a one stop shop. Eye doctor (he is a surgeon), yes.
This is why we are headed to Single Payer (Medicare). Probably with copays and a few other gotchas. Not so single payer.
My GP will not take new medicare patients. He will continue to see existing patients that have to transition to medicare. Thus I should be able to continue to see my primary care physician. But as with most things, that could change.
See what happens when Medicare payments are cut again.
You’d think that the universal failure of socialized medicine, in all its putrid guises, would give a clue that it just doesn’t work. But I suppose that, like Communism, it just hasn’t been done right yet.
Either that or the politicians can’t see anything but the lovely, lovely opportunities for graft.
Since my GP is at Nellis, AFB under Tricare, I’m boned trying to find a new GP once Obolacare destroys health insurance as we know it.
“But I suppose that, like Communism, it just hasn’t been done right yet.”
“Either that or the politicians can’t see anything but the lovely, lovely opportunities for graft.”
A hateful twofer! Both correct. Epic fail? No problemo, hermanos y hermanas; we simply DOUBLE-DOWN on it. Until it does not fail. Or forever. Whichever comes first, haha.
“It will be Obama’s third and fourth terms. With more bribery and more favors.”
Wrong. It will be far, far worse. Think Venezuela with nukes and innernet.
“It will be Obama’s third and fourth terms. With more bribery and more favors.”
Wrong. It will be far, far worse. Think Venezuela with nukes and innernet.
I forgot to mention the civil war two years in. That in itself may rapidly transition to multiple civil wars as Billary tries to reign it all in.
As a wise man said, what’s the difference between Venezuela and the United States? About ten years.
In 2026 RBT and I will be 73 and that’s a tad old to be humping rucks and ammo across hostile terrain but we may be in decent enough shape to make a whole bunch of assholes die trying to take us down at our doorsteps.
Go out in a blaze of glory. Fuck dying in bed with tubes stuck in me.
The discussion of the Chromebook and Android apps reminded me of this:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/05/google-to-bring-official-android-support-to-the-raspberry-pi-3/
Android for the Pi 3.
Go out in a blaze of glory. Fuck dying in bed with tubes stuck in me.
What if the tubes have nonstop morphine? As much as you want.
Nope; may as well just be a vegetable being doused with vinaigrette.
“Give me liberty or give me death!”
Fuck that.
I don’t care about pain, nor about effort. I care about being in control of myself and I care about accomplishing the goals I’ve decided on. I’m going to die violently, preferably in pursuit of one of my goals. Whether that’s a blaze of glory or a blaze of infamy, I don’t care — another of the things I don’t care about is what anyone thinks.
@OFD and @SteveF, couldn’t have said it better. I’m in.
@OFD and @SteveF, couldn’t have said it better. I’m in.
Well, now that Cankles has basically declared herself President and Queen Bitch of the World ™, you three will be the first ones strapped to a gurney. And, it won’t be delicious morphine flowing in the tubes.
Enjoy you WHITEY!, cishetero, Veteran, proto-apes!
Oh, wait, that’s me too. Shit.
@MrAtoz: “Oh, wait, that’s me too. Shit.”
Welcome to the club @MrAtoz, your in good company. 😉
All four of us and any other “volunteers,” strapped to gurneys; I don’t think so. I can think of at least four of us being shot down like rabid dawgs first.
Just about anyone who would read this board will be marked for extermination by Billary’s death squads. Guilt by association.
I’m proud to be associated with this rag-tag bunch.
I’m rather dubious about associating with anyone who’d voluntarily associate with me. A rather sketchy bunch, by any standards.
My awesomeness is an awesome awesomeness. Presumably the same goes for OFD.
Topic drift: I’m often amused by people dictating how others are to use the English language. Case in point, telling us that teenagers’ routine use of “awesome!” is wrong because only God is awesome. I’m sure you know where this is going: both times I told the over-reaching ass-hat that his attempt to tell me how to talk was awesome. One guy got pissed off and the other chuckled at it.
his attempt to tell me how to talk was awesome
Awesome response from your awesome awesomeness.
I’m not in the least awesome; I’m simply an over-the-hill derelict and lunatic. But a trained and experienced derelict and lunatic. Usually armed. Short fuse. Best to shoot on sight.