Sunny, windy and cool.
Yesterday was just like Monday, possibly even nicer as it was just a bit cooler. I’m hoping for more of the same today.
I did some more yard work, added dirt to the potato towers, pruned the grape vine that didn’t recover from this winter, sprinkled fertilizer on the raised beds and potted plants, and bundled more of the crepe murdered branches. Watered everything.
I then went into the driveway to move more food from bins under the tarp to my new shelves. Oh lordy. I knew one bin was a loss, full of moldy boxes. I was NOT prepared for the bin full of rusty cans, sewage, and huge maggoty looking things.* About 150 cans destroyed. Burst, rusted thru, totally rusted, and all missing paper labels. One can of spam, one jar of peanut butter, one jar of spaghetti sauce, and one bottle of oil are about all that was salvageable and I’m not really sure I even want to wash them… About $200 worth of food, maybe more. The ‘moldy’ bin had a dozen pouches of meat, possibly recoverable, but just thrown out, one case of Kraft mac n cheese, a couple dozen freeze dried side dishes, and a bunch of hamburger helper. All rotten and damp and moldy. Not a cheap bin to lose. Those black bins suck for long term storage in changing conditions. Call it another $200 lost.
I did move two bins worth of dry goods to the shelves and got rid of a whole pallet under the tarps. Two, possibly three bins left for tomorrow. It’s worth mentioning that these bins were stacked three high, and were under tarps and in the shade the whole time. I don’t think any water got into them directly, I think the changing temps and humid air “pumped” moist air in where it later condensed and couldn’t get back out. The same bins at my secondary location where the temps were indoor temps with some A/C in the summer and no real cold in the winter were fine, and kept the food dry and safe. The ones full of cans were the worst in my driveway. I think the thermal mass of the cans is just that much higher and makes the problem worse.
Dinner was Taco Tuesday. Fixin’s from the fridge. Meat from pouches with best by of 2016. The pouches were pre-seasoned “taco crumbles” hamburger, and pork carnitas chunks from Brazil. Delicious and unchanged from new. Dessert was Easter candy.
Some encouraging reports from ERs around the country, but that’s probably because the current restrictions are working. Keep the faith, stay sane.
Stay in and stay safe.
nick
*I picked up the cans and threw them in the trash but have no idea what to do with the 2 inches of black water in the bin. The stench is incredible, and I sure don’t want that in my driveway or yard. I poured half a gallon of bleach in the bin and left it for today. I might pour it in the gutter in the street, and then wash my truck to move the stink along. I’d pour it into the sewer directly if I could do it without a dozen neighbors watching.
Tax day for me is June 15th, unless I also have an extension. I file every year as a “non-resident”, because I have a tiny bit of oil income, but it’s so little money (this year, maybe $200-$300 income) that I never owe anything. Given the current chaos (between COVID, and our moving), I’m not sure where all my relevant tax papers are.
Anyone know what happens if I just don’t bother to file? Is it actually necessary, as a non-resident, if the end result is all zeroes?
– – – – –
I finished “Picard” last night. Wow, that was really well-done. I wonder how much longer Patrick Stewart will continue – I mean, the guy is 80! It’s amazing that he can still perform so well. Anyhow, I’m probably going to follow y’alls recommendations and have a look at “Discovery”.
– – – – –
The house is finally to the point that they are mounting the pre-fabricated components. I’m not sure what you call this in English: it’s a custom-built house, but they pre-build all the walls in their shop, bring them on a truck, and mount them. Only the lower floor (with concrete outer walls) was built on-site.
Anyhow, that means that progress is really fast – an entire floor went up yesterday, today they’re working on the beams that will support the upper floor. Which will go up tomorrow. Then the beam-work to support the roof, which will go on next week.
Then comes the long, long phase of interior work. Lots of conduits and pipes are pre-laid, but wires need pulled, plumbing and heating needs installed, walls need finished, floors need laid, etc, etc, etc… But at least it will look like a house 🙂
This commercial was where I learned that plexiglas will burn. We had an 8K watt xenon spotlight shining thru one of the windows for a bit too long. It caught on fire and the fire started going up the window. One of our guys broke the plex with a fire extinguisher then squirted the pieces. Fun times.
Plexiglas is opaque to a large chunk of the EM spectrum. We learned this trying to find a temporary medium upon which to mount passive toll tags in rentals at our test site. Ultimately, we resorted to plain glass, but it had to be thick to avoid problems with handling.
I finished “Picard” last night. Wow, that was really well-done. I wonder how much longer Patrick Stewart will continue – I mean, the guy is 80! It’s amazing that he can still perform so well. Anyhow, I’m probably going to follow y’alls recommendations and have a look at “Discovery”.
Don’t forget to watch the “Short Treks” also.
Paramount had to purge the Stage 8/9 era showrunners after “Enterprise” tanked, but the “divorce” between movie and TV “Star Trek” and ensuing, for lack of a better word, ‘custody’ agreement for the franchise greatly shortened the potential life of any revival series using the TNG/DS9/VOY characters. 25th Century or not (“Picard” is set in 2399), the actors are on the edge of too old to be credible for, say, a 7-10 year run of a series.
Now that Weigel is experimenting with new programming on their MeTV Network, they could come to some agreement with CBS for future series similar to the old syndication model that worked in the 80s and 90s. The country is about to get a lot poorer for a while.
And, please, Weigel, find some other commercials besides “International Foundation of Christians and Jews”, “Lyposene”, and “Side effects: death” medications for psoriasis.
Generally speaking if you don’t owe any money, or have a refund coming, you do not have to file and there is no penalty for not filing. The IRS is only concerned with people that owe money to the IRS. They don’t give a rat’s rear end if they owe the taxpayer money.
Even if the IRS were to go back and discover someone had not filed for 20 years, and finds the individual owes no money or is due a refund, the IRS will not expend the effort to audit as they will not gain any money from the effort. The IRS will also not expend any effort to get a refund to anyone that is due a refund.
In your case for that small amount I would just not bother to file anymore. Skip the hassles and avoid all the paperwork and the chance of doing it wrong. Let the IRS do the effort to determine that nothing is owed. You can only be fined on money owed, you cannot be fined for nothing owed.
There are thousands of people in the U.S. whose sole source of income is Social Security. They never file income tax papers as all of their SS income is not taxed. These individuals have no other items that need to be reported to the IRS so they do not file any paperwork.
Nick, take the lesson (and teach the kids): Check your stuff regularly. I understand having a to-do list longer than you are tall, but as you’ve discovered, rust, dry-rot, wet rot, and pests can destroy what you thought you had. (As can familial sabotage, which some of us have to deal with.)
re taxes, I’m still waiting to get the money back from a year ago. The accountant* screwed up in April and so I sent checks totalling over $4000 to the IRS and NY tax department as the accountant put in the standard (for her) six-month extensions. Come late evening of October 15th she sent us the forms to eyeball and approve for her to send in, and come to find out I’m supposed to get about $3800 back. Shocking! And here we are, six months later and no check. Shocking!
* An old friend of my wife. She’s been doing our taxes for some years, always squeezing things in at the last moment, like, hours before the midnight deadline.
Picard is on my watchlist, but I’ve been burnt so many times over the years falling in love with a show just to see it canceled after the first season that I almost always wait until the second season is released before I watch anything.
Lately I’ve been working my way through Black Sails and Westworld. I’m enjoying both. My wife got the entire series of Northern Exposure on DVD from eBay, so I’m sure I’ll be watching that too. Though, I do remember thinking back in the day that few women can pull off a short haircut like Janine Turner did in the 90s.
We did break the rules and spent Zombie Jesus Day (aka Easter) with the extended family. Most of the older relatives have passed on, so the only one there over 65 was my mom and she’s in great health. I think she decided working retail is riskier than having dinner with the family (she’s worked 30+ hours week at JoAnn Fabrics since the pandemic began). She’s also one of those that strongly believe the date and time of her death was decided by God the day she was born and she has no control over it. Also, we’re in one of the 7 states without stay-at-home orders.
Without regular attendance a lot of churches must be feeling the pinch from lack of offerings. I grew up in a poor church that barely made ends meet.
There are thousands of people in the U.S. whose sole source of income is Social Security.
Scary. It is the core of the current faustian bargain between my generation and our pre-War/WWII Baby/Early Boomer parents — keep the ponzi going, even though you may never see a SS check, or your mother, Allison Janey’s character in “iTonya”, moves in to live with you.
IIRC about 1/4 of the states have dusty laws on the books making the children responsible for the parents’ well being. If things get tough, you’d better believe those statutes are going to get the Pledge treatment.
Of course, the Millenials have it worse in the deal with their Late Boomer parents. 25-ish? You may as well count on never seeing that SS check. Legal precedent removed the requirement of the government to pay anything *out* of Social Security, and only a simple Congressional majority vote keeps any checks flowing.
Day 25: How Bad is It? 🙂
Capt. Kangaroo told Mr. Greenjeans he’d have to sleep in the spare room unless he wore a mask.
@steveF, yeah, pure negligence let it get that far. My storage conditions suck. I know that. I assume there will be loses and stack it up anyway. Both of these tubs were bottom tubs, and thus a bunch of work to open and look into (Heavy tubs on top of them). Excuses. Lazy. The stuff shouldn’t have ever been in tubs, and shouldn’t have ever been LEFT in tubs for that long.
n
Another downside to the virus situation is that the mask kabuki appeals to people who are control freaks at heart. Don’t underestimate the percentage of the population who think like this.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article242023966.html
And Sebring isn’t exactly a hotbed for control freak thought in the state. Just wait until mask kabuki fever takes over The Villages area of Florida. I have no doubt people *will* be arrested if not occasionally shot.
@SteveF “I’m supposed to get about $3800 back”
You’ll have to wait. The money printing presses are all busy with the COVID-19 stimulus money. It takes a while to print $2,000,000,000,000.
Tinfoil hat conspiracy of the day:
“Bill Gates engineered and released the coronavirus so he could get everybody ‘chipped’ for tracking in the NWO”
Who comes up with this shit?
“Bill Gates engineered and released the coronavirus so he could get everybody ‘chipped’ for tracking in the NWO”
Who comes up with this shit?
Someone named Rusty Shackleford. I can almost hear Johnny Hardwick’s voice.
Bill Gates is definitely pursuing an agenda with regard to vaccination and biometric IDs, but the emergence of the Wuxu Flu was dumb luck.
(IMHO, if there is one show that needs to be rebooted/updated and put back on the air right now, it is “King of the Hill”.)
More Silly Billy:
Put your money where your mouth is, Bill. They are only inches apart and I’m sure you can afford to fund the US share.
I read The Gates Foundation gives the WHO $300 million/yr already. What’s a little extra to control them.
The amazing thing is how LITTLE the chinese had to spend to get control.
n
My previous comment is “awaiting moderation.” 🙂
@chad, I got it out of ‘too many links’ jail.
It’s upthread ^
IIRC you can have 4 links in a comment and be fine. Even I have to get my own comments out of jail sometimes!
NB– if you have a comment in jail, post a comment letting me know. I don’t normally look at that notification page more than once a month…. but I look for new comments on the post constantly.
n
Yes! Such a beautiful face. I believe she was doing some kind of radio show these days.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8222007/Morgues-overflow-New-York-county-60-people-dying-coronavirus-day.html
That part of Long Island is where my wife has family. An uncle that is an EMT, and an aunt that works in the hospital.
n
“Though, I do remember thinking back in the day that few women can pull off a short haircut like Janine Turner did in the 90s.”
Yes! Such a beautiful face. I believe she was doing some kind of radio show these days.
The radio show lasted for a couple of years but is one of the many casualties of the broadcast advertising apocalypse which has been running for the better part of the last decade.
Rumors of “Northern Exposure” reboots have floated around WA State going back to when we lived out there. The basic problem is that the show skews older, meaning a return to CBS using the traditional TV model, but Universal holds the rights and might want a revival for their own streaming service. Complicating negotiations is that one of the producer/creators died in the last few years.
Plus, Jeanine Turner’s radio schtick was conservative and she makes the suits nervous. Jeri Ryan got back on TV so anything is possible I guess, but Ryan’s defiance of the Progs was about one issue, her unwillingness to cr*p on her ex- in public, and didn’t cover multiple years of weekday broadcasts for a couple of hours each day with a messy personal life involving players and ownership of the Dallas Cowboys off the air.
Trivia note #1 — The building used as the soundstage for Northern Exposure is now a Genie-Liftmaster factory in Redmond, WA (or was when I lived nearby).
Trivia note #2 — Roslyn, WA, where “Northern Exposure” exteriors and portions of scenes at the bar were filmed, was also used as location shooting for Amazon’s “The Man in The High Castle”. You’ll see many of the same buildings, including The Brick, but from more sinister camera angles.
Schneier lists the problems with zoom
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/04/security_and_pr_1.html
and they are legion
n
Have gotten the two biggest areas cleaned of carpet, pad, and staples. The tack strips will stay. Large areas with a lot of furniture to move. House is shambles. Got the carpet taken to the dump. Large dumpster (big thing, the size of a large truck with eight foot high sides) was “full” sort of. They dumpmaster had closed the main rear door. Thus no easy access. Parked the truck alongside, stood on the bed rail, and tossed the stuff into the dumpster. At least I don’t have to drive the 25 miles to the landfill, other end of the county.
Carpet had to be cut into sections and rolled to be able to handle. That stuff can get heavy really fast. Pulling up the pad was not too bad. Surprisingly little dust. Tedious pulling up all the staples. They have to be removed.
New carpet will have some type of vinyl backing, or whatever it is called, that will not allow dust and liquid into the pad. Good quality carpet from Shaw. The factory is about 100 miles away from us so delivery is quick. Carpet company wanted to schedule the install for this Friday and we told them no dice. We have too much work to do to get the space ready. So next Thursday and Friday is the installation date.
We are also replacing all the baseboards as the ones that are there are really ugly. Need to get the new baseboards home and get them painted. Probably do that on Monday. Install the baseboards on Wednesday.
Have two rooms to go and one long hallway. Those will require a lot of furniture to be moved. Stacking in a spare room and in the kitchen. Some furniture will be moved around while carpet is being installed. Musical rooms so to speak.
Lot of tedious, and sometimes strenuous, labor involved.
Remember to hold the baseboards up off the floor! If you are installing carpet, I think you need at least 1/2 inch of space between the base and the hard floor.
I have never seen a carpet installer reuse old tackstrip. And for some reason, pulled up tackstrip is some of the most obnoxious and scratchy material I’ve ever come across in construction or remodeling. That stuff is nasty.
When we put in glue down hardwoods we pulled up the nasty old berber carpet. There was dirt and debris under it, stains, and “pet stains”. I would encourage anyone putting in new carpet to make sure they clean the floors before continuing with the install. Vacuum and disinfect. Most won’t as a matter of course. It’s also why stains come back after cleaning the carpet, the material is still there under the rug….
n
Freefall: eating kibble on a spaceship
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff3500/fc03422.htm
With chopsticks ?
Schneier lists the problems with zoom
Encryption with an end point in China. That’s all you need to know.
I’d debate whether or not the company knew what they were doing in terms of encryption. I know from working on NetClient for a decade that the ChiComs have special requirements for weakening the crypto on links with one end within their borders. Though, so do India, Thailand, and France, among others, all our “allies” in theory.
Secure crypto of a video link is third year CS major stuff.
That said, the focus really needs to be on getting the testing out at a rate of tens of millions per day being possible, quarantining the sick/vulnerable in their homes, and opening the country back up to everyone else to get things done again, not focusing on how we can enable cocooning.
If we have to endure mask kabuki, fine. Though, it reminds me of the scene in the bar in “Hitchhiker’s Guide”, where the bar tender asks Ford if he advises doing anything. “Lie down? Put a bag over my head?”
“If you think it will help.”
“Will it?”
“Not a bit.”
Substitute “Wear a mask?” for “Put a bag over my head?”
Zoom is aware of all the security problems. The encryption via China servers is already fixed, I believe.
Other security enhancements are being made, if not already done. Big emphasis on security at Zoom in the past couple weeks as problems became known. See this page for some third-party opinions on this new security emphasis. https://zoom.us/docs/en-us/privacy-and-security.html#reviews
…or this article: https://diginomica.com/its-time-stop-bashing-zoom .
Two of the kids already have their COVID money. Direct deposited. MrsAtoz and I will get nothing since the goobermint considers her rich. Damn, should have filed “separately” last year. Maybe I would have gotten some sweet, sweet goobermint cash. You know, the money you give the goobermint and when you get it back, it’s because the goobermint is so generous, with your money.
Tennesee, but he’s a dead ringer for the Colonel Bat Guano-type neighbor I used to have in FL who was originally from Eastern Virginia. Maybe they’re cousins. I can’t see if he has capped teeth too.
Enabling control freaks is not a good idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKriSDH_E3Y
Off duty cop? How do they know? What am I missing.
@rick, what is the history of zoom? Where did they come from and how did they suddenly become the goto solution for .gov and .edu? That they seemed to burst forth, fully formed so to speak, was very odd to me.
How the ehll could they scale their architecture? I haven’t seen a single reference to any story like that. They were at best a newbie with a niche application and suddenly they are EVERYWHERE. And oh, by the way, they lie and collect tons of data about users. Has everyone forgotten the aphorism that if you aren’t paying to use a product, then YOU are the real product?
Webex is now free for anyone and is industrial strength.
Bruce likes the jit thing which is open source and free.
I don’t see a single reason to use zoom in preference to any other solution. Am I missing something?
n
He’s why I bought a stun gun.
n
The house is finally to the point that they are mounting the pre-fabricated components. I’m not sure what you call this in English: it’s a custom-built house, but they pre-build all the walls in their shop, bring them on a truck, and mount them. Only the lower floor (with concrete outer walls) was built on-site.
This is called tilt-wall construction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt_up
He’s why I bought a stun gun.
I was always careful to avoid any hint of being armed and/or aggressive when I was outside and the Bat Guanos moseyed over for a “friendly chat”. The dead wringer for the guy in the video went apesh*t crazy after his wife stopped at my house one afternoon to be a pain in the a** over the moss in my trees and I slammed the door shut with her standing more than three feet from the threshold.
Even the dweebs with fake teeth serving on the White House Cannon Brigade (that’s what the husband’s t-shirts read) are trained to kill. I’m not. I couldn’t afford for them to have a legal reason to hurt me because it wouldn’t have stopped at simple pain — the same kind of rage as you see in the video. He wants to have a reason to kill her so he sticks around. He can’t win; he lost the moment he confronted her. His buddies would cover for him. The line about uploading to Facebook probably saved her life.
Yes, moss in the trees. Oak trees. Florida. The wife, who ran the “snake torture” at Gitmo according to neighborhood legend, control freak, couldn’t handle the visuals of Spanish Moss dripping from Live Oaks when she looked out her window in the morning. They moved to the wrong state, but then they currently live in Alabama.
Nick, Nick, Nick, you just don’t understand. That so-called aphorism is so yesterday. People now are more familiar with tech than you boomers and don’t need your old-school so-called wisdom.
You may infer a bit of sarcasm in the above. I fight that mindset constantly at work. It took half a year of me mentioning the security problems and forwarding articles to get them to remove the Amazon Echo from a cluster of tables where sensitive information — conspicuously including personal health information, disclosure of which can be punished with criminal penalties — was routinely discussed. “No, the Alexa isn’t listening all the time, only when we say Alexa. Why would Amazon care what we talk about all day?”
As to why to use Zoom, it’s allegedly easier to set up, easier to get an account so you can create meetings, and more reliable than WebEx or Google Hangouts (or whatever the Google videoconferencing is called). I don’t have an opinion on that, as WebEx used to be flaky but I haven’t had any problems in the past year and I’ve never set up a meeting in any of them. Possibly the deciding factor is Zoom is newest and it’s what all the Cool Kids™ are using.
That said, the focus really needs to be on getting the testing out at a rate of tens of millions per day being possible, quarantining the sick/vulnerable in their homes, and opening the country back up to everyone else to get things done again, not focusing on how we can enable cocooning.
I foresee a federal health card in our future with frequent retesting.
For a disease with a mortality rate of somewhere between 2% and 0.1%, and the upper range is only if you’re broad-minded in attributing the cause of death.
Another downside to the virus situation is that the mask kabuki appeals to people who are control freaks at heart. Don’t underestimate the percentage of the population who think like this.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article242023966.html
And Sebring isn’t exactly a hotbed for control freak thought in the state. Just wait until mask kabuki fever takes over The Villages area of Florida. I have no doubt people *will* be arrested if not occasionally shot.
“Twilight” by Sarah Hoyt
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2020/04/15/twilight/
“I’m not often baffled by the insanity of crowds, but I’m genuinely baffled by the insanity over the entire Winnie the Flu episode.”
“I mean, what the hell is going on in people’s heads when they do stuff like this?”
See scary note from a neighbor.
“And what the holy fandango was going on in the head of the Raleigh police department when they posted a video of them arresting protestors of the #reopen North Carolina movement, and telling them that protesting wasn’t an essential right.”
SCOTUS needs to quash this police action right now or we are screwed.
Wait, we are screwed already. We may never have freedom of assembly again.
For a disease with a mortality rate of somewhere between 2% and 0.1%, and the upper range is only if you’re broad-minded in attributing the cause of death.
Do you think that a federal health card will be about health ?
The feddies want to track EVERYONE. Not everyone has an android or apple phone in their pocket being tracked by the NSA.
“Twilight” by Sarah Hoyt
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2020/04/15/twilight/
“I’m seeing food lines this winter. And I don’t know what that will do to us as a nation.”
Me too. Or, next winter. I have not touched my LTS (long term storage food) and plan not to do so. In fact, I would like to increase my LTS from 18 person months to 36 person months using canned food from Sam’s Club and will be doing so over the summer if I am allowed.
BTW, remember what RBT said. When the food distribution lines form, be sure to go stand in them also. They will be watching and noting who is there.
“Elon Musk Says Tesla’s Fleet of Robotaxis Could Be Ready by the End of the Year”
https://robbreport.com/motors/cars/elon-musk-teslrobotaxi-fleet-2913309/
“The CEO said the tech will be ready, that the company is just waiting on regulatory approval.”
No freaking way.
See Bill Gates “chipping everyone” above. Gotta get those LE satellites up NOW!
“Joe Biden Has Yet to Face Single Question on Sexual Assault Allegations”
https://freebeacon.com/2020-election/joe-biden-has-yet-to-face-single-question-on-sexual-assault-allegations/
“Joe Biden has been asked 81 questions in over two hours worth of media interviews since a former staffer in his U.S. Senate office accused him of sexual assault three weeks ago. He hasn’t fielded a single question about the allegation.”
Some people have got more rights than other peoples. Specifically, dumbocrats.
Hat tip to:
http://drudgereport.com/
The feddies want to track EVERYONE. Not everyone has an android or apple phone in their pocket being tracked by the NSA.
See Bill Gates “chipping everyone” above. Gotta get those LE satellites up NOW!
My son is trying to persuade me that Bill Gates has designed an injection gun that will automatically tattoo your federal id number also at the injection site. I haven’t bought it. Yet.
I foresee a federal health card in our future with frequent retesting.
Please. They’re going to chip you like your pets. That’s a proven tech.
The work “all hands” meeting today was innocuous on the surface until I started thinking about the company’s plan to empower the office managers to distribute logo-ed masks.
Our office manager in Austin is a control freak. She took away the company-supplied plates/glasses/cutlery in the breakroom for a week after I got in a hurry one afternoon and mistakenly put an interview candidate’s glass in the “wrong” place in the dishwasher and it broke.
For the record, I have a Buc-ee’s cup I wash at home.
“The CEO said the tech will be ready, that the company is just waiting on regulatory approval.”
No freaking way.
TSLA is done. The only way robo taxis would work this year is if Musk persuaded several cities to restrict sections of their downtowns to *automated* vehicles only, and even that tech is iffy right now, with Siemens having either given up their Austin-based effort or scaled it back. We see the resumes at our place.
The Real Life Tony Stark (TM) is trying to buy time. Everyone is going to be a lot poorer for a while, regardless of when the lockdowns are lifted.
IIRC, Disney had plans for automated vehicles running around the Florida property, but that concept never got out of the prototype phase so they cut a deal with Lyft.
There are any number of cloud platforms that can scale on demand. Amazon Web Services for one.
Not something I’ve worked with personally (at scale) but I imagine a 2x or 3x increase might reveal unexpected problems. I’m surprised it’s been going so well.
We’ve had a few audio issues on RingCentral (zoom rebranded) that didn’t sound like voip issues, and WebEx phone lines have been busy or static-y the last few days.
I foresee a federal health card in our future with frequent retesting.
Please. They’re going to chip you like your pets. That’s a proven tech.
Oh yeah, I can just see people voluntarily standing in line to get their chip inserted. Not.
We have 30% of the drivers in Texas driving without driver’s licenses. No way that segment of the population will get their chips. And I doubt that I would either. I barely forced myself to go to jury duty back in February.
My wife is extremely shot phobic. I have tried until I am blue in the face to get her to get the Shingles vaccination. And the flu shots. You would have to hold her down to get a chip in her. While I am poking a gun in your ribs telling you to stop it.
Already aware of that requirement. We were also told by the carpet installers we could wait until the carpet was installed to do the baseboards.
They said no problem. We did have one room done by Home Depot as the wife liked that carpet for some reason. That installer was the same. Reused most of the tack strips only replacing a couple of short sections and installing in the closet where we had replaced a section of flooring.
Oh yeah, I can just see people voluntarily standing in line to get their chip inserted. Not.
No chip = no entry to HEB. Curbside pickup only, and anyone who has done it in the last few weeks can tell you, there are no guarantees with Curbside.
Cars are still about five years away from the fleet consisting of mostly vehicles amenable to complete control via software. Requiring a chip to drive would make pre-2004 vehicles really popular so another Cash For Clunkers will need to happen.
Think I’m kidding? I skipped an online seminar the company held today on “Connected Cars”. I’m considered the defacto expert on reversible plazas in our group so, lately, I get invited to some crazy discussions related to cities planning to restrict access to their surface streets and/or billing the cr*p out of anyone who isn’t on the approved list for access that day.
The cities are very open with their plans. No one will take them seriously until the bills start arriving in the mail.
Whew. Washed both vehicles that were in the driveway. Washed out the two black bins. I ended up dumping the black water on my lawn, near the street. It didn’t smell as bad with half gallon of bleach in it. The maggot things all had climbed to the lid to escape the bleach. Gross doesn’t begin to capture the yuck factor.
Nice day to be out in the sun with water…
Freaking win10. My NVR had somehow turned off recording for all cams and windows was waiting to restart. FFS, I can’t turn off updates anymore? I can only ‘pause’ them for 30 days? WTF kind of BS is that? Who owns this machine? I thought I did but I was wrong. How the 4377 does corporate IT deal with this? No way they let machines update at random and without testing for compatibility…
n
The vote-by-mail push continues.
https://www.fox7austin.com/video/674330
Also outside HEB:
Cop: Sir, you don’t have a chip. The deadline was January 1st.
Man: But I was at…
Cop: BLAM! Next.
Sound of rats scurrying away.
Cop: Sir, you don’t have a chip. The deadline was January 1st.
Man: But I was at…
Cop: BLAM! Next.
A little too out there for Austin. More like:
[Buzzing of taser]
Man: Don’t tase me bro. Arrrrrrgh. Police brutality!
Cop: Next.
Apart from the delay period, the other option that helps is turning off “Download updates over metered connections..”. I seem to recall that the Pro version has longer periods…
I for one prefer it this way. When it was opt-in, the vast majority of non-tech people did not update and that lead to widespread dissemination of malware.
You just have to remember that there is a patch-Tuesday every month. So, just check and do the update process yourself and not let it be done automatically by Windows whenever it wants. You do have 30 days to actually do that…
One more item for your long To-Do list? 🙂
All this talk about VTC systems, and nobody mentions Skype?
My wife had to install Zoom on her Android phone to join her quilt guild meetings. I helped her, and found it pretty straightforward, but she has trouble with it dropping audio, and then she accidently terminates it trying to fix the audio because the touch screen controls are clunky. Happened three times in an hour meeting.
She uses Skype at her volunteer job with no problems, but that is on a Windows desktop with a nice big screen. They share spreadsheets and whiteboards. I watched for a few minutes (I am the local IT support,) and it was pretty slick. Still, it is a solution in search of a problem, IMO.
Saw the stimulus money was deposited into my old, Mississippi, bank account. I almost closed it in March but decided to keep it open another month to see what direct withdrawals might still point to it. Happy me.
Skype is a classic, although everything about it is new since MS bought it years ago. But I didn’t think you could do more than 2 or 3 people on a call.
I have used skype with screen share when I couldn’t get Teamviewer to connect.
The biggest change in skype that F’s people up is the way MS wants you to log in with your MS id after upgrading. It’s really not clear that you can say no and continue with your old skype account. This trap caught me, my dad, and my mom at various times in the last couple of years.
n
I don’t want MS to update my machine. It’s a sealed black box I’m using to run NVR software. That’s the downside of not just buying a hardware NVR, is the damnable updates. I sure as 4377 don’t need them deciding to run stuff I can’t kill on the GRAPHICS CARD. Start menu experience host? yourphone.exe? microsoft.photos.exe? I don’t want any of those to run at all, let alone on my GPU.
@nick – for your dedicated NVR box – have you considered a Raspberry Pi ? I am sure that someone has done a project for that purpose, along with full instructions and a video.
Something for all of your spare time.
It actually takes a lot of processor and memory to record 12 full HD streams at 30fps. There can be a whole lot of encoding depending on the stream format. The little linux based boxes use a FPGA and have very limited streaming bandwidth. Which is why the pro level boxes are multi thousand dollars before drives. The best sweetspot NVR I’ve found was still $1500 before drives, and it won’t record full speed, full rez streams on all the cams at once.
n
I’m currently running a mix of cams, with a mix of streams from mjpeg to mp4 to H.264 with 3mpx being the lowest rez. Because it’s dark and quiet, most of the cams are currently streaming 5-10fps. My pc is using 36% cpu and 200 threads to run the NVR. That goes WAY up when there is activity and the FPS go up…
n
Any idea how to add a camera to a Win 10 home built system? My grand-daughter wants to connect to me with Skype. I suppose I can use some kind of USB camera.
I’ve got several that don’t work or I’m doing something wrong. With the camera connected they are never detected. I’ve checked the USB port using a thumb drive and the port is OK. I even moved the mouse and used that port. Nada.
Skype is what we’re using at work for meetings. I’ve been in meetings with 30 to 40 people, though admittedly most are just sleeping, er listening. It’s a great vehicle for sharing PowerPoint slides…you know my hell.
Ug, that stupid smartbyte bandwidth shaper is installed again. How many times do I need to kill that POS?
n
The house is finally to the point that they are mounting the pre-fabricated components. I’m not sure what you call this in English: it’s a custom-built house, but they pre-build all the walls in their shop, bring them on a truck, and mount them. Only the lower floor (with concrete outer walls) was built on-site.
Anyhow, that means that progress is really fast – an entire floor went up yesterday, today they’re working on the beams that will support the upper floor. Which will go up tomorrow. Then the beam-work to support the roof, which will go on next week.
Then comes the long, long phase of interior work. Lots of conduits and pipes are pre-laid, but wires need pulled, plumbing and heating needs installed, walls need finished, floors need laid, etc, etc, etc… But at least it will look like a house
So what is the outside layer of the house to be ? Obviously not brick.
When I was having the addition built onto the old house, the thing that took the most manhours was the foundation. They dug about 4 ft down and reshaped all of the dirt to what they wanted it to be with the rebar for the beams and piers. It was fairly interesting and took 5 or 6 guys about a week and a half. The framing and the roof took three weeks but it was the same two guys the entire time.
Panelized construction….
Very air tight, very well insulated. Gets the house ‘dried in’ quickly. Can be built in winter…
There used to be a show on Home and Garden or DIY that featured those type of houses exclusively.
@robert, if they are old, win10 might not have the drivers.
Have you tried finding it in skype? Or is that where you are seeing the error.
Windows might not show it to you but skype might still see it. I’ve got a little clip on one that win10 found without a problem and it was pretty old. On the other hand, new ones aren’t much money and if you get a MS branded one, it’s sure to work. Make sure it has a mic built in if you don’t already have a mic.
n
Since I’ve been working remotely, and have meetings with various students and companies, I’ve had to use a variety of remote software. Mostly WebEx and Microsoft Teams. Both work ok, but (it pains me to say this) Microsoft Teams is more pleasant to use. It’s also irritating: everytime I use it, it reappears as an “autorun” program and starts up when I log in (Linux).
Zoom: based on the reports I’ve read about their lack of security, I will avoid it entirely.
Skype: haven’t used it this year, but my past experiences were universally negative. Unless MS has completely rewritten it, both WebEx and Teams are better solutions. Why doesnt MS just merge it into Teams?
– – – – –
“It actually takes a lot of processor and memory”
I believe that!
I’ll have to look into solutions eventually, at the new house, since we will have some (not yet sure how many) security cameras. I know zilch about this stuff – and I’m not going to learn just yet – but when I actually have the cameras…
– – – – –
On a completely different topic: Stephen Wolfram thinks he may have found the theory that unifies physics: it’s basically automata theory, and the universe is (according to his theory) basically a big computer. The link leads to his layman’s summary of the work. Mind-bending and fascinating – even if this isn’t how things work, it lends a completely new perspective.
For work we use WebEx or Skype, and are migrating (slowly) from Skype to Microsoft Teams. We are not allowed to use Zoom due to the security failures. Skype is really just a company-wide IM system – audio, video or screen sharing is rarely used – we use WebEx for that.