Intro
This is another of the W.O.O.D. series of semi-regular
Weekly Occasional Open Discussions.
(i.e. if I forget and skip one, no big)
Immediate prior one here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/02/14/w-o-o-d-14-february-2019/
and remains open for threads running there (at least until the ‘several month’ auto-close of comments on stale threads).
Canonical list of old ones here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/w-o-o-d/
So use “Tips” for “Oooh, look at the interesting ponder thing!”
and “W.O.O.D” for “Did you see what just happened?! What did you think about it?”
What’s Going On?
Venezuela is in a political stalemate, and will likely stay that way until one side or the other has a change of military actions. Venezuela will hold as long as the Military stays loyal to Maduro, or as long as the USA stays militarily idle. There is a Security Council motion about it, but with both Russia and China holding a lot of Venezuelan debt / promises, you can be assured the Security Council will have vetoes in hand. The food aid convoys were generally halted (two trucks set afire at one border station) and both sides are claiming the other is doing bad things. My guess is a couple of more weeks before anything significant breaks.
BREXIT: We are supposedly about 4 weeks away from being done with this Farce. T. May continues to run out the clock. Nothing is changing in The Deal. Parliament is now getting pissy and shoving various “amendments” and proposals forward. The general theme being to take “No Deal” (i.e. the same WTO rules most of the world works happily under…) off the table; and / or extend the BREXIT deadline (i.e. not actually leave the EU on time and try to find a way to stay); or just not leave the EU / have another referendum, anything but just get the hell out. Someone really needs to inform these folks that straddling a barbed wire fence is not comfortable nor is it a good place to stay, even if holding yourself an inch or two above the barbs… Just get it done already.
What would I do? Just ‘crash out’ with W.T.O. rules (we do a lot of trade under them, and in fact Britain does LOTS of trade with the USA under such. It is NOT a big hardship.) On Ireland, treat it rather like the USA treats Canada. Yes, we have a border, but there are some towns where the border runs right through them. Cross the street and be in another country. We have “border stations” at some places, and lots of area where it is wide open. Then, model on the USA “inspection stations” where effectively the border is well inside the USA. One is on I-10 near Van Horn Texas. NOT on the physical border. Ireland is an island and folks need to get on a plane or boat to leave it. Put your inspection station there and request non-UK citizens go through the customs line. Don’t worry about someone in Dublin getting some bootleg non-taxed wine from the other side of the Island (it is a small price for peace…)
The rest of the EU continues the slow decay of Empires. We’re down to the Brussels / Germany / Paris Elite as the core group advocating the Globalist Agenda. Even there, the citizens of France are not on board and continue to have Yellow Vest Saturdays. How long can Macron continue with that every weekend?
Today Michael Cohen is giving “testimony” to congress. It is clearly a Democratic Lynch Party out to get Trump. There’s a couple of Republicans trying to keep things more balanced. Every time it gets to “Did Trump order you do do {illegal act}” Cohen says something along the lines of “He didn’t directly say it but I knew what he wanted.” or “That’s how he works, he speaks in code but I know how to decode it”. Sounds to me like he made the decision to do illegal things instead of, as any good lawyer ought to do, advise his client what is legal to do and what is not. When I ask a layer “Can you fix this?”, I’m assuming that they will hold to the law (as sworn) in their answer, not “interpret my code”.
I’m pretty sure the Democrats will claim this is the smoking gun and move articles of impeachment from it, while the Republicans will call it a joke (and it is somewhere in the middle). Cohen testified that in July (in the teens somewhere) he heard Stone talking with the Trump Team about Wikieleaks having Hillary’s emails and going to release them. The Democrats had done the “set up” that this was clear evidence of Roger Stone and Trump in COLLUSION!!!! with Wikileaks and RUSSIA!!!! Then the rep from one of the Carolinas had his turn, confirmed the July date, and held up a copy of a newspaper front page stating the Wikieleaks email dump was coming – from June. He then pointed out that Cohen had “old news” and it was public knowledge at that time (so what’s wrong with discussing it?)
The Circus of Congress goes on… (I’m not sure who’s government looks most stupid and incompetent at this point, the British Parliament, the US Congress, or Venezuela.)
In the West we’re cold and frozen. Oregon had an Amtrak train stuck in the snow for about 3 days (now hauled backwards toward Eugene IIRC by another engine). Not since the San Francisco train in 1953 (heavy snow year) has such a thing happened here.
Yes, the UK is presently warm (depends on which ‘lobe’ of the loopy jet stream is over you at any given moment), but for everywhere warm, somewhere is frozen. Can you really trust that the average of those things, to the 1/10 C, means anything? That’s the fundamental proposition of Global Warming. That a fairly random (being generous and not calling them cherry picked or carefully selected) set of thermometers can be averaged and have it really mean anything.
I’ve had a corruption of the uSD card on the Odroid XU4 where I was doing the SQL graphs and such. All the procedures, data, and my home directory are on a hard disk, so not an issue (there were some corrupt blocks on the /tmp and /var file systems from the crash, but not significant loss). The biggest deal is just that I need to “fix it”. I can restore from a backup prior to the install of MySQL / MariaDB and just redo that step, or I can have a full do-over reinstall. (so losing some Crufy Bits in a clean install). For now, I’m just running on a Raspberry Pi for the recovery and postings. I’ve made backups of the current state of the uSD card (so changes to /etc/* and other config things are saved if I need to inspect them) and I’ve snagged a copy of the 2 TB hard disk just to assure it’s not an issue. Now it’s just “some assembly required”. And deciding what I want as the final product.
I’d moved a lot of I/O off of the SD card ( swap /tmp /var my home dir /usr ) so I’m not sure why it would have an issue with the use level (a couple of years, on and off, for that uSD card). I’m very tempted to do a build from scratch and put /* on a hard disk, only the minimal boot blocks (FAT file system bits) on the uSD card. I’ve done that before on a R.Pi. and for selected file systems on this particular build. One of the advantages is that you can have, for example, /lib /usr /var /boot on a hard disk, and each mounted on top of the same stuff on the uSD card. (All the stuff under the mount is still there). Then, if you do an update/upgrade and it breaks, just edit /etc/fstab to remove the mounts and boot with the older copy under them. Copy that back to the hard disk partitions, change fstab back, and you have recovered. For “rolling releases” like Debian that can save you from a broken upgrade…
In any case, I’m “basically functional” again and the desktop is no longer cluttered with backup and restore and recovery disks (and I’m not actively moving TB of data so the damage of a surprise hang is minimal – meaning I’m willing to do stuff on the machine now). There will be a slower progress, especially on the SQL DB stuff, as that is the station that’s got issues ATM. Back up near instantly is part of the benefit of “several boards with several OS images”. What I don’t have is a lot of spare screens ;-) Well, that, and desktop real estate on which to put them.
So I’ll be doing some postings, but not a lot of tech postings, as I have a chunk of infrastructure work to deal with. Rebuild, and then clean up all those emergency duplicates of data. Plus the Pi M3 is not nearly as fast as the XU4, so some things just go slower. (Disk I/O is USB 2.0 but not even full speed of that, while the XU4 is USB 3.0; 4 A56 cores at 900 MHz to 1.2 GHz maybe if you config things right vs 8 cores with 4 of them very fast A15 cores at about 1.8 GHz and twice as much memory). So I’m interested in getting the XU4 back in service quickly… but this is also an opportunity to make it more “robust” to uSD issues.
While I’m doing that, it’s worth a read at https://www.iceagenow.info/ where he’s documenting the tsunami of record cold running over a lot of us. Here’s a sample of the headlines:
Record snowfall in Idaho for entire month
February 27, 2019 by RobertThree times average monthly snowfall.
Read moreRecord snowfall in Idaho for entire month
Categories Archives, Global Warming Hoax, U.S. News & RecordsLeave a comment
Los Angeles – Coldest February in 60 Years
February 27, 2019 by RobertGlobal Warming?
Read moreLos Angeles – Coldest February in 60 Years
Categories Archives, Global Warming Hoax, U.S. News & RecordsLeave a comment
Biggest February snowstorm in 118 years hammers Central Oregon
February 26, 2019 by RobertA one-day snow total of 12.5 inches set a new record in Bend as the highest February total since the agency started tracking it in 1901.
Read moreBiggest February snowstorm in 118 years hammers Central Oregon
Categories Archives2 Comments
Amtrak train stuck in snow since Sunday night
February 26, 2019 by RobertRunning out of food – 183 passengers on board – Record-setting snowfall
Read moreAmtrak train stuck in snow since Sunday night
Categories Archives, Global Warming Hoax, U.S. News & Records4 Comments
Roofs collapsing in Quebec
February 25, 2019 by Robert“So much snow in the province of Quebec that the roofs of buildings are collapsing,” writes reader Pierre Demers. “Some have between 4 and 6 feet (1.2 to 1.83 m) of snow on them.”
Read moreRoofs collapsing in Quebec
Categories Archives, Global Warming Hoax4 Comments
Fighting for energy and human rights equality in Africa
February 25, 2019 by Robert“Last year 70,000 Ugandans died from malaria. In 65 years, DDT never killed anyone.”
-Paul DriessenRead moreFighting for energy and human rights equality in Africa
Categories Archives, Dissenters, World News & Records3 Comments
Phoenix shatters 122-year-cold record
February 25, 2019 by RobertDates back to when Arizona was still a U.S. territory.
Read morePhoenix shatters 122-year-cold record
Categories Archives, Global Warming Hoax, U.S. News & Records3 Comments
Saskatchewan – Coldest February in 80 years
February 24, 2019 by RobertDaily highs – highs! – have remained below –20 C (-4 F) for 9 days in Regina and 10 days in Saskatoon so far this month, while temperatures overnight have remained in the minus 30s or even minus 40s C (-40 F),
Read moreSaskatchewan – Coldest February in 80 years
Categories Archives, Global Warming Hoax, World News & Records6 Comments
National Guard Rescues Motorists Stranded by Blizzard
February 24, 2019 by RobertBlizzard conditions in SE Minnesota. I-35 and I-90 closed.
Read moreNational Guard Rescues Motorists Stranded by Blizzard
Categories Archives, Global Warming Hoax, U.S. News & Records2 Comments
Heavy Snowfall in Las Vegas – Video
February 23, 2019 by RobertThe media tried to tell us it was just it a “dusting.” This video, posted on 21 Feb 2019, shows otherwise
Read more
I do find it interesting that the more consistently cold areas are right about where the Glacial Ice Shield was built up. I hope that’s not a persistent thing “going forward”…
Musings from the Chiefio 
Cooper Amendment (MPs should vote on whether to rule out no-deal and delay Brexit is the Withdrawal Agreement is rejected) just passed Parliament. Vote was 502 FOR, and 20 Against, with a margin of 482.
So I think it can be fairly safely predicted that the T. May deal will be killed, then the MPs will vote to not just get it over with and leave under WTO rules, and instead vote to postpone Brexit and continue this fence sitting for another 6 months while they continue to work on a way to Remain.
Looks to me like The Elite are in opposition to The People and working to set up an end run.
Hey Chiefio, Thanks for all that… Useful news source with all the mSN bs extracted.. I know folks from Venezuela who came here 6-7 years ago as refugees..They saw the writing on the wall & got out early. Along with a million of two others now settled in places like Argentina, Spain, Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and yes the USA… Methinks it’s time for the local American policeman to step in and see Madura off to somewhere he might be welcome like North Korea say. Perhaps Trump & Kim Jong Un can do a deal on it today ? Now that would be a step forward for civilisation in the Americas. ?
The United Methodist Church voted on an important issue this past weekend. Which issue doesn’t really matter to my present point. But it’s interesting to observe that, like Trump’s election and the Brexit vote, (and Yellow Jacket protests) a majority of Methodist laity out-voted the clergy — against the expressed preference of the leadership and (U.S.) bishops.
There is a trend.
Venezuela is a good example of where the CIA could do some undercover work to tilt the balance to freedom. In WW I, Germany defeated Russia by allowing Lenin to go there. It backfired later on, but got the immediate job done.
I just discovered that YouTube has a block of live news shows. Including this one that is from Australia (ABC).
That’s kind of fun…
EM, rer Brexit, I consider this to to be all part of the PLAN concocted by the Conservatives starting with Cameron’s Not invoking Article 50 as he said he would and then resigning instead.
The whole point was to build in as many delays as possible to allow as much “intervention”, negativity and propaganda possible.
Non of the people doing the so called negotiating were actual Brexiteers, May’s “Deal” was so bad she did not want it exposed to the light of day, hoping it would sneak through.
But if it didn’t it was also so bad that the alternative of canceling the whole thing looked good.
With so much negative propaganda the public have been brainwashed in to thinking that “No Deal” will be a disaster, when as you say we do 60% of our business under WTO rules now.
This was the plan all along delay until the public will accept exactly what 95% of the Parliament & Civil Service wanted in the first place, the canceling of the ACTUAL Referendum Result ie Leave the EU.
The referendum had no mention of a “deal” it was IN or OUT, out was chosen and that was totally unacceptable to our EU loving Ruling Elite which sold us out back in the 1970s.
This is typical EU playbook for any country that disagrees with them and they will win because the MPs of all the EU countries want to stay in, they have long put the EU before Sovereignty and will continue to do so.
So May’s “No Deal is Better than a Bad Deal” was all bullshit to lull the public in to a false sense of security while she got on with setting up the reversal of the Referendum Result.
As to the Climate, we have the UK Met Office and the BBC pushing “Highest February Temperatures Ever” with the hint that it is due to Global Warming with nary a mention of the unprecedented Cold & Snow that the US is experiencing.
Add to that the depravity displayed by the Democrats, the Cohen business, the outright lies put out by the MSM has reached shocking levels, the brainwashing of kids is the same, so the world has become a place that is hard to recognise for us older folk.
This is an interesting twist.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/world-bank/world-banks-legal-immunity-stripped-opening-door-for-lawsuits/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-27/u-s-supreme-court-rules-against-world-bank-arm-on-immunity
This may make it a bit more difficult for globalists to conduct commercial activities which are predatory to local interests.
No surprise to many of us here but a nice source to file away for future discussions.
Wind energy shuts off at a cold cut off temperature of about -20 deg F. to protect the equipment. Also when it is very cold that typically means there is very little wind in the first place.
Recent cold outbreak resulted in a max generation event for fossil fuel generation to make up for the loss of wind in the upper midwest.
https://truepundit.com/green-new-deal-wind-power-dropped-off-the-grid-during-polar-vortex/
@Larry L:
Yeah, both wind and solar crap out right when you most desperately need them.
That ruling is interesting… No more making money without responsibility…
Sigh.
There’s a Quality Assurance epidemic in Linux…
I’ve spent the last 24 hours+ trying to get the Odroid XU4 back up. Even resorting to just a plain Armbian build for it. That one fails with inability to start lightdm display manager.
Really? Did nobody bother to just boot the platform with a GUI and see if their preferred release could bring up a login panel?
It just shouts “Zero QA Done”.
Armbian isn’t the only one. I’ve tried 3 or maybe more different OSs on it. They all fail the basic “give me a login window” in various ways.
It isn’t the hardware (the old build still works – but I’m suspicious that the crash / fsck might have lost some bits). I’m now about to drop back to the old saved copy of Jessie Armbian (one major release back from the present) and restart from there.
But really: Folks have a web page saying “Download THIS approved version of the OS for THIS exact hardware” and it can’t even pop a window to login? Grumble…. Now I’m using the generic Debian download and doing an apt-get install lxde. They also have an Ubuntu image that likely does have a working windows in it; but I don’t want Ubuntu and their desktop choice. I may need to start from that base and rip out the “Ubuntu-ness”…
IMHO there’s a whole lot too much “rush to the future” and a whole lot too little “QA this and make sure it works before you move on”.
Yes, I know, “hacker boards” and “Linux” are supposed to be “some assembly required” and I’m OK with that. But the key word is “some”. The very basic “give me a working environment” ought to work at least to the point where you have windows and a terminal option (and I’d even say “networking and browser” too – one release took me a couple of hours to get Ethernet going… So THE thing that getting updates depends on doesn’t work out of the box? So how do you update that to fix it, eh?)
So I’m going to step away from the Odroid XU4 as my main desktop board for a while. Don’t know which one I will end up on. The R.Pi is very reliable, but just a bit slow for comfort.
FWIW, the Devuan release for the XU4 comes with broken networking. I got that going and it still didn’t want to give me a desktop (same failure to start lightdm I think… but it was about 3-4 AM and I’m not sure ;-) while Armbian Debian with SystemD comes up with networking in place, but can’t make lightdm work.
I’m going to “move on” to fixing up the disk use and allotment so my full environment is available on “some other box”. We’ll see where I end up in a day or two…
That has always been my pet peeve with Linux, two things absolutely must work out of the box, the monitor display, keyboard, mouse inputs, and the networking.
You can sort out other stuff if you can get those running but issues with just those simple basics has been the one thing that kept me from actively persuing Linux.
Until very recently (ie Mint Linux etc.) if you had anything but the most popular configurations it had problems. Old Caldera was the first distribution I ever loaded that actually ran out of the box, and involved no hair pulling to just load a web page like google.
Just got back from SoCal. I-8 was closed from Ocotillo to Alpine, Snow was down to 1000ft level. And it dropped below freezing several days I was there (Imperial Valley). I only brought i long sleeve shirt and long pair of pants. But at least it was sunny, Except when it was not (rained all day Thursday).
But the fund raiser went well on Saturday! It was in the low 60s.
More EU
“EU hides their Toaster and Kettle bans so they don’t “galvanize” Brexit”
Read the whole thread but START HERE
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/03/eu-hides-their-toaster-and-kettle-bans-so-they-dont-galvanize-brexit/#comment-2112153
for some real skulduggery
Tucker Carlson at his best!
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/02/28/president-trump-tweets-watch-tucker-opening-so-heres-the-video-replay/
Meanwhile the major media and the Democratic talking head cadre will simply ignore this outcome.
About that “ephemeral energy” that is going to lower your electricity costs – Oz shows the way (/s)
“States with low cost solar and wind paying 1300% more at the moment”
“It would appear to sail up the renewables river requires a heart of darkness.”
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/03/states-with-low-cost-solar-and-wind-paying-1300-more-at-the-moment/#comment-2112320
And the rest of the thread
For those that worry about sea level rise
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/01/singapores-highly-successful-economic-evolution-in-an-era-of-irrational-global-climate-alarmism-propaganda/
Per Frence24, Europeans are flocking in droves to follow the wisdom and guidance of a child, Greta something, about the urgent need to destroy their economy and become UN Serfs to fight “climate change”….
It’s sickening, really. Watching this exploitation of children. And the fools who follow them.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/february-cold-month-saskatchewan-1.5040275
If you felt like this February was a particularly brutal one, even for Saskatchewan, you’re right — Environment Canada reports it was among the coldest in the decades that records have been kept.
How bad has this winter been? When will it end? — Dave Phillips, Environment Canada
Saskatoon had a monthly mean average of -24.2 C, more than nine degrees colder than normal. That made this past February the fourth coldest ever recorded in the city, in more than a century of record-keeping.
The province’s other major city, Regina, didn’t fare much better, with a monthly mean average of -23.5 C, twelve degrees colder than normal. Its February was the fifth coldest recorded.
It was La Ronge’s coldest winter, in fact, in the 53 years since records were kept, with a monthly mean of -23.6 degrees.
That was eight degrees colder than normal.
Other Sask. communities that suffered through the unusually frosty conditions included:
Estevan with a monthly mean of -22.4 (second coldest winter on record)
Key Lake with a monthly mean of -27.5 C (third coldest winter on record)
Meadow Lake with a monthly mean of -25.6 (second coldest winter on record)
Prince Albert with a monthly mean of -24.6 (fourth coldest winter on record)
Swift Current with a monthly mean of -22.1 (second coldest winter on record)
Well this is interesting, if true ! Adds a whole new dimension to the AOC candidacy.
If the CIA is running AOC, it seems like a bizarre choice to me.
Unless she’s the equivalent of a breaker bar being used to loosen a bolt before switching over to a speed wrench. Or perhaps she’s more of a sacrifice pawn in a deeper gambit.
If true, to their strategic credit, there’s nobody who could conceive of her being CIA, so she’s perfect.
That is assuming that the CIA leadership actually has the same idea of what is good for the country as most people do. John Brennan voted for Gus Hall a communist in the 1976 presidential election, the CIA is not nearly as monolithic as many people think. The recent behavior of Senior CIA and FBI indicates that at the 7th floor level the rules are different and may not be what you would think.
As a globalist puppet she would fit right in with a long term plan to break the system to allow the creation of a new globalist world government, much like the EU has broken national sovereignty in Europe.
Well this is interesting – looks like we are about to return to banishment in Denmark if the Syrian and Somali refugees will not leave willingly.
https://neonnettle.com/news/6677-denmark-plans-to-send-refugees-home-considers-using-force-for-deportations
Re Brexit
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/03/weekend-unthreaded-249/#comment-2112954
Larry L
Just seen a comment that “William Casey didn’t have a son”. Might need checking
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/05/07/former-cia-director-william-j-casey-dies/da60a0b4-79cf-43d3-b370-848c2439e833/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.84538be519e5
At the end
We’re hunkered down here in Heiskell, Tennessee while the snow passes through all the states we would have been traveling through today. The mountains are blocking that snowstorm so all we’ll get is rain.
What sucks is that Friday, it was around 70 (F) when we left Florida and mid-60s (F) at our first overnight stop in Perry, GA. Here in Heiskell it will be in the mid-40s (F) today. Our First 3 days at home will have temperatures in the lower 20s (F).
Now that’s climate change!
Denmark is reportedly planning to send all Syrian and Somalian refugees back home after declaring that the situation has changed in their country of origin and they no longer have grounds for asylum. The Danish Government has also announced that the country will no longer automatically grant all Syrian asylum seekers temporary asylum, and is preparing plans to return those who were previously granted asylum. Earlier this week, Danish officials revealed that Denmark, unlike its Scandinavian neighbors, is considering using force to remove migrants from Syria and Somalia who are unwilling to leave willingly.
https://neonnettle.com/news/6677-denmark-plans-to-send-refugees-home-considers-using-force-for-deportations
Ian – Yes as noted “if true” apparently William Casey was survived by only a daughter, so the item on the CIA connection is bogus. Also he was appointed by Reagan and was in the Nixon administration so was conservative as would likely be his children. More than likely this is disinformation to “oh look squirrel” to misdirect people away from support of AOC by Soros.
@HR, perhaps you can make one of these, a different way however, to contend with the climate change in Ohio? Best viewed with the sound clicked on ;-)
https://mobile.twitter.com/AwardsDarwin/status/1101991051747868673
A bit of US History in video regarding Shay’s Rebellion.
@ossqss – Real Men of Genius!
Mrs. H.R. near choked to death laughing when watching that. I think I’ll just stick with putting on an extra sweater or something.
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.
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@jim2, et al – The internet here at the campground is more like the intermittent-net. Cortana popped up while I was waiting and asked “What can I do?” I typed in “Turn yourself off.” OK, it seems the programmers learned something from HAL in 2001 A Space Odyssey. No can do, sez Cortana. (I found out you make a registry edit to turn off Cortana; no radio button.)
So I went to install cc_cleaner and Windows 10S won’t let you install anything that didn’t come from the Microsoft Ap Store. That’s the ‘S’ in 10S. Supposedly, the only way to turn off ‘S’ mode is to download the reversal from 10S to plain Windows 10 from Microsoft. Sneaky bastards!
To download that, I will have to create an account with the MS store. They want an email address, phone# and DOB. I have a throwaway email account and when I entered it, it came back with “Somebody else already has that account.” Yeah, ME!
I suppose I’ll have to create another anonymous email account, but I’m guessing that by now, they have filters to cull out people who use the Wrigley Field street address and phone number. That’s what I used to use for an address and phone number but I don’t think that will work any more.
Anyone have some ideas for a real phone# that won’t trip any wires? I’m guessing they can cross-match the info associated with a real phone# to the misleading info in the rest of the application. A burner phone is my last resort. I am looking for a freebie solution, first.
That guy does some absolutely hilarious videos of Darwin projects. He is obviously a very talented electrical engineer type as he manages to put together catastrophic failures without killing himself.
He posts videos under the name electroboom
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=electroboom
For your amusement – why DC is better than AC (sort of)
sparky go boom
HR @ https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/02/27/w-o-o-d-27-february-2018/#comment-109127
This is one of the problems with using MS products. I don’t know of a way around it, other than download Linux Mint onto a USB stick and boot from the stick :)
EMS probably has some ideas on how to get phone numbers, etc.
Sorry!
Global warming and flying
” Flight Level
March 2, 2019 at 7:20 pm
So far in between simulator drills, check rides, proficiency, all kind of directives and updates, there was not a single training on the effects of global warming on aviation. Other drivers wearing different colors report the same.
Not a single official safety update or training directly related to global warming impact on weather and flight conditions.
From this perspective we can safely deduce that authorities do not really have tangible evidence of whatever scaremongers they feed the public.
Further paradox: -If I import a car, I’ll have to pay a one time CO2 tax. About 500$ for a very small 1.1 liter gasoline cheap drive. And exponentially increasing for bigger displacement engines.
However eventual subscription and other attendance / lodging fees to a climate saving conference, COPxx included, would not qualify as tax deductible for private citizens.
Even more funny. Based on safety concerns, German post would refuse to ship Lithium batteries. Including the same brand and type as those powering their 3-cycles and other “zero emission” delivery vehicles.
It all seems to be a one way only deal. From our pockets to their junkets.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/02/damage-control-cnn-explains-usas-climate-change-driven-winter-cold/#comment-2645244
So it obviously doesn’t affect all those private jet aircraft that congregate at global warming fests (/S)
The cheapest phone number I found was an IP phone from WalMart. Used it for a few months. Didn’t see them selling it lately though, so don’t know. You can set up an IP Account with various vendors for cheap (some are like $20 /year)… I found the burner phone about as good. $20 for the phone and a $20 “plan” and you are set for a couple of months (and don’t need an IP spigot for it to work.
On my infinite ToDo list is set up a SIP account and play with it from a R.Pi:
https://www.lifewire.com/free-sip-providers-3426672
Different folks do different amounts of checking for physicality. I could sign up for lots of stuff in Florida with my “box address”, except the car registration refused it. That went to a friends address instead. I did manage to get to zero stuff with my real physical address on it (a rent-a-coach “vacation cottage” in an RV park paid cash to the owners). Things a Security Guy does when he’s bored… find the edge of the envelope…
Usually at about this point I give the Elevator Pitch for Linux instead of Windoze… but I’ve spent the last 2 days slogging bits and OS versions around due to Linux being a pain right now. BUT, for folks NOT running a Single Board Computer only created in the last year or two using odd drivers… but instead using a Regular Intel PC Platform: I’d strongly suggest using Linux as it is quite nice now. I’m particularly fond of LXDE as a simple “classical” window environment. There’s also one that goes out of their way to look like MS Windows (7 IIRC) but why? ;-)
FWIW, I’m presently running on Pi M3. Why? Huge number of user base and eyeballs means things tend to get fixed / be right out of the box. The “Bleeding Edge” SBCs (RockPro64, Odroid XU4) are both being a bit fussy with the latest downloaded images. I suspect the disruption for the Code Of Conduct in Linus house, Red Hat bought by IBM, Microsoft buying GitHub AND a seat on the Linux Foundation Board Of Directors; all seasoned with Meltdown & Specter kernal re-wraps and thrashed by the SystemD Wars… all add up to bad / nonexistent QA and development in “patch and catch up” mode not “make it work smooth and well”. Especially on low user-base boards.
So for now I’m taking the “bit of sloth” in exchange for a stable platform. Sometime next week I’ll return to “Just which OS of what release worked?” and try again.
Along the way I decided to consolidate my System Images Archives (scattered all over) so I’ve been moving a few TB off of a half dozen disks onto on. In the middle of that, also consolidated a half dozen “home directories” from the last few years and tossed a lot of trash. Since that was all going on, I also decided to convert some file systems from “ext” to “xfs”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFS
So a few more TB dumped and restored.
Why? Well that whole ext4 comes in two flavors that are incompatible had caused me to convert most stuff back to ext3. But it isn’t as robust to crashes and such. I’d played with xfs about a year (2?) ago and liked it. No problems on the system that I’d set up as a test case. The xfs file system is the one from Silicon Graphics tuned for better performance and larger files / file systems. It is now the default on some of the Red Hat releases (the data center folks especially like it).
So I’m basically turning those things that can use it into xfs file systems. Not for really old systems (as a few years back it was a ‘glue on’ and only recently got added into the Linux Kernel) but fine with most of my stuff.
Essentially I’m taking a “reset and clean up” on the pile of SBCs and Disks and cleaning out the “left overs” from prior experimenting in the process.
Hopefully about the time I’m done the Devuan or Armbian ports for the XU4 will be working better… Or I’ll drop back to the Jessie version from a year ago and just run it. It worked well for a long while.
So, H.R.: Looks like both of us are “slaving over a hot computer” ;-)
This is going to be an expensive fishing trip.
Alack, Jo Nova Blog’s crashed.
Back up now.
In my general “clean up” of old systems images, I found an old Devuan 1.0 (that had been my major workstation / Daily Driver about a year ago). It runs with your choice of key file systems from uSD car or from Seagate USB disk. ( /etc /usr /var /lib /tmp home directory).
The interesting thing is that it just feels significantly faster than the Devuan 2.0 (also on USB disk) that I was using yesterday.
I don’t think it is the disk (at least not this disk) as I first booted it from uSD card and that was the first notice of the feeling.
So…
Could be the very old USB disk on the other system is a slow disk, the uSD is a slow one, or maybe, just maybe, the changes to the Kernel et. al. (meltdown / specter / etc) that was reputed to take about 20% out of performance on Intel chips has had an effect on an Arm chip too.
It’s the same RPi hardware and both are running full clock speed.
So now I have minor dilemma: Which one to keep using and which one to “clean up”… and out…
Interesting item here on how to destroy an asteroid – seems just because you blast it into many pieces gravitational forces will just reassemble it from all the pieces that fail to achieve local escape velocity.
Sounds like you need to rethink a few things. The difference between being hit by a 15 pound bowling ball and a 15 pound bag of small rocks is not all that significant. Pretty much the same energy just a slight change in how long it stays together as it enters the atmosphere.
https://www.euronews.com/2019/03/04/huge-asteroids-harder-to-break-up-than-previously-thought-study-finds
@Larry:
Look at effective damage / kt for nukes. Nobody bothers making anything bigger than 50 MT as it does nothing more, just more energy sent into space. Max damage comes from a lot of smaller nukes ( so a field of 500 x 100 kt does a LOT more damage).
Depending on the size of the rock IF you can “gravelize” it then the gravel bits will burn up in the atmosphere. If NOT, then you made things worse…
This results in a big game of “chicken”… You want to wait to just before impact to blast it to rubble. That way the bits burn up… IF you made them small enough… Do it too early, they reassemble… to late, you get a bolus impact.
Personally I’d prefer the “spot it far far away” and use a big laser to ablate one side / surface so the trust shifts it away from impact. Then, just as it passes “near by” and just past us, rubbleize it so as much mass as possible ends up in a variety of orbits and can’t be a future threat (while some core would reassemble, but it is unlikely to have exactly the same orbit prameters either…)
FWIW, I’m pretty sure a “one two” punch could work too. One big nuke makes the rubble, then the #2 goes off in the center of the cloud of debris and scatters it beyond the mutual gravity ability to pull it back together.
It would be great fun to study this… (Nukes In Space! Whoop! Whoop!) I’m sure there’s a few asteroids nobody would miss ;-)
well down side do gravelizing it, is you still have all the same energy but now it is released almost instantaneously as all those small rocks hit the top of the atmosphere creating a Chelyabinsk meteor or massive Tunguska type air blast event. Instead of being relatively localized cratering event you now shot gun the whole planet with billions of meteorites all burning up at the same time, and generating a huge thermal pulse that burns continents to the ground.
As you say best option is the full miss due to adequate warning and long term change in orbital elements.
In the Chelyabinsk meteor maximum blast and thermal effects occured as the bolid broke up and suddenly released most of its energy over a short period of time, instead of over a long reentry track.
Meanwhile we have another cold weather event to add to the summary of return to colder weather typical decades or centuries ago.
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/03/04/denver-weather-coldest-march-day-since-1880/
Likewise all time record cold here in Chicago.
https://wgntv.com/2019/03/04/dangerous-wind-chills-15-to-25-degrees-chicago-area-wide-this-monday-morning-record-cold-temperatures-today/
I suspect that tendency for the central USA to be frozen will continue for the next 40 years or so. Possibly with some respite at the top of sunspot cycles, but generally frozen until we’re out of this Grand Solar Minimum… and that’s likely to be a couple of solar cycles.
A bit of news from Occupied Ukraine sourced from a Russian woman “warlord”
Of course you have the whole wilderness of mirrors problem as hard to tell who is really behind such things, but the rapid expansion strategy she discribes for Pro Russian units and the behind the curtain control of the “Ukraine separatists” certainly fits with other bits and pieces of how Russia has mastered a new way to rapidly quietly mobilize troops for such semi-official wars.
https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/female-warlord-defects-to-ukraine-details-russias-involvement-in-donbas.html
First rule of gun safety do not give a loaded gun to a Chimp!
If we break up that asteroid far enough out and with enough kinetic energy to overcome its rather weak gravity, there is a sweet spot there, then it will be the best meteor shower – EVAH!
Land vs Ocean trend. WFT doesn’t have a UAH 6.0 Ocean only, so comparing UAH 6 land to global. From 2000, land is warming faster than ocean.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:2000/trend/plot/uah6-land/from:2000/trend/offset:-0.03
Howdy, all! Home safe and sound. Staying that extra day in Heiskell TN let us travel after the snowstorm that just swept across the US and ahead of the next one coming through.
We were traveling through Georgia and noticed a really ominous cloud that looked like a tornado might form any time. Then we hit a wall of rain and hail that had many pulling off the road as visibility was down to about 30-40 feet! We kept going at about 25mph with flashers on and leaving only enough distance between the truck ahead of us to make out its tail light; enough distance to stop if the truck stopped suddenly or was headed into a pileup.
We found out in Tennessee that we must have just squeaked through ahead of those severe storms that hit Alabama and Georgia, killing at least 23 people and maybe more. We had no idea how lucky we were until later.
Y’all have caught E.M. and myself discussing mobile living. Well the missus and I were quite content in the RV park and had no problem living in the travel trailer with the two dogs and the cat.
Maybe it was the palm trees but we didn’t miss home at all and would have been content to stay another month.
Coming home was a shock. Our kitchen is about 50% larger than our trailer. Our family room is twice the size of our trailer and has an 18′ ceiling with a wall-o-windows. No more walking the dogs on a leash. Open the back door and out they go to potty. The cat has room to roam; upstairs to the loft. down to the basement, into the office, into the bedrooms, through the kitchen and dining room and living room. “Where to nap? Where to nap?” Too many kitty decisions all involving naps.
Yet… already we are missing the palm trees that were on our lot, massive live oaks everywhere, loads of one-off restaurants, and the beach.
We’ve already reserved Dec ’19 through Feb ’20 at the same RV park, but we started discussing where to go “out West” and how to tackle a trip to the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, and over to bug p.g. :o)
Home, away. Home, away. It’s all very strange and yet it also seems quite normal in either the house or the trailer.
The nicest thing of all is that no matter where I am, I can log on and join in a conversation here with friends that I know but just haven’t got around to meeting in person… except for E.M., ossqss, and Rhoda.
I’m hoping to add Larry and p.g. and John F. H. and cdquarles and gallopingcamel and many more of the denizens here to the list of longtime blog acquaintances that I just haven’t had the pleasure of meeting in person. Don’t know about the OZ or UK contingent as the trailer is untested on the open sea ;o) Anyhow, there’s nothing quite like the Dodgy Proceedings of a Chiefio Blog Meeting.
It might be the two Unholy tripel ales talking, but I feel a little bit like Bilbo coming back home to Bag End. Ahhhhhh, home at last, yet…….
@HR; this meeting place on the net has been a wonderful thing for me. To be able to visit with friends and family while at my desk is a god sent blessing. You are welcome any time, in person or the internet.
Meanwhile I work at my little factory creating plastic toys to play with…pg
Hope to meet up with a few of you eventually too!
HR what sort of rates are they charging for long term stay at RV parks from your experience?
I imagine it varies seasonally but just curious what sort of weekly / monthly rates you need to plan on for such snow bird escapes in an RV.
@Larry – The RV park we stayed at in Florida is Bickley RV Park on Seminole Blvd, Seminole Fl. It is around the corner from Madeira Beach. It’s a 55 and over park so there aren’t any kids running around (kids allowed for 2-3 only to visit.
They have two types of lots. The standard lots are about 16′ wide and about 40′ deep. Landscaping is spotty. The park planted live oak trees and palms and over the years, people who stay for 6 months or year ’round plant some native species for privacy and/or color. I think the multi-month rate is about $800/month.
The deluxe lots are 24′ wide and are screened on each side with palms and flowering shrubs. They have a storage shed about 6′ x 8′ and a pergola that’s either 5′ x 6′ or 8′ x 8′ on a paver patio.
A 1-night stay on the deluxe lot is around $100 but the monthly rate is about $1500. Three months knocks it down to about $1200/month and I believe 6 months gets it down to about $1,000/ month. We only needed a $250 deposit to reserve our spot for next year and it’s refundable with suitable advance notice of cancellation… like our estate says we ain’t a gonna make it ;o)
Those are peak season rates. Summer rates in Florida are dirt cheap to attract… anybody they can.
Towards the Florida keys, they have a few RV parks on the beach and some seriously deluxe lots where the monthly rate is about $100/night or more. But some of the motor homes and fifth wheels are so spacious and nice that you are better off there than a condo, which might be $300-$500 or more per night.
The condos where we stayed when I was working were just around the corner, so to speak, from the RV park and I talked to a fellow while I was fishing who was staying at one of the places we stayed. It was about $5500/month now, 2nd row back from the beach. There is a huge savings having a trailer or motor home. We stayed 3 months for the price of a condo for a month.
Traveling and overnight stays are reasonable. Since we came home in March, Georgia and Tennessee were charging a slightly higher Spring rate. Their off-season is Winter. Overnight at Fair Harbor Park in Perry Ga was $49 for a pull-through lot (they are higher for the convenience and they use a little more space than a back-in lot). It was $44/night for the deluxe pull-through lot at Volunteer Park Family Campground in Heiskell Tennessee – $5.00 higher than Winter rates.
So far, every RV park we’ve stayed in has discounts for seniors or AAA or Good Sam members. It’s pretty hard not to qualify for some discount.
Anyhow, it seems all of the RV parks now have their rates online, you can read reviews of parks, and you can get aerial and streetside views to make sure the place isn’t a dump.
Location, conveniences such as pools or pull-through lots, landscaping, and level concrete pads (some lots are just gravel) determine price along with length of stay. There are even some snooty places now that are motorhomes only, no tents, pop-ups, or travel trailers. But then the people that paid 1/2 a million bucks for a motor home towing a Cadillac Escalade don’t care about price and want a super lot, well landscaped.
Oh, the places we’re staying have full hookups meaning electric, water, and sewer and wifi. Most have cable included. Bickley does not but a lot of RVs/trailers have satellite dishes so it doesn’t matter. We just streamed what we wanted using hulu and Netflix and… I don’t really know as I’m not the one who watches stuff on the tube.
State parks have some of the best camping real estate there is in the best and most desirable locations and they generally have the full mix of sites for tents, trailers, and motor homes. BUT! Few state parks have full hookups; electric and water but no sewer. OTOH, they usually limit stays to a max of two weeks so more people can enjoy the place. They are also way cheaper than the private RV parks.
For comfort, convenience, and ease of setup it goes
Motor home
5th wheel trailer
Regular travel trailer (some ultra lights are just right for a single dude, hint hint, and can be pulled by less than a pickup truck)
Pop-up camper
Tent camping
.
.
.
Older single gentleman from Massachusetts traveling with his dog pulled in beside us in Perry Ga on his way to Florida. It was a 20′ ultralite he was pulling behind his minivan. It had a queen bed, 2-burner stove, small fridge, sink, microwave, 2-seat table and a love seat sofa. It had a wind out awning and one small slideout. Plenty comfy for one and fast setup for travel. He plugged in his electric and water and skipped the sewer hookup. You can use the camp showers and toilets and save sewer hookup/rinse out time that way when traveling. Too small for two people plus three pets but perfect for that guy and his dachshund. He’d have no trouble being comfortable for a month or two stay.
There are also “Vacation Cottages” (i.e. immoble mobile homes) in some RV parks. We paid $1200 / mo for one (all utilities included). It was great for two folks. Double wide and about 540 sq. ft. all up. Plus patio with “park table”, washer dryer in a shed,
Avoids that whole “towing something issue ;-)
At one time at Disney World there was a HUGE drive in crowd. All the way down Hwy 192 was a Motel Row. The further out you got (toward Kississimme) the cheaper. Then folks started flying in more and avoiding the drive time. About 15 years ago (on contract for year+) I could get hotel rooms for $20 (sleazy and marginal at best) to $40 (quite nice for a guy who isn’t on the luxury kick path… including microwave & mini-fridge). There were Viking Theme and Africa Safari theme and… Then…
Last time I was there (about 4 years back) it had started dying. From the far end in. Pretty much all the “desperate and cheap” places had gone under. Giant Deluxe Mega Hotels on and around Disney proper taking folks by bus from the airport to the Destination.
That was when we got the “Vacation Cottage” as a cheaper alternative to the $50-$100 / night hotels and with a longer term comfortable factor.
Having lived there year round a couple of times: I don’t find Summer oppressive at all. Maybe it is growing up where it was “110 in the shade and there ain’t no shade”… but having it get to about 88 F and then a thunderstorm pops up and cools it down (rain between about 1 PM and 4 PM most days, then sunny and nice); well, I just like it a lot. Then again most of the time I was in the office working looking out at the rain in the afternoon.
Drive to work was glorious. Evenings were glorious. Between 11 AM and noon it was sometimes bothersome hot / humid (so go into the bar for lunch ;-) and then the mid-afternoon rainstorm. I liked it…
FWIW, I’m considering getting a micro-trailer to tow behind the Forester… Something just big enough for a twin bed, one coffee pot, and a single burner camp stove… Why?
Well, turns out that between “clandestine smoker rooms” where they change the sign and call it “non-smoking”, the room next door being a smoking room and “ventilation” spreading it around, various kinds of cleaners and / or “fragrance spray” and / or “deodorizer spray” that doesn’t and / or… Well, lets just say checking in to a Hotel room is Russian Roulette for my nose. I have a decontamination technique, but it takes a couple of days for full effect (i.e. the first night is still miserable…) so that’s no help for a “1 night stay” traveling across country..
Then there is my habit of “drive until I can’t stand it any more, then sleep” – the odds of finding a low priced good hotel at Just That Moment tend to zero… So I often end up taking a nap in a “Rest Stop” instead. Part of my inducement for a 3 day coast-to-coast rocket run is just that I can make that with only two sleep periods joining a couple of “all nighters”. (At 64 hours, that’s 2 x 24 + 16 and I can sometimes make it in an hour or two less. So: Hit the road for a 24 to 36 hour marathon start. Sleep. Repeat. Now I’m one modest day from home, sometimes as low as 6 to 8 hours, usually about 10. Not hard to make that on coffee and “home in your sights”. Roughing it 2 nights in the car or one in the car and one fleabag is tolerable, 4 or 5 of that is hell on wheels… So I go for 3.
But I am getting very tired of the experience ;-)
All of which has me pining for a small shed-on-wheels out behind the car / truck where I could pull into a KOAA or similar, pay my $40 (or less), and sleep in a real bed without needing to decontaminate the space… OTOH, I’m getting good at “Car Camping” ;-)
FWIW:
Some time this Spring to Fall I’ll be making a run to Chicago. I’m hoping to run through Colorado. (Why? ‘Cause I’ve seen way too much of Texas and Arizona and Oklahoma and… going all the way up to Wyoming / Dakotas is a bit out of the way. Besides, I want to run through the tall part of the Rockies again ;-) So I could be open to suggestions about timing, route, and a “gathering of the tribes” at some watering hole known to the locals (Hint hint Larry ;-)
It won’t be real soon, but at some point I need to deliver a load of stuff to The Kid (things he’s not picked up from home in 15 years…) and see the grand kid. It is all very up in the air and might not happen; but I’m noodling the idea about…
If the weather is at all decent I’d be likely to do the “car camp with a tent” thing. But not if snow or rain are involved… Then I’d just likely recline the seat and nap…
I’m hoping that in a year or two such trips can be in bigger equipment complete with all the usual RV stuff; but that will be after selling the house. So a long ways away ATM.
@E.M. (and interested parties) – You have brought up more regarding the range of mobile living choices.
You can pay from zero $$$ (hard to find spots where the highway patrol won’t kick you out of the rest area HA!) to some high end premium spots at $200 or so per night.
The range of prices for towables and driveables is very broad, from a few hundred dollars for a fixer-upper towable to a few thousand for a motorhome that needs some work to close to a million bucks for the highest end brand new motor homes. The matrix of mobile unit types and prices is huge.
The main thing is to figure out where you intend to go, how much you want in the way of space and amenities They are starting to put in king beds, washer/dryers, and dishwashers in the larger units now! Or you can go with a more spartan ultralite towable.
The other problem right now is that there are a lot of boomers retiring that are buying mobile travel rigs of some sort. Sometimes, there are no places to be had during high season at the popular destinations. There is a shortage of RV parks near many of the popular destinations. It’s important to reserve ahead for longer stays in the ‘weeks’ or ‘months’ range. That said, there is almost always an opening for a night or two at every place because stuff happens and someone will have to cancel their reserved stay.
The nice thing about RV unit prices is that many people choose poorly for their style of travel and find they don’t use their RV as much as they thought they would . There are bargains to be had from those people.
The nice thing . . . is that many people choose poorly . . . There are bargains to be had from those people.
And this makes RVing different from everything else how? :-) ;-)
Yes, it is mild sarcasm.
@H. R.
Unfortunately for those affected, there was a bad storm that started in Central AL, around Smiths Station that crossed into GA. Two dozen people were killed and more died in that storm than all of 2018, in the US, from tornadoes. See: https://nwschat.weather.gov/p.php?pid=201903050618-KBMX-NOUS44-PNSBMX. This is a preliminary report.
I have been to Orlando when it did get to 100F, even with the thunderstorms. It has been about 20 years, though, since I last visited. True enough, 90s is about as hot as it gets in the Deep South, without a big, dry high over you to suppress the usual afternoon thundershower; like, say, Dallas often sees. “Natives” get used to the humidity. That and you almost always have shade ;p. 80sF/100% relative humidity in the shade takes some adaptation, even under tree canopies, if you are not used to it. NB that the ‘official’ readings are in the shade, but the box it is in, typically isn’t; so they read hotter.
I look forward to seeing you passing through Colorado, I don’t do “watering holes much” but will see what I can figure out as a good place to meet up. (any tentative head count of other near by members of the council?) I can think of one place in Golden but will have to check and see if they are still in business.
I sort of have a travel solution already in my Chevy Astrovan. I can live out of it for a week or so at a time no problem, but it is a bit long in the tooth and on my list to get upgraded. I have a permanent cot in it, and all the stuff I need for a week long stay (ie out at bonneville). Big advantage no need to tow anything, and you can pull into any truck stop get a bite to eat and sleep in the van for 3-4 hours with no worries in the wee hours of the morning and stopping for a nap at rest areas during the day is never a problem (at least here in the west). Only an issue if you are obviously camping in the rest area for long duration. I have often just pulled off the highway on I-80 onto a rural road and pulled off out of traffic and slept for several hours never had an issue. If I can find an afordable one would like to move up to a 9 passenger van size and 4×4. Enough room for a small built in fridge and one burner stove.
I would like to upgrade to a larger van, or one of the smaller self contained RVs but that is a ways down the road, need to burn another 20k miles on this van to get all the good use out of it. I am currently using it as my daily go to work car since the Subaru got totaled when I was rear-ended.
Many years ago I lived in a pickup truck camper for about a year parked at a friends house in the mountains, so that is really all the accommodations I need, plus a place to park and access to some services.
I have lived in semi-tropical climates when I was in the Navy (Guam) so can acclimate to 85% humidity and 85 deg but prefer drier climates if given the choice. Baking hot of Texas not on my fun list, but have lived in desert climate of South East Colorado near La Junta where summer heat of 104 or so was not unusual. (in the 1930’s that area was the northern edge of the dust bowl. You could drive just a couple miles south into the Pawnee National grass lands and find silted up farms where only the top 3 ft of buildings remained visible above the surface. In the winter it can still get pretty cold down there during the heart of the winter (snow on the ground and ice storms etc.)
@Larry L:
I’m more interested in “Food with beer or wine” than “watering hole”. So, for example, the Florida Meet & Greet was at a Sonny’s BBQ mostly for the BBQ… but they did have decent beer too. Prior meets have been at an English Family restaurant for “Sunday Dinner” (no booze involved) and at a “World Of Beers” with lots of beer but also some decent food.
IMHO what is most important is decent food with a low enough ambient noise you can have a conversation. A Brew Pub with 95 dB shouting match isn’t of interest… A Marie Calendar’s with wine would be fine. Just as random points of reference.
I’ve thought about the Van Solution for just me, but the gas mileage tends to put me off. (I know, it will be worse in an RV… but then you are talking whole mini-house ;-) Since I’m doing 2800 miles x 2 inside a few weeks, it’s a big hit. Were I doing “local tours” not so much… Thus the RV is going to be a Florida Thing…
One of my best “Nights on the road” was just pulling off of I-10 somewhere in east Arizona to west New Mexico on some “off ramp to a local road to nowhere” in the Banana Boat. I just popped open the back a little and slept all night in the warm desert. I had a mattress in the back but it was about 5 inches too long for the deck, so the hatch had to be open a bit to lay it flat. IMHO one of the few design errors in the Mercedes Wagons. They are just a tiny bit too short to lay down straight in the back. (Midgets excepted ;-0 Then the seats do not recline all the way. Basically no way to comfortably sleep in the car. Not in the German World View…
Both the 190 E and the Subaru do have fully reclining seats and are now the preferred “cross country” vehicles just for that reason. I’ve comfortably “car camped” from both of them and not been bothered snoozing in Rest Areas in the reclined passenger seat. But I’d still like some micro-camper solution “someday” (or a full sized RV with enough money to drive it anywhere ;-)
@C.D.Quarles:
It had to be Smith’s Station… ;-)
I once got out of the car in Gulfport Mississippi and it was something like 98 F and 98 % humidity. Water started condensing on ME as my skin was cooler than the air (thanks AC..)
It was THE most miserable I’ve ever been in humidity. We all rapidly put on swimming suits (for the kids & me) and hit the Gulf beach while the spouse retreated to a shopping mall with icy AC…
Everything in Florida (so far) has been better ;-) A couple of oppressive “about noon” events, but between car AC, home AC and Work & Shopping AC those were like a 4 minute transit to / from the car… I got really comfortable with the idea of doing a split shift of outdoors stuff with morning and evening and just dodge mid-day. The last year in Florida the Banana Boat AC quit. I drove it all year with no AC and “no problem”. Why? It was morning and evening commuting about 20 minutes… Weekends mid-day we used the other car.
Just a side note on the RockPro64 and Rock64:
Yesterday the Rock64 suddenly stopped making sound. I was on the wrong keyboard and typed some plain text intended for a posting title. Sound halted. I fiddled with it a while trying to get it back, then tried a reboot. I failed to even try to restart the OS.
At this point it seems dead. No idea why or if stray electrical issues might be involved and the typing was just a coincidence. I’m going to try a new flash of the uSD a bit later to attempt to isolate “Hardware dead” vs “OS dead”.
I’m currently posting this from the RockPro64. I gave in and figured I’d just stuff the full Ubuntu SystemD with desktop on it and see if the extra QA / Ubuntu stuff might make it all work right. The browser is fine (but still no sound, though I’m on the DVI adapter so need to check straight HDMI later).
The big problem though, and one that was shared with the Rock64 before it crapped out: Neither one of them can see USB disks. Even “gparted” doesn’t see them.
Something isn’t right in USB land on them. This is with the Armbian OS copies (usually pretty good about making things work).
So while I like the speed of the RockPro64 – at the moment I’m a bit put off by the apparent sudden death of the Rock64 and the poor software support for both of them.
I’m still hopeful this will resolve over time with more eyeballs and more coders working on them; but so far it’s just not ready for prime time. That Pine based laptop is not going to happen for me, even at the low $100 price point.
So I’m liking the very fast browser for plain text posting and reading, and may continue to use it for that, but it can’t be my Daily Driver as I do a lot with disks. I’ll be seeing if the NFS facilities work so I can at least have that storage available. Then the 2 GB of memory means swap isn’t needed (much) – and it has almost a Gig of some kind of swap configured, but Lord Only Knows where it is. (It isn’t listed in /etc/fstab so it’s hidden off in SystemD config land somewhere as systemD has not taken over swap management too… I presume it’s a swap file somewhere as memory shows at 1.95 GB out of 2 GB and no amount of compression can turn 0.05 GB of memory into a ramdisk of 996 MB.
The Raspberry Pi M3 may be just slow enough to be a bother, but that guy “Just Works” and that’s worth a lot.
With that, I’m back to testing what died and what was just wounded and needs some TLC. I’m starting to suspect maybe some power issues need addressing. I’ve now had 2 boards die ( Rock64, Odroid C2) and a couple of OS copies seem to croak (reflash needed)… so maybe something isn’t quite right. IIRC a circuit tester plugged into the wall had neutral / hot backwards. I’d expect the UPS and PSUs to provide enough isolation for that not to matter, but maybe nobody has a transformer and they are treating some of it like ground? But it’s worked with all sorts of gear for 25+ years…
Well, whatever. Time to try reflashing the Rock64 chip and seeing if it will boot a generic image or if it is just Dead Jim…
Curiouser and Curiouser…
I was putting the Rock64 through a final boot test ( it failed ) and then into the “junk / parts” box… and decided to do one more test of the Odroid C2 that was already in there. It had failed a dozen tests some many months ago. There were two uSD chips in the box with it, both for the C2, both ones I’d made for testing it before. Put in the “Generic C2 Ubuntu” and plugged in the power supply.
It booted into the Ubuntu logon screen, then crashed. What? I moved the PSU over to the UPS fed power strip and tried again. It booted fine. I’m typing this on it.
So what’s the deal?
I don’t know.
I’m pretty sure I did every possible test last time and it was a solid “No Go”. Now it boots.
OK, I’ll gladly trade a Rock64 for the Odroid C2 back again… especially if the alternative is both “dead”. But really? Sit in a box for a bunch of months and then you work again? Same chips, same PSU, same board, same monitor…
OK, so maybe some crap was in some persistent memory somewhere and it had to take time to fade out, or “whatever”. It’s back, It is useable. I guess I’ll let the Rock64 “age” for a few months in the junk box and they try it again too…
Also, on the off chance there’s some kind of ground loop or “whatever” in the power set up, I’ll be running everything for a given system through the same power feed. Critical stuff (DNS server, proxy server, boundary router, etc.) on the UPS. Desktop “stuff” via the surge suppressor line from the wall. Lights and crap straight wall power.
Guess it pays to be a pack rat for “parts” and skeptical that things really are dead…
FWIW or not, I could not reload Windows 10 through a micro SD USB adapter a couple months ago. I had to use a USB stick. It was strange, but it was what it was.
Land is cooling faster than ocean + land since 2016.5.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:2016.5/trend/offset:0.1/plot/uah6-land/from:2016.5/trend
By they way just started reading an interesting book:
“Dark Winter” How the Sun Is Causing A 30 – year Cold Spell
John L. Casey
He identifies the dominant solar cycle as being 206.5 years long, and expects we are entering a weather period comparable to 1813 or so (when Napoleon froze his army in Russia.)
(book is copyright 2014 so these predictions are 5 years old)
He predicts current cold cycle will run from 2020-2045 and hit bottom near 2031-2037
Well, this is a kind of nice surprise…
I downloaded a new version of the Debian with xfce desktop for the Odroid C2 (now risen from the dead…) and installed it. Launched a video (on the HDMI to the TV) and it’s running a 480 p video full screen with only minor skips / jerks on a dance scene video. WITH working stereo sound.
Quite acceptable for the Office Space (where I had been using the Rock64 that suddenly twigged out)) for the same purpose and with slightly less smooth performance. (i.e. it didn’t like full screen bit rate. So a 1.54 GHz vs 1.4 GHz and both A53 cores, 64 bit, 2 GB memory. )
So from “dead” to “works with sound and video”… I don’t get it… maybe some internal register was trying to boot from the eMMC slot (empty) and it needed the charge to bleed off? Whatever…
It’s running now, and my “Video Station” is again in service…
I did find that one of the C2 uSD cards would not boot. The one that was written over with this Debian install. So one corrupted uSD and one working Ubuntu. I hope I didn’t just get that perfect storm of the wrong things plugged in each time and figured the board was dead.
FWIW, this boot started out looking dead. I didn’t have the TV on at first boot but turned it on quickly. Still nothing on the screen. A power cycle and it came up fine. Was the OS hung? Or just checks in the first 20 seconds for HDMI and if it isn’t there you are dark forever? No idea. So “note to self” make sure video device is up and running then power on C2.
One brick at a time I’m building back up to where I was a month ago… I do wish I had clue as to why suddenly things will just turn “4 paws to the moon” all over the board for no obvious reason on different systems with known working parts. Maybe it’s cosmic rays or something… 8-{
@Larry:
There are several lines of evidence all pointing that way. Habibulo Abdumatisov (Russian scientist I met in Chicago some years back) predicted it based on his studies of solar diameter. Seems the sun changes diameter and that “means something” ;-) (Gee, change density and pressure in a nuclear fusion reactor and reaction rate changes… who knew ;-)
My only issue is that I’m still not out of California and in Florida yet. As the “Mid West” gets God Damn COLD a lot of folks will naturally move south. I was supposed to be ahead of them… but “family choices” prevented that… I can only hope people are dumber and slower than I’m expecting…
@E.M. – We’re staying in the Midwest, but we’ve already reserved our 3 months in Florida next Winter. I think the only dumb move I’m making is failing to reserve 4 or 5 months…. 11(F) this morning! wOwZA!
For grins and giggles, next stay I’ll try to remember to take an accurate survey of the number from each State or Canadian Province staying at the RV park and post the results. Not particularly scientific, but I suspect that the colder the State the more there are that are voting with their feet to escape the cold. There sure were a lot of Minnesota climate refugees there this year :o)
Wow, this piece on American resilience actually gave me goosebumps.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/american-resilience-1969-lessons-disunity-achievements/
For those of you anticipating the return of grilling weather perhaps you would like to try out an interesting spice option.
Interesting read from Shellenberger of all people. I guess the truth can’t be hidden forever.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/03/07/with-ethanol-and-biomass-no-longer-viewed-as-green-will-other-renewables-soon-follow/#bcb36397fb98
Media is pretty much ignoring this – but looks like we are getting another Ebola outbreak that is in the process of running away due to a combination of superstition fear and bungled control efforts.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-ebola-congo-idUSKCN1QO1F1
@Jon K:
Nice piece. Matches how I remember it, and how you just get up and get to work each day, even if someone is screaming at you about The End Is Nigh!
@Larry L:
Thanks for that… suspect a little Veteran Owned BBQ company is about to get a big spike in orders ;-)
I’m thinking I’ll order 2. One for each coast. Just need to find where to get it…
Pricey for the 5 spice set, but it’s the 4th over from the left… $75 for all of them:
https://www.amazon.com/Seasonings-Sampler-10-14oz-Container-Variety/dp/B073W3L5GF
Get them before they realize it is still available ;-)
$10 for just the one here:
https://beararmstx.com/products/grill-your-ass-off-infidel-pork-rub
Per Ebola:
That’s not good… Then they are over 400 cases and rising… that means likely near 1000 including those infected not yet showing symptoms. Most likely this will continue until much worse, then either “the usual” methods will finally be invoked; or the area will just be sealed off and left to die out.
The worst case, of course, would be to have it start jumping (via planes, trains, or cars / buses) to other areas.
WHEN Ebola eventually makes it into a heavily urban area, it will be a major and probably global disaster. IIRC it can survive in dogs and rats, so once it gets into the urban rat population, that urban area will be basically “Dead Man Walking”.
The only good scenario was that some Ebola vaccine was shown to work. (Unknown how well, with what side effects, duration of immunity, etc. etc. but it did work when trialed on a few folks). But there’s just no way the world could manufacture enough of it fast enough to deal with a major urban centers. We’re at the “dozens to low hundreds” manufacture scale, and an urban area will be 100 Thousands to Millions with loads and loads of rapid spread connections including off continent.
Oh Well…
WHEN Ebola makes the jump, just be ready willing and able to stay at home with the door closed for a few months… or practice extreme hygiene if you must venture out.
@Ossqss:
It never ought to have been seen as “green” in the first place. Cutting down forests to save the forest is nutty on the face of it.
Colorado is in extreme avalanche hazard warning right now.
https://avalanche.state.co.us/forecasts/watches-and-warnings/
https://avalanche.state.co.us/observations/avalanches/
On Highway 91 they had a naturally triggered avalanche that ran on a path they have no history of ever running before.
When I was working for Office of Emergency Management, one of my last assignments was to do a historical avalanche risk assessment. I found historical records of avalanches in Switzerland which destroyed buildings which had stood unmolested for 500-1000 years.
If Colorado gets some 500 year avalanche runs odds are good we will lose some buildings in major ski areas, a few of them are sitting at the bottom of terrain which only runs every few centuries.
Avalanches are fickle beasts and snow loading can change due to subtle things like the direction the wind is blowing at the time of the storm.
Twin Lakes, Lake County (1962)
The Twin Lakes Avalanche was 57 years ago, on January 21, 1962. It destroyed four homes and trapped nine people, killing seven. The avalanche happened at about 5 a.m., so they were still in bed when avalanche ran down from Mt. Elbert from 13,000 feet.
https://cozine.com/2000-january/twin-lakes-tragedy/
For those planning on playing in the snow this weekend here in Colorado
https://avalanche.state.co.us/
Prime ski country is in a Black extreme warning condition right now.
Apologies if this has been posted before.
Can I just once again state my love for [WireGuard] and hope it gets merged soon? Maybe the code isn’t perfect, but I’ve skimmed it, and compared to the horrors that are OpenVPN and IPSec, it’s a work of art.
Linus Torvalds, on the Linux Kernel Mailing List
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/08/wireguard-vpn-review-fast-connections-amaze-but-windows-support-needs-to-happen/
@Larry L:
Given what I know of current weather (climate?) trends, I’d not go anywhere near “Snow Country” unless it was clear skies for a couple of days and the avalanche teams had done the “shake the snow with cannon and explosives” thing…
Having almost gotten caught in snow in The Arizona Desert, I’m being very cautious for a while…
@Jim2:
Don’t know if you did a pointer before, but this was the first one that got me to look, and I’m very glad of it. That looks like a real “keeper”. On my “someday list” has been to set up a general use VPN. I’ve mostly just played with them from the Tablet… But we’ve reached the point where using a VPN for “daily driver” and general use by default is starting to matter. ISPs are starting to snoop into our “Data” too, so the best way to stop that is via encrypted tunnel to bypass them – i.e. a VPN connection.
So yeah, I need to do that…
France24 reporting a nation wide electrical failure in Venezuela.
Maduro is blaming the USA, but they have had dodgy power for a few years (drought caused lack of hydro capacity and that is a big fraction of their power) then lousy maintenance due to breaking their economy… which the USA did assist them in doing…
Wonder how long the country can run without electricity?
That whole Prepper Thing looks valuable under Socialism…
On Youtube, “Agends-Free TV” Has 3 hours of coverage of the Venezuela blackout titled “Venezula blackout – LIVE COVERAGE” recorded 4 hours ago… (yeah, I know…)
I wonder if we willl find out how long a society can last without electric power?… No cash registers, ATMs, banks, airports, subways, gas pumps, etc etc…. If this goes a few days it will get grim fast.
I think the public release process has started if this is a true copy of the Lindsey Graham letter.
It is late summer almost fall there loss of refrigeration and water supply will be the two big problems, immediately followed by loss of sanitation (toilets and sewage treatment) stand by for massive water born disease out breaks.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/ve/caracas/353020/weather-forecast/353020
Strange this is the number I have been quoting for over 10 years, it is almost like they read the same papers I did a decade ago.
https://sunshinehours.net/2019/03/06/noaa-average-global-sea-level-rise-rate-of-1-7-1-8-mm-yr/
@ LL Re Graham letter. I’m happy to confirm it is true.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/lindsey-graham-calls-on-new-champion-in-fisa-abuse-investigation
PC infection of Physics:
he European particle physics research centre Cern has cut ties with the scientist who said that women were less able at physics than men.
Cern has decided not to extend Professor Alessandro Strumia’s status of guest professor.
The decision follows an investigation into comments, first reported by BBC News, made by Prof Strumia at a Cern workshop on gender equality.
Prof Strumia told BBC News that he stood by his remarks.
“Some people hated hearing about higher male variance: this idea comes from Darwin, like other offensive ideas that got observational support,” he told BBC News.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47478537
https://motls.blogspot.com/2019/03/cern-fires-strumia-silence-is-deafening.html
@ EM re “I do wish I had clue as to why suddenly things will just turn “4 paws to the moon” all over the board for no obvious reason on different systems with known working parts. Maybe it’s cosmic rays or something… 8-{ ”
May be.
I run all Win-whatever on my various machines…except when I have to use Ubuntu to override the Win10 control over the file system.
I usually see weird behavior when I’m switching from one program that grabs control of the sound resources, to another program that grabs control of the sound resources. One program will actually advise me that another program has control of the sound so I can reboot, or whatever. The 3 music programs I work most frequently in are Noteworthy Composer, Band in a Box, and Harmony Assistant (from France). Harmony Assistant is the program that will use a synthesized voice to “sing” lyrics if they are present on the staff. Even when I choose American English, though, to my French-trained ear, it still sounds like it’s being sung by a French person. One time I gave a CD with Harmony-Assistant-generated practice tracks on it. When his wife heard it, she asked, “What language is that?” ;-D If I’m forced to, I can overdub the tracks with my own voice…but only if I’m forced to!
Recently I have had weirdness with Audacity when I try to grab the sound track from a video using a patch cord. The first time I tried it, it worked like a charm. I must have just held my mouth just right, or something.
Recently, however, I have had less and less success. I’ve had to start using two computers to make that work, running the cord from the headphone jack of the source computer to the microphone jack of the destination computer.
I’ve wondered if the newest Win10 has put up blocks to grabbing sound by plugging in a patch cord from the headphone jack to the microphone jack.
I can’t help but think that, with each iteration of “upgrades” to Windows, they’re trying to lock people out of being able to do stuff on their own. It’s like they just want you to stream whatever you’re working with. Maybe that’s one reason smart phones are being built without 3.5mm jacks.
I just keep my machines off the net (except the big one in the living room) and use sneaker net to move stuff around. :-)
Some have such small hard drives that if Windows tried to force an upgrade on it, it would be too small to hold the files they build the upgrade from. Then there’s the issue of when an OS upgrade makes your old, familiar applications fail to run.
Well, that’s enough whining for now.
On the topic of onset of cooling cycle due to quiet sun, I have been cruising around the web looking for related stories. Found this one in a local eastern Colorado news outlets page.
Points out one of the vulnerabilities of agriculture is different risks to calving (and other lives stock like sheep) as you get colder. Note that in the Dakotas they have to invest in calving barns to protect the young calves as they drop in really cold weather, where farther south here in Colorado that sort of infrastructure is missing.
https://yumapioneer.com/local_news/frigid-weather-has-made-for-challenging-calving-season/
One of the adaptations that will come with colder weather will be forcing ranchers in the lower states to adopt techniques used in the northern states and Canada to protect livestock (or shift livestock breeds to ones more suited to very cold weather like the scotch highland breed.
https://www.thatsfarming.com/news/highland-cattle-breed
Looks like Finland will be one of the first Euro states to attempt to face the music for rampant social benefits and an aging society.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/finlands-entire-government-resigns-after-breakdown-of-agreement-on-welfare-state-reform
[doo-doot-do-to-doot… doo-doot-do-to-doot…]
Windoze Update
Hey, hey, hey! I got rid of the S in Windows 10S and now I’m a real happy camper with the new laptop.
It seems Mrs. H.R., from her geek days, has a throwaway MS account which she used to get the app from the store. The account email addy hasn’t been valid for 15 years and she has a nondescript handle that goes with it.
So, all done and done with no fussing on my part.
Oh. While I had 10S, I downloaded the free version of AdBlock, which has always performed quite well for me. I’m guessing that if an app is available from the maker and the MS store, 10S recognizes that and doesn’t carp if you download from the maker. I downloaded from the AdBlock site with nary a peep from 10S.
But I also wanted cc cleaner, and that’s one where 10S coughed up a hairball. It’s not in the MS store so you can’t use it with 10S. Who knows how much other stuff is blocked by 10S?
Wiki leaks just dropped some Clinton emails
https://qnation.us/wikileaks-just-dumped-clinton-emails-bon-appetit/
This is interesting – redacted almost the entire email. Only fragments of the header block remain.
Click to access C05761522.pdf
Hmmmm may be a new place to get certain perspective on the news..
qnation.us ( I don’t know anything about them but you might want to look at this item to get a feel for their coverage.
https://qnation.us/leaked-doc-reveals-secret-gov-database-of-traitors-arrests/
I am highly skeptical of the Q phenomen like any popular movement it could be very different behind the scenes from what it appears to be, with that grain of salt, it still is useful to have some awareness of the movement.
“Over at the Cat a very interesting video presentation on The brains behind Alexandria Ocasio Cortez http://catallaxyfiles.com/2019/03/10/what-if-this-is-true/
The research behind the theory is all laid out and could quite possibly explain what many of us have wondered about AOC’s behaviour and sudden rise to prominence.
This also prompts the questions regarding Obama’s rise and conflicting history.”
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/03/weekend-unthreaded-250/#comment-2116048
France24 have an interesting report on Jihadi brides in Syria. Around half an hour, and reporting from the frontline of the battle. This makes it pretty obvious what the problems will be if those jihadis and their (multiple) wives are returned to their countries of origin, since many of them remain committed to jihad. So much so that the ones amongst them that aren’t as committed are targeted in the refugee camps and their tents burnt, and they feel at risk of being knifed as well.
https://www.france24.com/en/20190308-exclusive-video-reporters-plus-jihadi-brides-wives-syria-islamic-state-group
Worth watching, IMHO.
Meanwhile polar bears are thriving and local natives are pleading with Canadian Government for more control of their numbers due to increasing attacks and encounters with humans.
https://www.wnd.com/2019/03/surprise-new-global-warming-report-reveals-truth-about-polar-bears/
EU is going full 1984 – now imposing restrictions on American visitors beginning in 2021.
So Africans can just flood in no papers no questions, but Americans must have a credit card, eh?
Well, count me out of a European trip. I don’t have any credit cards. Debit only.
I suspect their Travel industry is about to discover a significant down turn in bookings…
The US has had this since 2009, so it’s not an unfair act on the part of the EU.
https://www.cbp.gov/travel/international-visitors/esta
More or less a tit-for-tat where the tat is a bit late in happening. Just another travel tax…
FAQ is here: https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2018-Dec/ESTA-fact-sheet-English-12-12-18.pdf
(have to laugh: one of the reasons folks might have to reapply is if they change their gender… SJWs….)
Another example of an anomalous avalanche that happened this weekend and ran beyond normal run out zones. Avalanches normally have well defined run out areas with very little tall growth in them from repeated smaller releases. If an avalanche took out significant numbers of trees it was likely a release of a size which has not run in 50-100 years (typical age of much of the timber in the Colorado Rockies).
https://kdvr.com/2019/03/10/pitkin-county-avalanche-was-mile-wide-dropped-3300-feet/
They’re out to get you
“Last year, Facebook was forced to admit that after months of pestering its users to switch on two-factor by signing up their phone number, it was also using those phone numbers to target users with ads. But some users are finding out just now that Facebook’s default setting allows everyone — with or without an account — to look up a user profile based off the same phone number previously added to their account.”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2019/03/11/break-them-up-30/#comments
and comments
“Just straight up propaganda: The sun is quieter than normal, but don’t panic! ”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2019/03/11/things-youre-going-to-see-on-the-cbc-3/http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2019/03/11/things-youre-going-to-see-on-the-cbc-3/
Nice turn of sarcasm there
@Another Ian regarding 2FA – Just another reason to get a burner phone.
I’m headed right now to search for one of those pre-paid phones that only requires you to add minutes when you run out of minutes. Buy it, turn it off, and throw it in a drawer. If they are no longer available, maybe I’ll have to go to the “Shady Side Mall” where you buy a phone from some guy who fetches it out of the trunk of his car.
I’m not on any social media. Gmail keeps bugging me for a phone number every time I sign in “for extra security” but so far they let you skip that step if you don’t wanna, and I don’t wanna.
Okay, those old pre-paid plans where you buy a phone and minutes, replenishing your minutes only when depleted, are no longer available. All the providers want regular vigorish to keep your phone number.
I think I’ll just wait for the next spam caller and use their number.
@H.R.:
You sure? My Walmart bought minutes card still worked a few weeks ago when I used my phone. It’s a “Tracfone” and every time I’ve been in the store they have the minutes cards hanging on the rack…
I used my burner phone about a week ago and it was still happy…
I thought tracfones had time sensitive minutes on them like 90 days to use them if memory serves me. At least that was how it worked a few years back when I got one for my mom.
The trac phone minutes also have a life time, for the 60 min card they time out if you don’t use them within 30 days, but if you add minutes it also adds time to the time out counter.
For the last couple years I have been buying the 1 year card which largely side steps that time out issue.
You can also buy minutes on line for your account without screwing with the cards, or even buy just extra text messages (1000 at a time)
Okay. I’ll have a look at tracfones next time I’m at Walmart.
I looked online, but I think info like that is hidden 15 clicks deep while they bombard you all the way with $30/month plans. I think it’s better to just go into the store and read the cards, plans, and the packaging on the phones.
Weather service has a blizzard warning up for much of eastern Colorado on Wednesday.
https://forecast.weather.gov/wwamap/wwatxtget.php?cwa=bou&wwa=blizzard%20warning
URGENT – WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
National Weather Service Denver CO
324 PM MDT Mon Mar 11 2019
…Blizzard expected to develop over portions of northeast
Colorado Wednesday afternoon and Wednesday night…
.Heavy snow and very strong winds will develop over most of
northeast Colorado Wednesday afternoon and Wednesday night. The
most severe conditions are likely to develop just east of the I-25
Corridor where the heaviest snow is expected to fall. Power
outages and wind damage will also be possible as winds gust to
between 60 and 70 mph.
…BLIZZARD WARNING IN EFFECT FROM NOON WEDNESDAY TO 6 AM MDT
THURSDAY…
* WHAT…Blizzard conditions expected. Total snow accumulations
of 6 to 12 inches expected. Winds gusting as high as 65 mph.
This should be fun for the folks on the eastern plains. Make sure the cattle are watered and have wind shelters, gas up the snow mobile – with 6-12 inches on the level and 60-70 mph winds they are going to have 6 ft plus drifts out there in some places.
Looks like fingers were faster than brain – above post mine
@Larry L:
I just figured you were freezing your “Bippy” so only took the gloves off long enough to type on CHAR and paste & go 8-)
Actually today was pretty nice, (warm before the storm), around here if it suddenly gets really nice this time of year it usually means a freight train of cold air is headed your way and compressing the air in front of it warming things up a few degrees. It got up to 57 deg F today just after noon, will do the same tomorrow then Wed will be 20 deg F cooler as the storm comes in.
“Failure to Launch – Pelosi and Schiff Announce They are Dropping Impeachment Plan…”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/03/11/failure-to-launch-pelosi-and-schiff-announce-they-are-dropping-impeachment-plan/#more-161100
It finally dawned on them that such an impeachment trial would provide a perfect platform for President Trump to air out all the Democratic dirty laundry on the record under oath. Then they would be force to also testify under oath and either confirm his statements or take the 5th. Not a very good look for an accuser to have to take the 5th to avoid testifying.
The wheels are coming off their apple cart and the public is telling them we don’t believe a word your are saying, while sane Democrats are fleeing the party as fast as they can.
I think Cohen was their Big Play and it had exactly ZERO traction.
1/2 the population (the Trump half) just looked at it as a Democrat Circus and blew them raspberries. Of the other 1/2, about 1/4 were entirely unaware, or bored shitless with them. Inside that total 3/4 a good chunk of them were pissed at the Democrats for making everything a Political Hit Piece and not doing their damn job.
That left them about 25% who are True Believers and Useful Idiots. Those folks were getting so wound up with TDS and so over the top nutty their press looked increasingly loony toons and downright evil. (Like that Native American guy who got in the grill of a Kid and the whole thing blew up in their faces with the lies and deception on every news outlet … eventually).
In the face of all that, I think it finally sunk in that they were a Laughing Stock and any Political Impeachment was likely to look Very Very Bad for them (with the potential for a few Million Grumpy Red Hat Folks camped on the Capitol lawn… Heck, I was thinking it would be a nice place to spend a few weeks… IF Necessary…) I suspect their Letter Box was full of “suggestions” – many involving the lack of sunshine and anatomical inversion…
SO, OK, somebody saw the Mueller Report and it must be a real yawner. They managed to bag 1/2 dozen or two folks for petty stuff (some of it just errors) and they could not make “Talked To The Russian Ambassador In A Receiving Line” a crime… Even Russia Today RT was making jokes about that one… Finally they managed to get one coherent thought between them: “This crap won’t work”.
At last…
Hopefully now “Russia, Russia!!, RUSSIA!!!!” can fade away. Look for some new angle to surface in about a week after their Dream Team gets done with their smoke induced dream quest and comes up with the next bogus angle…
“Hillary Clinton’s license to practise law reinstated after 17 years of suspension”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2019/03/hillary-clintons-license-to-practise-law-reinstated-after-17-years-of-suspension.html
Are they running that short of lawyers?
Interesting collection here
“it gets clearer every day that Trump’s campaign promise to withdraw from Paris was more than likely the reason for the attempted coup – now called impeachment (without cause): ”
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/03/peter-ridd-free-speech/#comment-2116728
The vile “Tony” Blair continues his campaign against Britain: latest development is “secretly advising” Macron on Ways to Fight Brexit. This man is composed of pure turpitude. I note also that the ‘leftier’ papers (e.g. Guardian, Independent) found the story not worthy of inclusion on today’s front page …
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/03/11/former-prime-minister-tony-blair-secretly-advising-macron-on-how-to-stop-brexit/
Also an interesting article on True Publica on “the creeping, incremental deterioration of democratic rule in state after state, slowly transforming the nature of the system until it is no longer recognisable as a ‘true’ democracy”. “Demographic deficit” (or whatever name it’s using today) is certainly something that needs sorting out if we are ever to get some authority over these uppity “civil servants”, given that too many politicians in modern “democracies” seem to be too fond of shifting the reality closer to totalitarianism.
https://truepublica.org.uk/global/democratic-decay-the-threat-with-a-thousand-names/
E.M.Smith says: 12 March 2019 at 6:41 am
“and comes up with the next bogus angle”.
I think that was to be the Tax angle, but that is hardly likely to be enough is it?
@A C: They want President Trump’s tax returns strictly for the smear factor.
President Trump is one of those ‘lucky’ people that get audited by the IRS every year with extreme prejudice just because that’s where the money is. The IRS randomly audits a bunch of little fish each year just for the fear factor it instills in the populace. The mostly IRS concentrates on businesses making a few million and up because their tax returns will be more complicated and there is more opportunity to catch someone making a mistake or intentionally fudging the numbers and so the IRS can get more revenue from fines.
Anyhow, there are tons of obscure loopholes written into the US Tax Code that were lobbied for by corporations and put in place to favor the legislator’s rich friends. An astute businessman like Trump would take advantage of every exception and exclusion available; very smart and quite legal.
But the Dims will use President Trump’s return to paint him as an elite who “doesn’t pay taxes” and gets those special “rich guy breaks” that ordinary people don’t get AND, due to the complexity of the returns, they will hammer on President Trump that somewhere in that mess of a tax return, he must fore sure and absolutely done something illegal. They will try to smear him as a tax cheat.
But all they will have is fake news smears, which will only sway their base and some low info voters because he gets the proctology tax audit every year. I’d imagine there has been an error or two over the years and the Trump organization has had to pay a fine here and there, then again maybe not. But the Dims will be looking for that as well to cry “TAX CHEAT!”
So anyone who guessed taxes as the next angle gets a cookie, because the Dims are running out of angles in their polygon of smears.
@H.R.:
When the Dims run out of angles, is that when it becomes a “circular firing squad”? ;-)
@A.C. Osborn:
The Trump return will have been prepared by a bank of Accountants and Tax Lawyers. Anything the Dims “find” will simply be an opportunity for them to demonstrate just how much accountant and lawyer a $Billionaire can buy… Plus, it is so huge it would take the rest of his term just to go through it to figure it out…
@Steve C:
I have an idea running around my brain that the European Aristocracy never really bought into this whole “democracy” thing and are busy trying to recreate the Holy Roman Empire and / or European Peerage… AND extend it to those unruly “colonies” that tried to break away – like Australia and the USA… (So far they are succeeding with Australia. USA TBD).
It fits all the known facts and the visible behaviour when stuff from “behind the scenes” shows up.
@Another Ian:
Was there any doubt? They (briefly) tried to get Trump “on side” figuring “OK, he played the Populist Card – but he’s a Billionaire so ought to be on side…” and got B-Slapped. That’s when the jihad started. Then Paris put it on steroids. We’re talking $200 BILLION / YEAR they expected in pocket from the USA alone. Nobody walks away from that kind of vig from the graft / con.
Per Hillary’s license: Now she can claim attorney / client privilege on all sorts of things. Expect her to suddenly have a very long list of ‘clients’ from the old days. Also expect that the Congress will suddenly rediscover the concept of attorney / client privilege (at least for Democrats)…
Larry and EM – I think you both missed the “no impeachment” reason. I doubt they have all of a sudden gotten smart after 3 years (yes 3) of being so stupid. A mistake can be explained. 3 years of them is a pattern.
The real reason Pelosi said what she did is because even the democrats were calling her a SINO – Speaker in Name Only. They were laughing at her and saying the real speaker was the snot nosed kid – AOC. She took impeachment off the table to show everyone she is the REAL boss (snicker).
All she did (in the Trump 50%’s eyes) is show that she is not in charge and still dancing to another’s tune. And besides making the Trump half snicker, she also pissed off the hard core 25%. But since her rating was about 25% from the get go, she lost nothing, Nor did she gain anything either.
I think Pelosi figured out that going after Trump is just going to energize his base and maybe make valued independents feel sorry for him. There’s an election just around the corner and she wants to attract with honey rather than fear of the bees.
I think this is especially a problem for her given the freshman idiots on her side of the isle. Independents may already be rethinking their Dimowit votes from 2018.
“AOC Research Staff Fail – Ocasio-Cortez Embarrasses Herself During Finance Committee Hearing…”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/03/12/aoc-research-staff-fail-ocasio-cortez-embarrasses-herself-during-finance-committee-hearing/#more-161179
Latest Pointman
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2019/03/08/absence-has-not-made-the-heart-grow-fonder/
Our little high plains blizzard is getting cranked up now, 35-45 mph winds here on the west side of the metro area, and blowing snow. Various emergency services folks are telling people to stay home unless they have to go on the roads. Where I work most are working from home or heading home before the storm gets wound up.
Blowing snow conditions a few miles from where I live and work.
Sky News has shown British Parliament voting to reject T. May’s bad deal, and also rejecting leaving with No Deal under any circumstances. So what, in 2 weeks they will make a whole new deal AND get the 27 EU members to vote yes?
I used to think our (USA) congress was screwed up… now it’s looking pretty good.
What part of “Leave” was unclear?
I wonder if the EU will just vote to pitch them out as they are being such a PITA?
E.M.
I’m reading Ian Plimer’s “Not for Greens”
IMO you could describe it as “the book that contains everything that the supporter of green electricity needs to know”
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