Should Have Kept It As It Was

The more DSA candidates win in the primaries, the more I think we shouldn't have let Germany reunite.

We should have kept East Germany as it was as a living history museum so that when anyone started to forget that every political party with socialism or socialist in the name was evil, we could point them at the Democratic Republic of Germany so they could marvel at it's success.

Of course, like all political groups with socialism in their name, the real goals are not the stated ones.

Sharia is the more apt 'S' in the DSA name.

You only get to use the D a limited number of times before they lock the gate behind themselves once they obtain enough power.

It creates the classic situation you can vote your way into and have to shoot your way out.  And they do love themselves some gun control, don't they?

I also notice that DSA shares a trait with another socialist in the name group.  They hate the Jews.  They have a lot of overlap on the political Venn diagram with "conservative" bigots there.

Dunno if we're going to dodge this civil war.  Our luck has to run out eventually. 

I Need An Equalizer

Something I've noticed about Ubuntu and media is a lack of an equalizer to shift the preponderance of bass down a notch.

I know there's a nerd or two reading this.

What do I need to do? 

Please Wait

Tried to fire up LibreOffice on the Win7 machine because two big screens is better than one small one for doing my GURPS stuff.

Silver Light said to please wait while it updated my installation.

I know that LibreOffice has moved on and they don't support Win7 anymore, so I expected it to fail in a moment and let me continue.

Nope!

It finished an I got a "cannot find api-ms-win-core-path-l1-1-0.dll" and no LibreOffice 26.2.6 anymore.

Mutter mutter mutter.

I'll just repair the install of LibreOffice, I think.

No go.

So I uninstall it.

Reboot.

Cannot find the network.  This happens about once per 100 reboots for some reason.

Reboot.

Wait.

Reinstall.

Try to run it.

Silver Light, again, says to please wait while...

I stab the little red box with the X in it!

Try to run it again.

Loooooooooooong delay.

LibreOffice 25.2.6 lives!

Change the settings to stop checking for updates and to stop trying to automatically update.

Grumble.

The Win7 machine is perfectly fine offline, I just need to get programs to stop trying to reach the outside world!

Drama Of My Own Making

I was in a rage.

I'd been driven away from having fun at a local brewery by a family that doesn't manage basic hygiene or do much of anything to keep the three kids from running wild while they drink.

Two days in a row.

So I did what any idiot would do and vented to Facebook.  Smart people don't do this.

One of the owners thought I was referring to them and not the family.

So I deleted the post and sent a PM apologizing.

Then I unfriended everyone I'd ever met through that business.

You know, like any idiot would.  Again, smart people don't do this.

To my shock (because idiot), this did not make anything better.

I am accustomed to people never noticing that I've unfriended them on Facebook.  There's people from 2009 who still have not said anything.

I've gotten it, mostly, sorted out with the owners.  Her and her husband are even refriended.

One of the beeristas, though, went off at length to a mutual friend and...

Well, I'm embarrassed by the situation I've made and not quite brave enough to actively apologize.  I made a weak attempt that Marv didn't even notice (and that I think got a cold shoulder).  All he saw was me trying to be small so as to not rub her nose in having to serve a prick like me.

So I'm going to try avoiding that employee until she says to a third party that she's done being actively angry or the heat death of the universe. 

On the plus side, I'm gonna save money not going out for beer much any more. 

Don't Piss In My Pocket

Attorney Mark Smith of the Four Boxes Diner YouTube channel is thrilled that we keep losing at the circuit level over whether machine guns can be banned.

Core of his excitement seems to be that we're avoiding it going to SCOTUS, where we're sure to lose.

Dude.  We're already losing.  You're celebrating another loss.

I recognize the philosophy he's using.  As soon as we have the perfect defendant to fight this all the way to SCOTUS, THEN we pull out all the stops and...

I've been waiting for Mr or Ms Perfect since 1986.

They don't exist.

The kind of person they're looking for doesn't have illegal machine guns.  The perfect client doesn't break the law.

The thing about how our rights are supposed to work, and I cannot get lawyers to grasp the philosophy, is they also apply to the scummiest of the scum.

So, no, a scumbag should not be punished for breaking a law that's unconstitutional and they are the people who need to be protected from the government more than the beatified saintly law-abiding citizenry at large.

The Bill of Rights is for everyone, not just the best of us. 

End Of An Era

There are no longer any 24-hour Krispy Kreme Donut locations in Florida.

Dunkin Donuts 24-hour locations rarely make the donuts at that location and are frequently out.  Never mind that if you do find one open, it's drive-thru only and 95% of the experience of getting donuts is looking at what they have on the rack.

I want my America back.

Fuck This I'm Out UPDATED

I said with The Biscayne that I was never doing unreliable AC again.

The Beast has unreliable AC.

I'm out.

I don't have the resources to keep fixing things and never getting to the modding part of hot rodding.

Update:

It might have been a simple fix.

I went out to the car to move it more out of the way, since I was planning on letting it sit for a while.

On a lark I popped the hood and pushed down the plunger on the HP port.  Hardly a pssssh.

I had a can of R134a laying around so I put it in.

Compressor fired right up and the air was blowing cold!

That's a positive sign.  I had been imagining that the sealant we tried had clogged something.

So I shut it off and disconnected my fill line and I heard hissing from the LP port!

So I asked Marv if he could come over with his gauges and a couple cans of R134a, then removed the schrader valve from the LP port; losing that can I'd just put in...  C'est la vie.

New schrader installed, two 12oz cans installed.  Pressures reading correctly and air blowing 43° at the center vent (just like the tables in the service manual says for 93% humidity at 73°F.)

Cautious optimism installed!

If we're really lucky, this was where the leak has been all along.  Eyes crossed.

Life Support Restored?

Put in the call to the professionals, and it fired up like nothing was wrong all on its own.

Starting to sound like something simple like a starter capacitor or relay.

I'm betting on relay because I've never seen a cap recover and work again, I have seen relays do it.

We're still having them come out, because even if it is the relay being intermittent, those don't trend to "get better" in any way shape or form.

What I do know is that we won't die while we wait for the tech.

Update:

It was the starter capacitor.

Life Support Fail

Woke up just a bit ago thinking, "it's a bit stuffy in here."

It was a bit stuffy.

The AC wasn't blowing cold despite the current and desired temperatures disagreeing by 3 degrees.

The fan on the compressor is spinning.  That means the starter capacitor is prolly good.

The fan on the air handler is blowing.

All of the fuses check out.

We're in year 4 of a ten year warranty, so we just have to wait for the place to open at 8.

We might be spending some time at the inlaws.

Mean Tweets Were Worse Than All This Right?

Leaders are blowing off Brandon.

We got protests in front of our embassies in Arab nations.

Feels like Carter again.

You can almost TASTE the malaise.

Of note is the protests at the embassy in Iraq.

Remember how I often have said that if you fuck up so bad we have to come break shit and kill people where you live, we own it when we're done?

If we'd conquered Iraq and made it a territory, the idiotic war that's about to start would have had competent leadership on our side because it would have happened 20 years ago.

Lowest Denominator

I'd like to renew my objection to adaptive cruise control.

I further object to any car maker who can't make it an optional mode.

You are, in effect, selecting to follow (at a safe distance) anyone going slower than you are at their speed and not at the speed you've selected.

Smooth, silent and seamless are the watch-words so it will match speeds with the slower car ahead of you and you have to be really paying attention to notice.

So you end up with miles long lines of people going the same speed with, almost (but not quite), enough space between them to get in line with them. 

Worse is when two of the benighted savages going four and five under, respectively, end up in both lanes with their computer controlled entourages trailing behind them.

Everyone on cruise, rolling road block.

Do you know how long it takes for a mile long line of cars to clear a vehicle in the other lane going 1 mph slower?

It's right in the name "mph".

That's right, Troubleshooter!

An hour!

Almost as fun is the person in mid pack who suddenly realizes they aren't going the selected five-over any more and decides to jump lanes right in front of you!

FUN!

FUCK!

Remember when I talked about fixing a leak back in April?

$1,300 fixed that shit.

Well the water company, despite saying they'd help us out with the bill...

Took a whopping $25 off the total and we're on the hook for $500 worth of water.  And $150 of sewer.

Normal bills are about $100 total.

Motherfucker Cocksucker!

It's no wonder I can't get any money saved to do the DOD/AFM delete or even sportier exhaust saved up.

I have to unass the least loved guns at bargain prices to just keep ahead of the bleeding.

If We Could Stop Doing This

$300 finds the leak.

Another $1,000 fixes the leak.

I have the $300...

Yes, Mr Plumber, Sir, I am aware that I should have the house re-piped.

We could save up to do that, except we keep having to spend $1,500 every five months fixing leaks.

We haven't got the front porch's tropical storm damage repaired for the same reason.  We keep spending money on emergency repairs so we can never save up to do preventative maintenance.

And No Paypal Link

ANOTHER fucking water leak under the motherfucking slab.

Can't even ask you to stab the donation button because PayPal went stupid.

FML, this has been the worst two fucking years of my life and that includes comparing to being in traction for six months.

One Can Hope

Bustedknuckles links to a report that says that...  The Dems done stepped in it big time!

Oh, wait.

Nevermind.

It's just the findings of several watchdog non-governmental groups who cried shenanigans over the last election.

Wake me when someone actually gets perp walked.

This is the same kind of breathless reporting that makes Gateway Pundit so hard to take seriously.

While they might be absolutely correct in their findings, what will it matter if nothing is done?

I want people to go to jail (or worse) for fucking with the elections.

But I don't see it getting any traction.

Fifty

Fifty years ago this very minute, Gene Cernan removed his foot from the surface of the moon and returned to the interior of Challenger.

He said:

I'm on the surface; and, as I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come — but we believe not too long into the future — I'd like to just [say] what I believe history will record. That America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return: with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.

He was the last human to set foot on another world.  It has been fifty years since.

How very sad that is.

I Think I Found Them All

Let's hear it for back-ups!

When the Drobo died, it took out a few large files.

I thought I still had them because their names were in the directories where they were supposed to be, but I found a few of them that wouldn't open.

While trying to figure out why, I noticed they were 0kb instead of a few mb in size.

Dammit.

Something went wrong moving them from one drive to another, I guess.

Happily, for most of them I have more than one copy and they 0kb was replaced with a known good.

The couple I was short, they were readily recovered from off-site sources.

Avoidance

I have not been posting much because I have not been reading the news or other blogs much.

I have enough in my life to be mad and depressed about that I don't need to be finding other sources of it.

Maybe it was from growing up in a hyper-liberal college town that clued me in early to things that other people are just now talking about.

Welcome to the party.

I was Cassandra.

When I was right, I was not believed.

The level of utter stupidity that a hyper-liberal college down generated was epic.

And it spread.

Nobody believed it could, but...

Here we are.

You want to know why science died?

Because the morons in charge of grants didn't care for the advancement of knowledge unless it supported their preconceived conclusions.

No money for research outside an ever narrowing topic of discussion and no experiments which would cause the cash-tap to shut off.

It isn't scientists who make the decisions about where the money goes.  It's politicians, and they've no use for science if it doesn't advance their careers.  The same can be said for many businessmen.  Science doesn't sell.

It's why there's no Bell Labs.

It's why we cannot discuss the war on poverty.

It's why we cannot discuss the war on drugs.

It's why we cannot discuss immigration and the effects of not assimilating the people who move here from other nations.

It's why we cannot discuss the wisdom of letting subcultures hostile to the main culture exist and thrive, despite the constant evidence that allowing it is damaging our culture, nation and economy every day.

I tried to write to get my thoughts out and be informative and, perhaps, guide someone to knowledge if they were open to seeing it.

I tried.

But my little 1,000 hit a day blog doesn't reach many people.

But I get the most hate back from people who'd nominally agree with me, but since I took the wrong route to agreement, my concurrence was invalid.

It doesn't help much to see them cited as experts when they showed they didn't know what they fuck they were talking about several times when they ventured outside their narrow expertise.

Being an expert at one thing doesn't even imply expertise outside that field.

Murry-Gellman-Amnesia is so fucking real it hurts.

A Test

Judging by all of the indicators that The People are fed up with how things are going and wish to change from The Evil Party to The Stupid Party in November...

We should have a decent majority in both Congressional houses coming.

The thing is, with the whispered news coming from Arizona and Michigan that the 2020 election was, indeed, fucked with...

2022 is a test to see if the system really is rigged and that the soap and ballot boxes have failed; leaving only one box left.

Well informed voters and honest elections are king pins of this Republic.

The latter is far more important than the former.

There Is No Worse Feeling

Nothing sucks quite so much as watching a loved one be in pain and being unable to do anything to make it better.

Harvey spoke to the ortho doc about her shoulder today.

The options are:

1. Physical therapy and see what we get for lost motion and strength.

2. Plates and screws.  Because she smokes, bone necropathy is a thing?

3. Complete replacement of the joint.

For both surgeries, her diabetes comes into play and she has to get her A1C down to an amazingly low level.

This got her to burst into tears because after the insurance pays, the meds that actually work to keep her glucose levels in check comes to $700 a month.

Metformin, which is essentially free, doesn't do a good job with her blood sugar.

We're super pissed that the attending at the emergency room didn't do more than an x-ray and send her home with a sling.  We're convinced that had they done a CT scan that night they'd have done surgery immediately and emergency surgery doesn't demand a low A1C.  Emergency surgery is also covered by our insurance better. 

To say that she is bummed out is a gargantuan understatement.

Can I borrow someone's "make it all better" magic wand?