"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
Bill Whittle on “President Social Proof’s” new clothes and the fun we can have running the naked socialistas into the river. . .
I’m going to operate this year focusing on saying to every Loony Left Moonbat I can, in effect or in fact *heh*, “Although I disagree with you, I will defend your right to say what you believe. . . and my right to mock you for being an idiot. But when you try to COMPEL me to agree with you, you’re in for a fight, mmmK?”
With some modification, noted in [], I’d like to start with a comment from a How to be a Hacker site:
The hacker mind-set is not confined to [a] software-hacker culture. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like electronics or music — actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them ‘hackers’ too — and some claim that the hacker nature is really independent of the particular medium the hacker works in.
I’m among those who embrace the universality of hackerdom. 😉 “What would happen if I kludged together X and Y to do Z?” is the kind of question any hacker might ask, in any medium. Basically, it’s just tinkering with stuff to make whatever it is more useful, better in its primary application or applicable to something unintended by its original creator. (And, of course, ALL these things can be done well or poorly, for good or ill.)
So, I “hack” every recipe I come across. I “hack” my car (something that was called “shade tree mechanicking” in days of yore *heh*) and I extend that tinkering to darned near everything I interact with.
Case in point, a simple “hack” performed on a very, very nice knife given to me by my Lovely Daughter and her Redoubtable Husband. A very nice Ka-Bar knife, frankly even better than the WWII version I had on hand from a great uncle who used it for many years skinning deer. This is a seriously nice knife, but. . . it had two very, very small–minuscule even–things I thought could be improved by a very, very simple hack. Lovely blade; the guard was just right; the full tang hand with stacked leather plugs was perfect; but the pommel had two extremely small flaws to my eye: a small gap where the tang and pommel joined and another very small depression where a pin passed through the pommel and tang to secure them together.
Simple, less than 5 minute hack: mixed some JB Weld and filled the very small gap and depression, smoothed the JB Weld level with the surrounding surface and I’m now a happy camper. The JB Weld is even almost exactly the same color as the pommel.
Bonus knife hack:
When you need to tune up the edge on a knife but for some inexplicable reason do not have an appropriate stone, steel or ceramic sharpener available, turn that ceramic coffee mug in your hand over (WHAT?!? You say you don’t have a ceramic coffee mug at hand? Get outa here! I have no further use for you! *heh*). There on the bottom of your ceramic coffee mug you will likely see an unglazed ring of ceramic. Yep. It’s just like a ceramic sharpening rod. Make sure it’s smooth so that you won’t create a problem on your blade and then just use that ring as though it were a ceramic sharpening rod.
There you have it: an easily tuned up edge from a coffee mug. You’re welcome.
Now, go forth and apply simple creativity to whatever little things are bugging you. Hack your life.
[If this sounds just a bit queer, well it is.]
So, had a call from Bluehost saying I needed to move to a more expensive hosting service, which they very naturally had on offer, because my lil “let the voices in my head duke it out here” blog was exceeding a reasonable bandwidth usage.
WTF?
OK, now why would that be, since I have seriously scaled back on traffic by deliberately working for several years to drive idiots away (leaving the 0.01% of blog visitors as acceptable traffic *heh*)? The guy–not tech support but sales–surmised a broken plugin or some such, once I clued him in on the site’s usage.
MmmK. . . No new plugins recently, but I let him deactivate ’em all for testing.
Right. Everything except the built-in left sidebar and the blog title–*poof!*–disappeared.
Oh, joy. *sigh*
Re-enabled plugins one-by-one, checking bandwidth usage as I refreshed the site. One plugin re-enabled yielded the restoration of the right sidebar (as expected) and also–surprise, surprise!–ONE post, the most recent.
But no more.
Have now re-enabled plugins to match pre-disabled state. Still no spikes in bandwidth usage. Still only most recent post visible (we’ll see what posting this one does, eh?). I’ve tried to access the database optimization and repair tools available via cPanel at Bluehost, but no joy. Won’t let me log in with known good credentials and when the credentials are reset, still no login. :-/
I’ll cogitate on this a bit. I have my two most recent database backups (in three locations) I can use–once I can log into the database management tools–so all my head voices’ crap is still around. . . somewhere
. . . as it seems to be doing more and more often of late.
*sigh*
I just determined that my right mouse clicking problems on this computer aren’t entirely the fault of the mouse. *sigh* I live by the right mouse click! *heh* Dam*ed twitchy-finger. . . *grumble-grumble-gripe-complain*
Olde Pharte Body Fail.
Back in the day when Britain still had an empire (and a queen with bigger balls than all but perhaps two or three living Republican politicians), some Brit, unhappy with “eggplant,” mugged a poor Frenchie for “aubergine”.
True story. No, really. Would a face like this lie to a face like that about a thing like that?
A fact based, reasoned argument presented to a contemporary faux liberal (progressive, leftist, etc.) is like attempting to teach a pig to sing. All it does is waste your time and annoy the pig.
Ditto with the porker.
I needed several days in a row of sub-90 degree weather to get some more painting done on the exterior of the house and. . . finally, weather cooperated and a good chunk is done (with much more to do, yet *sigh*). The thing is, i’s been 35 years since I managed a paint brush as high off the ground as this has to be, and I’m not as well-balanced, *cough* graceful *cough* and sure-footed as I was then.
I also don’t have my former youthful sense of invulnerability. *heh*
Plus. . . this time, I have a wall that I can only approach with a ladder from a sloping yard below. So, digging footings every time I move the ladder, wearing a safety harness and using a safety lanyard/rope attached to one of the safety anchors I left on the roof when I re-roofed last summer.
Cumbersome. Slow going. Especially since the paint I’m using has a STRONG warning to NOT THIN, so I MUST use a 3″ paint brush on the siding instead of spraying as I had wanted to do. Oh, well.
Must remember before next bout to take the ibuprofen BEFORE ascending the ladder. *heh* Hands’ll probably work a bit better.
Annnnnd, after this lil chore is finished, it’ll be back to downing and cutting up a few trees that have to go. Firewood, anyone? (It took me a couple of months last year to get someone who needed firewood to haul off a goodly-sized tree I had cut up into ~18″ chunks that still needed to be split. I’m sure if I’d split the wood for ’em it would’ve gone sooner. *heh*)
*sig* I seem to remember being much, much younger last year. . . 😉
Of course, since it’s going to rain for the next two or three days, I’ll have some time off from yard work and work on the outside of the house. Love it when a plan comes together. . .
Well, not really. More of a “lazy-faire” *heh* approach to lawn care.
For some few years now, I’ve let about 1/3 of the back yard go more or less natural. Oh, a large section gets string trimmed to whack down any grass and weeds sticking above the “yard vine” I’ve been trying to encourage to spread (it’s working! :-)), and the “possum grape” vines sometimes threaten to choke things out (not a bad thing, since I almost always have some to pull down, cut back and use to make some fine charcoal out of the woody remains :-)), but one particular joy has been “The Boys’ corder.”
Before The Boys (Son&Heir’s dogs) ran off to dog heaven (RIP, guys!), I really encouraged the grape vine to grow over the fencing in the SW corner of the yard. Yeh, it provided a visual shield from the view of a neighbor’s large storage shed, but it also provided some great shade for The Boys in the dog days of summer. After they were gone, I just continued weed whacking that corner to cut down grass and weeds but took moderate care to NOT cut down anything that looked interesting like. . .
Been keeping an eye on our volunteer hollyhock for a couple of years now. It finally bloomed just recently.
One really nice thing about banking locally (no, REALLY locally) is the VERY personal service. Fraud alert call on a debit card? (Happened today.) Couple of minutes on the phone, fraudulent charges handled and card redlined. That’s pretty normal. In person: immediate service, two signatures. Now, fraudulent charges not only handled but new card and all, in almost no time. It really does help to know and be known face to face (and it doesn’t hurt to have the head teller as a next door neighbor :-)).
We deliberately took a percent and three quarters hit on our mortgage a couple of decades ago, because it meant going with our local bank. Got cookies and such from folks there when we paid it off early. Yeh, yeh, not a big deal, but it was a nice personal touch, and over the short time we carried a loan with the folks there, we had many times to be glad we had a direct line to the folks who “owned” our home with us.
You’re familiar with the old saw that a prosecutor (persecutor, more like nowadays) can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich if he wants. Yeh, law enfarcement really is about that bad.
More than a few years ago, a client (who shortly thereafter moved with his family to an undisclosed rural, off-the-grid location–really) warned me to be careful what I said in phone calls, because the feds were listening in. I didn’t dispute his warning, because it didn’t matter. No matter how innocent one’s actions or speech may be, there are so many laws and regulations on the books now, that we are all “ham sandwiches”–open to be indicted for “crimes” thought up by our overlords any time they wish to have our blood.
Yeh, the “feddle gummint” has you by the short and curlies any time it wants to hang you. So? All one can do is live as best one can, as morally and ethically as possible, and let the chips fall where they may. *meh* Oh death, where is thy sting and all that.
Hell awaits law enFARCEment and bureaucraps who abuse their power. I wish them the joy of their final destination.