Category: FYI

Posted on

Eureka!

[N.B. Added link to one example–of many, many examples–of behaviors in support of my thesis below. ;-)]

The Zero has been an open book enigma, wrapped in a con man’s smile, covered by a flack industry’s hand-waving distractions and outright lies.

All this stuff we’ve been seeing from The Zero, his fellow travelers and cronies–the gutting of the economy and building of “golden Solyndrachutes” for the Crony Class, the bowing and scraping and (at least metaphorical) bending of knee to all sorts of foreign potentates and outright enemies of the US, the shredding of constitutional guarantees of fundamental human rights, and on and on and on: it’s all about Moochele’s campaign to combat her childhood nemesis. Yep, her childhood obesity is driving all this.

Oh, I have no picture of her as a fat child, but her psychological derangement is blatantly apparent, and its most likely cause is her own self-image, formed growing up as a fat kid.

And how does this explain The Zero’s (and his fellow travelers, etc.) behaviors? Think about if for a nano-second (that’s about all it takes, of course, to understand so simple a set of minds).

  • That Moochele drags Barry around firmly by the one ball she has let him keep is pretty much a given, taking even a brief glance at their respective public behaviors. One shudders to think what that emasculated quasi-male suffers in private (but then, considering who and what it is, notsomuch with the shuddering, ya know?)
  • That EVERYTHING Barry (and etc.) has done is aimed squarely at enfeebling the US is obvious to anyone with active brain cells numbering greater than that found in the average used Kleenex.
  • That this enfeebling of America has resulted and continues to progressively result in a cancelation of the “super-size” menu plan for Americans is also obvious. Just take a look at that package of bacon you’ve been buying for years. It doesn’t cost a LOT more (in increasingly worthless fiat dollars) now than when the Zero took office, true, but have you stopped to look closely at why that is? Yep. It’s now 12 ounces instead of 16. That package of cookies that’s only a “little more expensive” than in 2009? Yep. Smaller.
  • And as “the little people” have less and less to spend on smaller and smaller portions, Moochele’s dream from her childhood will come to pass. It’s almost biblical in scope. Or Greek god-like in petty, childish arrogance. (Those columns: whose idea were they really? Hmmm?)

And so it goes. Genius! It’s all about slowly weaning Americans from food entirely!

Continue reading “Eureka!”

Posted on

FB Rumors and Scaremongering

Deer season approaches, and here in the Ozarks that’s a VERY BIG DEAL. Saw/heard some FB scaremongering about the Bluetongue Virus (“BTV”) in deer–folks worried about what that might mean and/or warning people about it: safe to hunt, eat venison? What?

*feh* I felt like saying, “See that search bar in your browser? USE IT!!! (Well, actually, my thoughts were a bit more derogatory *heh*)

http://www.cfsph.iastate.edu/FastFacts/pdfs/bluetongue_F.pdf

(Note that I posted the link in the clear to give you fair warning that it’s a pdf file. Don’t use Adobe Acrobat Reader to view it, mmmK? Oh, I scanned the file and it’s OK, but not all pdfs are, and AAR is notoriously full of security holes for malicious folks to exploit.)

Check with the CDC and the USDA as well, if you doubt Iowa State University… though the pdf was linked by the USDA. *heh*

The takeaway, for folks who

    a. are willing to trust me to be honest with my sources
    b. have read this far

From the linked pdf:

Can I get bluetongue?
No. Bluetongue is not a significant
threat to human health.

and, from a USDA page,

“Humans do not play a role in the transmission of the bluetongue virus, either as mechanical or biological vectors. The exception to this is via poor management practices such as using contaminated needles or equipment.”

That is, don’t inject infected blood into your own bloodstream, and don’t cut yourself while processing an infected carcass and get its blood in your wound. *duh* Those are just commonsense behaviors, period. Heck, most sources, from the University of Vermont to te Brtish health services to the University of Queensland–resources all over the world–simply say it’s NOT A PROBLEM FOR HUMANS.

Infection via meat products? Notaproblem. HEAT KILLS THE VIRUS, silly scaremongers.Blood-to-blood–and a susceptible host! (which most sources say MUST be ruminants–bovine or ovine: in those families somewhere) seems to be the only possible way it can be transmitted (which is how the animals are infected: midge bites from midges already carrying infected blood from another animal. Those midges are sooooo messy in their food habits… although none of the sources I have read have indicated humans can also be infected by those same midges. *shrugs* I’d still wear an unscented insect repellent).

Posted on

“I’m Givin’ It All She’s Got, Cap’n!”

OK, 105(+) degree weather. Roofing gig on hold. Why? Oh, not the temps so much. No, worn out right now from cutting up and removing a tree that fell last night. Oh, the tree removal’s nowhere near complete, but it’s cut up enough to get it off the house (no damage to house) and moved out of the way enough to be able to get back to work on the roof… when I’ve rested up a wee tad.

Still, looks like no actual roofing today. Have 65% of the roofing done. The heat allows just spurts of activity, so it’s been slow going, but getting done.

Interesting project.

Posted on

Well, This Sucks

*sigh* I was saddened to hear of Ric Locke’s illness, and sadder still to learn just now of his passing. I had just read Temporary Duty and was spurred to search out more web info on him… and was struck by the poignancy of his circumstances: first published novel doing well; lung cancer. He seemed to be the kind of guy I would have enjoyed meeting. Someone needs to do a Sci-Fi adaptation of W.H. Auden’s lil ditty for cases like this:

“As poets have mournfully sung
Death takes the innocent young,
The rolling-in-money,
The screamingly funny,
And those who are very well hung.”

R.I.P, Ric. I never knew you, but after having read your novel, I feel as though I could have known you, at least a bit.

Posted on

Fun, Fun, Fun (’til My Daddy Takes the T-Bird Away… )

Well, maybe not that kind of fun, but not bad, nonetheless.

The re-roofing of twc central (RW) is progressing. Minor setback. Make a short story long(er):

Installing metal panels over the existing asphalt shingles: use 1″x4″ purlins over the shingles, screwed into the deck and joists below, metal panels installed on the purlins.

OK, no biggie, except… 1x4s at local hardware-cum-mini-lumber yard, or even at Lowes: WTF?!? That much?!? Nuh-uh, baby. Further away than local hardware-cum-mini-lumber yard store but closer than Lowes “fell off the back of a truck lumber yard”: reasonable, but… The store was way low on 1x4s but had a pot load of 10′ 2x4s for $2 each. Rip ’em down the middle? Nominal 1x4s. Close enough. Bought a passel of ’em; brought ’em home and began ripping ’em up.

Table saw died. *sigh* OK, replaced table saw (much faster than repairing the old one, although I have that in my hip pocket for a later mini-project: repair and sell) and began ripping again. Smooth move. I’m still under the cost of 1x4s at Lowes (let alone the “cat’s back-riding” local hardware-cum-mini-lumber yard) and have replaced a slowly-decaying power tool.

Still to go: installing the safety anchors (which I will be leaving on the roof permanently), the purlins and then the steel. Working on the first two on that list today, until the heat drives me off the roof.

The most fun thing in all this, so far, is that I’ve not done anything quite this physically demanding for the better part of two decades, and while I have the typical muscle aches–and my constant “Olde Pharte’s joint aches, etc.–to contend with, so far the pain’s all of the good kind: I can actually feel the good I’m doing myself. Like it.

Most UNfun thing so far: the buckets of sweat. Oh, it’s not all that bad in some ways, but having a puddle literally pour out of my sunglasses onto some work I’m doing is annoying, although at least that clears the puddle of sweat out of my field of vision. *heh* Playing in the attic (to replace a gas vent that needed replacing before the roofing went on) was interesting–like being in a low-ceilinged, stuffy sauna. Temps outside were 106F and in the attic? On fire, man. Going back into the unconditioned, ambient temp, garage from the attic? Felt like air conditioning. Chilly, dude.

As is Tradition for men in my family for carpentry or mechanicking work (going back as far as my paternal great-grandfather, at least), I have already offered a Blood Sacrifice to the Handyman Spirit. Yeh, yeh: I neglected to put my gloves on before moving the steel panels from where they were off-loaded to a better place for beginning to feed them up to the roof. Blood Sacrifice… What does not kill me hurts like the dickens for a while (and then fades into the background of a world of hurt *heh*), then heals… or not (so far all my past “Handyman Spirit Blood Sacrifice” wounds have healed, for various values of “heal” :-)).

Posted on

However Did I Live This Long Without This Stuff?

This is just a short plug for a product I like a lot. If you’re not into “handy-mannery” *heh* stuff, just scroll on by.

DeoxIT® L260 Grease

Seriously good stuff. I have yet to find any Caig Labs cleaner/degreaser/contact enhancer for electronics and simple electrical connections that I do not like, but this stuff has rescued electrical circuits I have not yet found time to replace and noticeably improved connections made by electrical tools and small appliances. Where humidity can be an issue (bathroom, kitchen), I now consider it a must for lighting fixtures and anything plugged into outlets–IOW, any electrical connections.

Seriously good stuff.

No, Caig Labs doesn’t pay me anything. I’ve used Caig Labs’ DeoxIt products for a number of years with great results. I just started using this a couple of months ago and keep on liking it more and more.

Posted on

More “Phishing pfor Psuckers”

Text of an email I received recently:

Dear Customer,

Your order has been successfully canceled. For your reference, here’s a summary of your order:

You just canceled order 162-427-72682 placed on May 11, 2012.

Status: CANCELED

_____________________________________________________________________

1 “Mounts”; 2003, Second Edition
By: Jamie Turner

Sold by: Amazon.com LLC

_____________________________________________________________________

Thank you for visiting Amazon.com!

———————————————————————
Amazon.com
Earth’s Biggest Selection
http://www.amazon.com

Now, someone who wasn’t paying any attention (or is just too stupid to waste oxygen on) could easily have been caught out by this. There were links to a malware installation on both the purported “order number” and on the text referring to Amazon.com at the end of the email.

But… this one was just too, too easy to resist. First, I knew I’d not placed such an order. “But then,” someone might say (though certainly not YOU, gentle reader), “surely that would lead one to click the link to check on that order. After all, someone might be using one’s stolen Amazon ID to make purchases!”

Except, not mine, and I’m not clicking on ANY obscured link in an email without KNOWING where it leads. Not happening.

But, I did look at the email’s source text and see that the links were NOT to Amazon but to a site that would steal my Amazon creds were I to go there and log in. Except that neither my browser nor LastPass would recognize the site and offer to log in for me, were I to be foolish enough to have clicked the links anyway.

Oh, and the email was to an account that is not in any way, shape, fashion or form associated with my Amazon account, nor has it ever been. Sure, all my email accounts are polled and gathered by one account, but I checked which account the email had been sent to, AND the form is not what I’d have received from Amazon, what with a few pertinent details missing.

So, just taking few seconds to do a coupla quick checks averted the possibility, remote though it is given my other simple measures, of having my Amazon account credentials stolen.

It’s not hard and doesn’t take any time at all, but I’ll bet a few mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging oxygen sinks with fewer active brain cells than a cracked crock of kimchi will fall for it.

Posted on

“A Day Late…

Forty-six years ago, I purchased a set of books, the Great Books of the Western World as compiled by Mortimer J. Adler, et al. The 54-volume set was a tad expensive for a high school kid (twice what I paid for my first car, in fact; nowadays, USED copies of the set run from ~$350 to ~$1,200 on Amazon), but has been a great resource for decades. Sadly, the bindings are in rough shape (largely the result of toddlers getting their hands on ’em a couple of decades and more back, as well as simple wear from use), and some volumes are in downright raggedy shape.

Fast forward to today. I picked up 40 of the 54 volumes in excellent condition at a library books sale of donated books. Most appear completely unread, untouched, although volume 1 of the complete works of Shakespeare is well worn (though still not as worn as my original copy). Glad to have ’em. Oh, why only 40 of the 54? Well, volume 2, the first of two volumes comprising the “Syntopicon” was missing from the donated collection, and 13 other volumes had been purchased by one person before I purchased the rest.

I’ll probably print up some book covers for the “raggedy” copies in my original set and place them in among the “new” set for use, as I still use them for reference, although I have re-read few of them entirely in the last couple of decades. I may also add volumes from the 1990 “second edition” of the collection, at least some works that I don’t already own in other editions as separate copies–who doesn’t already own at least one copy of Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling” for example, or “Waiting for Godot” [Beckett], Animal Farm [Orwell], etc.? I think I may skip volumes 59 and 60 (heavy on 20th Century) from the new edition. I despise Joyce, detest Faulkner and Ftzgerald, and Virginia Woolf gives me a rash. The ones in the collection that are worth anything, IMO, I already have, usually in multiple copies (Brecht, Beckett, Chekhov, Eliot, Shaw and others), anyway.

The recent “classes” via Hillsdale College dealing with the Constitution (thanks for the tip, Diane) have already gotten me re-reading background the Founders drew on in the discussions that formed our national government, so this is a timely find for me.

So, I worked a little bit tonight on some bookshelves. *heh* I may actually get our books organized more sensibly this year. Hey! It could happen! At least I have plenty to read and plenty to re-read (and plenty that’s worth re-reading) handy.

BTW, from that great *cough* reference work, Wikipedia (which nevertheless does have a few good articles), this:

“The scientific and mathematical selections also came under criticism for being incomprehensible to the average reader… “

Well, boo-hoo. Literacy is more than just puzzling out weird hieroglyphs on a page. Other criticisms of the collection are on a par with that one. *yawn* Yes, it’s incomplete, but hey, “Great” used to mean something more than simply “good” or “trendy” or “makes feminazis and multi-cultis feel good”.

Addendum 2: It’s interesting, to me at least, that this work was compiled and the “Great Conversation of Ideas” (largely via the tool of the Syntopicon–a monumental work in and of itself, IMO) fostered as a project sponsored by the University of Chicago, and yet The Zero, that soi-disant “constitutional scholar” who (mis)taught as an adjunct prof at that institution, seems completely unaware of the works (and ideas) contained in this collection except in a sort of weird, twisted mythological manner, since he never seems to get references to Western Civ (history OR concepts) anywhere near right.

Posted on

Timeless Wisdom

I don’t know who first said it (and am not even sure where I last saw it *heh*), but this ranks up there with, “Never get involved in a land war in Asia,”* as timeless wisdom:

“A human without at least one sharp pointy thing and the ability to start a fire is just whining hairless ape in most survival situations.”

Yeh, I feel naked without at least two or three “sharp pointy things” on my person at all times, and since I can start a fire with my burning gaze of scorn… *heh*

Continue reading “Timeless Wisdom”