bgavin

Harris Ranch on I5 still retains the flavor and aroma of 1900 Los Angeles.

I’m ok with the occasional earthquake here. Tornados are far more frequent and more damaging should you win the door prize.

We finally got a 4K big tv so we are enjoying all our favorite movies in 4K. I have been collecting them over the last two years as they go on firesale. A movie has to be beyond awful for me to pass it by. Woke movies fit this description. And movies choked full of homosexual crap. This includes nearly everything coming out today. The 4K Casablanca, Some Like It Hot, etc are first class transfers.

I would first ask if they have Zelle or similar. PayPal is far too invasive today.

I cancelled my PayPal account for the same above reason.

Knopfler is helluva guitarist... notice he is finger picking, and no plectrum.

No I meant CSPAN which offers the same level of entertainment as watching paint dry.

I have to chuckle... folks irate about data breaches... who still have Facebook accounts. All those little quizzes are data-mining efforts that when collated provide a huge amount of your personal information.

Finding a quality job becomes more difficult with all that visible hardware. My youngest daughter is a retired rock star, and as such is fully sleeved on her left arm. After 13 years on the road, she went back to school because she was "tired of being poor." Today, she holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, is a registered phlebotomist, and an Oncology R.N. One of the requirements of employment: all arm tats will be covered by full length sleeves.

In my younger years at IBM, I remember it took two of us to roll the chassis for 64k (not MB or GB) across the floor at Bank of America. I also remembered being tasked to replace a bit in a core array at a Wells Fargo machine. I had the youngest eyes and was best suited to thread the X/Y lines into the metal donut that constituted the "bit". I always laugh at the folks who claim their desktop computer has more power than a mainframe. Yes, an Intel desktop CPU runs at a hugely faster clock rate. The mainframe has separate standalone memory and disk controllers. This allows each to run independent of the processor, thus parallelizing the simultaneous work streams. This allows a staggering amount of work to be done in any unit of real time. The mainframe CPU sends the request to one (of many) storage control units, then disconnects to process elsewhere. The storage control unit sends the request to one of several disk controllers that handles the disk drives. When systems are viewed in relative human time measurement terms, it takes years for a disk to return data after it receives the CPU data request. The rotational delay is orders of magnitude slower, so it is pointless for a CPU to wait for disk data. Desktop processors that multi-thread can jump to a different thread while waiting for disk data to return. This means having a window open with an Excel spread sheet, and another open with a Word document. The photo below qualifies as a "selfie" even though taken in 1977 with a Nikon 35mm. The System 370 Model 168 was my first main frame.

Bach, Toccata and Fugue in F-Major comes to mind.

Don't forget the endless environmental impact and permit process required to use explosives that will harm barnacles and sea snails. IMO, they will clear the shipping lane in short order. The bridge replacement will take years, probably a decade or more.

Of course, John Wick is fantasy. All those killings in NJ and NY and no cops anywhere. At least Wick makes a show of changing magazines. Last night we watched #5 of Resident Evil, where they pump thousands of rounds through fully automatic weapons without reloading. I'd druther watch this mindless entertainment than suffer through the drivel of CSPAN or that crowd.

I figure my new Tacoma will see 2,500 miles per year. GEICO requires I send annual mileage numbers when I renew, so I have records going back a ways. I drive about 5,000 total annual miles, the wife about 7,500. My old 1991 Truck will do the other half of my annual mileage. The first Tacoma change will be at 1,000 miles, currently at 651 today. Afterwards, will probably be on six month intervals, spring and fall when warm enough to climb under it.

At the radiator I have only the power steering cooler in my 2023.

I know... Just a Stupid Dad Joke™ of shameless proportions...

Engine off at stop lights is a 100% deal breaker for me. Check for the engine and oil coolers. In 2020 Toyota stopped installed auxiliary trannie coolers, but left it in the brochure. The clod in the PR department seems to think fluid-to-fluid cooling via the radiator tanks is a "transmission cooler". This has been a feature of automatics since I was a tot... Dad's 1958 Nomad had one. The 2023 Tacoma is rumored to have an engine oil cooler above the filter housing. I've not been under yet to verify or disprove. Seems a damn stupid place for a cooler without a lot of air flow. The ideal temp for auto trannies is 180F. Smoggers run the radiator at 210~220F... do the math. Add to this heat load, a heavy towing requirement, or blistering hot summer days.. and recipe for early trannie failure.

Or a 10-penny nail...

Panty hose was a secret the hard core snow skiiers of my era used as kids. They went a long way to staying warm when the outer jeans got snow-soaked.

And here I thought Larch was the butler for the Addams Family.

I bought a TV, 4k blu-ray player, and some Rode wireless mics from BB. Price was no better nor worse than anywhere else. If Costco had offered the TV, I would have bought there, but they don't. BB got the business because they had in-stock what I wanted, local in-town and free delivery. Same prices as New York or Newegg in CA, but without the shipping delays. I bought my first smart phone (iPhone 13 Pro Max) directly from the T-Mobile store. My wife and I are both on my daughter's plan, so my part is cheap, my bride's part is free. No complaints.

I understand the same just happened in Oklahoma with a barge hitting a pylon. The Baltimore bridge was built 1972~1977, before the era of endless environmental studies. Today, I expect it might take even longer. Once the channel is cleared of wreckage, shipping can probably continue. Vehicle traffic will be a good long time before it resumes.

It is my understanding the Windows generational teams are two: think of one as Odd, the other as Even. The alternate version appear to be more designed by the same team that did the one two generations back. Win2000 and WinNT come to mind. I buy Win10 licenses (retail type, not OEM) for cheap from the various online vendors who buy and resell them. Sometimes the license key works right away, at other times you have to go through the tedious online authentication and entering those 9 or 10 groups of codes. Retail allows you to move the license from one machine to a new one, OEM does not. If you have an OEM license it is bound forever to the hardware signature of its hosting machine. A major change, such as a motherboard invalidates the OEM license.

This coming June 27, I will be 50 years in the computer business... 25 of them at IBM during the hey-day, and in on the PC since Day 1. That said, I run Windows 7 for my main workstation. All my work today is Photoshop, system programming and heavy lifting in Excel. Linux is the ticket for a GUI based low cost operating system for those not wanting Windows or Macs. The Mac is a hybrid Unix/Linux under the hood, but entirely under the quality control of Apple. I run VMware on a big server with 20-odd virtual machines, each tailored with a specific operating system, for a specific purpose. Win10 for Turbo Tax, etc, etc. Each of my language compilers lives on its own virtual machine, so it has nothing else to fight with. These VMs are powered on and off as desired... most of the time are all Off. File transfer over Bluetooth doesn't work. It ain't designed for that. Use WiFi, which is designed for file transfer. IMO, Windows 11 is a bucket of sh**. It is your favorite hardware store, where all the goods are still there, but all the doors, windows, and shelves are rearranged. I am happy to be retired.

Yes, they are interested only in themselves. However, same as Neville Chamberlain, they are also just plain stupid and fail to understand "what comes next."