Monthly Archives: August 2017

I am watching the Democrats and their prom date, McCain tut tutting about the President’s warning to the Korean Punk.

We tried the obsequiousness, we tried bribery and we get our current situation.

Time to lay it out there. They launch a missile roughly in our direction, we lay waste to the place.  No wait and see, no game playing, just dirt turned to glass where a country used to be.

Believe it or not, that was our national policy with the USSR for decades.  It worked.  They knew if they fired a missile in our direction it would be a very bad idea.

Trump just brought back the only strategic approach that works, the willingness to kill millions if they fire at you.

The N Koreans should have … Continue reading →

Sorry for the difficulty, folks.  I think I have it beat.  The nice thing about a database connection error is that it points to the likely locus of the problem.  Once it became a more permanent error than intermittent, it helped narrow down the likely causes.  Also, I dusted off some old skills and dug into the thing.

Seems we’re up.

What follows is an anti-diversity manifesto from an engineer at Google.  This guy will be fired, and then should run for public office.

NOTE: I drafted this when the news broke, on about 05 AUG.  It needs re-formatting which I was halfway through when I was pulled away for a while on family business.  More on this later.

Reply to public response and misrepresentation

I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem. Psychological safety is built on mutual respect and acceptance, but unfortunately our … Continue reading →

I had four four foot 40W fluorescents fail. They were sporadic and took time to give up the glow. I finally changed to four foot LED light bars. Think 4 white light sabers stuck on the ceiling. They are suppose to last 40,000 hours. They might outlast us all.

Recently at Chez 10, I have a round LED blob on the ceiling. That comes with a remote control that dims and has a timer to turn it off and to turn it on. I can change the color some two.

For those not living in the backwoods of Pencilvania, do you have LEDs? … Continue reading →

Thank you for the reports of blog issues.  As far as I know, there were a couple of instances of weird page loads and “database connection” error messages.  I suspect these were caused by server reboots or sommat at the host.  I don’t see any strangeness about right now.

Even in small outfits, there are multiple servers to divide the workload not only work load balancing, but for segregation of roles (enhances manageability, security, scalability).  These servers need to be synced to deliver the final product.  When emergent maintenance (or poorly sequenced planned maintenance) disrupts the cooperation of these servers, the send error message back and forth.

You can only receive an error message from a server you can reach.  Assume that when your request for a page … Continue reading →

OK, maybe three cheers. I came across this article published in Foreign Policy about ten years ago. Surprisingly for this rag, the article promotes the patriarchy:

Throughout the broad sweep of human history, there are many examples of people, or classes of people, who chose to avoid the costs of parenthood. Indeed, falling fertility is a recurring tendency of human civilization. Why then did humans not become extinct long ago? The short answer is patriarchy.

…

Through a process of cultural evolution, societies that adopted this particular social system — which involves far more than simple male domination — maximized their population and therefore their power, whereas those that didn’t were either overrun or absorbed. This cycle in human history may be obnoxious to the enlightened, but … Continue reading →

It’s that time of the week again, when we connect for another town hall meeting in the Village of the Darned.

BDB still wants somebody, multiple somebodies, or multiple nobodies out there to volunteer to speak on interesting subjects.

If the software tells you that you’re the only caller, don’t you believe it! Press on with the access code and you’ll probably find us in there!

US: 515-604-9908

Access Code: [see chat in “BDB Chat” tab above]

International Local Dial-in Numbers

Albania +355 4 454 1702
Argentina +54 351 569-7183
Australia +61 2 8077 0505
Austria +43 1 2650524
Belgium +32 3 294 11 50
Brazil +55 11 3042-5274
Bulgaria +359 2 495 1701
Cambodia +855 96 696 7824
Chile +56 2 3210 … Continue reading →

NOTE FROM ON HIGH: This is a picture of an error message — you are not getting an error message now.

She is the only one I know who erases with abandon. Poor Anthony S didn’t do Mooch of a job before Pencil cleaned up his act.

Who is next on her list?

[I got this a while back.]