One year ago today: December 8, 2021, for me, a memory-burger.
Five years ago today: December 8, 2017, the porch that wasn't.
Nine years ago today: December 8, 2013, early & grumpy, okay?
Random years ago today: December 8, 2002, I watch for kiting.
America is not sick, but the leadership is. News this morning is that freak Griner was just swapped by Russia for an arms dealer. Folks, the real America wanted Griner left there to rot. Dozens of media giants have announced drastic staff layoffs as the country slides into a depression. There's plenty of talk that people should grow their own vegetables, forgetting that they don't know how—and for such morons, it is probably cheaper to continue to pay outrageous prices. Sick as it is, turns out Biden released the arms dealer, then attended a vigil for victims of gun violence. These people have no shame.
Three personal letters mailed today, I chatted with the post office guy a few minutes. He says they see hand-hand written letters, as differentiated from cards and invitations, maybe one in 2,000 pieces of mail. The post office scans the lowest line on each letter for a ZIP code, so I've long quit adding the customary note for enclosures. He indicated that the post office likes to see letters addrressed long-hand as a measure of how the service is doing. Ha, unless the national IQ jumps by 20% before too long, the art of personal letters will be history.
Next an hour wasted trying to remove Edge from this computer. It's very association with Google and the spyware known as Chromium means I don't want it even resident on this hard drive. But what a task. The uninstaller is greyed out and I can't enable it. This means going into DOS, or I guess these days it is the DOS emulation called command prompt or whatever. It walks and quacks like DOS. I'll leave it until I know I can hunt it down because it is demanding the version number, which does not match what shows in the “About” folder. What's more, you have to stop Edge from re-installing and this requires editing the registry, which I don't know in Win 10.
This product requires some very Unix-like commands and those were designed by the worst no-brains IBM had to offer in the past century. Every one of them was an unimaginative squid-brain. Which is all what IBM hires. It has been getting progressively trickier to change these settings over time, a classic example of why I never liked MicroSoft. They try to cram stuff down your throat. It is routine to the nerds who do this for a living but little short of a nightmare to others. I find it hilarious how many “power users” haven't the foggiest how the system actually works. If that's you, I'd suggest you get some help before trying this. The picture is accurate but shows items not in the system. There is no folder called EdgeUpdate and as you see here, I'm renaming a Key (not a folder) with a command, which must later be enabled.
Prime example, VideoLan. If you download the latest versions, there are some valuable features missing. The old versions work fine and burn right through all the copyright and don't even have the capability of reporting or recording what you download or copy. That's the software for me. And the justification remains the same. This computer is my property and I am thus the only party who has any say in what it does.
Harry Potter fortune teller
origami template.
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By noon, another round of layoff announcements by big tech. I guess without Trump to browbeat, there is nothing the mainstream people dare or care to report. Everybody knows the elections in Arizona and Georgia were stolen and they know nothing will be done about it. All the cops are on the payroll and nobody is going to risk their fat pensions to uphold the voting laws. I feel like doing a little research today, so keep reading. This activity usually comes up with a bit of tech-like trivia or something completely off the wall.
Laser diodes were my quest today. They are LEDs that emit a single frequency which are thus calles lasers but they are not quite the same thing. You've seen these diodes on barcode scanners and I pulled a few from laser printers in the past but am unable to get them to work. I attribute that to lack of a proper power supply. I read a dozen paragraphs to learn enought that I don't have much interest in these devices. Much the same path as I realized on-line circuit simulators are no substitute for a breadboard. Same with many apps, the simulators do what they are programmed for and other than learning basics, the current offerings are not much to experiment with.
Of what's there, CircuitLab is one of the best and hard to use. Another irksome feature are the sites where you click on a component to paste into your circuit and a window opens trying to sell you the part. People who do this kind of coding are beneath contempt. This is why I would outlaw most advertising other than catalogs. One thing I miss is those little catalogs that used to come in the mail, the ones you read without ever buying anything. They were kind of a belwhether on the economy. From back when mail order was bigger than Amazon. I just happen to like reading catalogs.
ADDENDUM
I'm well into the book I mentioned on the World Economic Forum. It is (predictably) a harsh criticism, but fairly presents why it is so. If 100% of the money in the till belongs to America, and you borrow it, don't complain about the terms. It is the why-for details I'm after. This book has them, but deeply buried in discussions of poverty in far-flung countries of whom we know nothing. I advise the reader that poverty in America is unique in that there is really no such thing. All those homeless people can get food stamps and help anytime they want, although I'm not suggesting that is the ideal solution. I can never feel as sorry for them as they would probably like.
I've seen a lot of the world and real poverty is based on scarcity. There are no scarcities in America. Poor people in America have to work surprisingly hard to get that way and stay there. I allow for a few exceptions because I've seen so many recalcitrant imbeciles. America feeds and protects such people from self-correction, so they quickly get to the stage where they can't improve without admitting they've been an intentional idiot all along, and thanks to welfare, they never have to.
