Tag: Geeky Stuff

Posted on

Another article filled with the beauty of English…

I stumbled across a new site.

The main site home page is at brownstone.org

While perusing the site and reading I ran across this article from Jan 29th 2022.

It Was All There in the EUA. Why Couldn’t They See it?

The beginning of the article is interesting as it discusses the EUAs for the COVID vaccines. As I read the article, I thought, “Yep, this is a lot like the way I felt…”

Hey, it’s nice to see I wasn’t the only one reading the data and questioning the apparent disconnect between the published material and the endless news cycle.

Where the article really grabbed me was in the section titled.

From Orality to Literacy…And Back Again

The author, Thomas Harrington presents some interesting takes on society and its evolution.

As with any such article, I don’t have to agree with him, but he made me think. I also learned a couple of new words that I honestly don’t recall ever seeing before. For that alone, I am grateful I took the time to read the piece.

It’s been a very long time since I felt I had to have a “real” dictionary at hand.

It’s an even rarer event when I am unable to make a reasonable guess at the meaning of the words used from context within the sentence, or from a words roots.

I found myself smiling as I opened my dictionary and looked up the definitions. Upon reading the meanings I once again found myself marveling at our language and how often there is a single word that conveys an exact meaning, which otherwise might require a paragraph.

Others who take the time to read Harrington’s article may read it and think, “WWDucat is an idiot.” So be it. But at least I’m man enough to admit it and learn new things.

I suspect that when the words I looked up are encountered they’ll be obvious.

There is no shame in pulling out your Webster’s! If you’re like me, you’ll get lost in the beauty of words and language for more than a few minutes.

Have a great day.

Posted on

Well I tried…

Last night there was a lunar eclipse. This one was a super long one, only happening once in 1000 years.

In honor of the duration and rarity of the event I stayed up past my bedtime and walked out onto the deck to do what we often don’t do enough of.

I looked up.

The first time I went out, the sky was clear, with just a bit of haze and I could see the beginning of the eclipse.

Unfortunately my phone couldn’t. But this is what the beginning of the eclipse looked like and I thought I was going to be golden for the whole event.

I’d already heard from some friends “Down Below” (Yeah I live on a mountain and am elitist about it, So what!) that they were experiencing fog and cloudy conditions so they couldn’t see anything.

I smugly went back inside to warm up, secure in the knowledge that I’d be able to see the whole show. (Ahem! Mother Nature why do you hate me?)

I went back out about 30 minutes later to this.

What we have here is clear proof that A) Mother Nature hates me, and B) She has a cruel sense of humor.

If you’ll notice, this is a band of clouds, a single strip, the skies are relatively clear on either side.

The rest of the eclipse was more of the same from my vantage point. A strip of clouds that was moving in just the right direction to look like a curtain pulled across this celestial event.

Like I said Mother Nature hates my sorry ass.

There was a thinning of the clouds, and I could see the shadow covering part of the moon, the camera was even able to catch it, but much of the rest of the event was hidden.

From this picture, you can see that Mother Nature is also a bit of a tease.

That being said, I tried my best. I’m sure that Mother Nature is having a good laugh with friends this morning.

“Oh, Poseidon you should have seen the look on this one guys face when I painted over the moon with clouds! I haven’t seen a look that sad in millennia. Not since that poor tourist spent his life savings to visit Atlantis only to arrive just as it sunk. Hahahahahaha!“

Yes indeed the gods are capricious.

I hope you have a good day and pleasant weekend. I’m going to take a mid-day siesta and hope that there’s not an earthquake! (Poseidon, Hephaestus, I’m looking at you guys! No angry earth movements or accidents at the forge today please.)

Posted on

Well, here we are in August

The Summer is coming to a close, the children are supposed to be going back to school. (That rite of passage may again be disrupted due to COVID.)

I’ve got a couple of projects to get done before the Winter, those projects are on hold because of the living room and flooring mess.

There’s no reason to paint the stairs if there’re going to be workmen dragging all manner of tools and things up the stairs.

I can lay in supplies for the projects in the mean time. So at least that will be, in some small way, productive.

The flooring is the last piece of the puzzle regarding the living room, then we’ll have to have the fire suppression system inspected and re-pressurized. The jury is still out on the question of the furniture being replaced. At this point it’s likely that the couch and chair will be, but the rest of the wood furniture may have survived.

As we head back into another heat wave, I’m glad that the ceiling is at least back so that the air conditioning won’t be running quite as hard. My “Martian” special worked but was inefficient as far as insulation went. We’re now fully two months into having this disruption in our lives. Although, there are others who’ve been waiting 4 to 6 months.

Between supply shortages and construction repair crews busy schedules there are a lot of people waiting in line for remodels and repairs.

At the moment, I have a pile of trashed building materials on my front lawn and can’t really even do much in the way of yard work. There’s supposed to be a crew member coming up to pick up the trash and the ladders, I expect he’ll be by when the work is complete. It makes more sense to make only one trip instead of several so I’m not really all that worried about it.

This Summer has been a season of things breaking. My faithful 12 year old monitor gave up the ghost a week ago. While I didn’t want to spend money I’m glad I bought a new monitor. Amazon on the other hand said this monitor had more ports than it actually does. Their description was mostly correct except for this one small detail. Nonetheless, the thunderbolt port was there as indicated, and provided me with a method to connect to the computer.

Amazon’s description said there was a Thunderbolt, DV, and HDMI, port. There was only Thunderbolt and HDMI. I think the copy writer on the Amazon site may have grabbed the wrong specifications. Frankly, it’s probably too much of a pain in the ass to return the monitor and call them on their mistake. Going to the Samsung site told me I had the correct model number and that this unit did not contain the DV port. So word to the wise, cross check Amazon’s description and specifications against the actual manufacturer’s before you click that convenient “BUY” button.

In this case it’s not a big deal, but If I’d specifically needed the DV port it would have been.

The panel itself is very nice and crisp. It’s even convenient to watch movies or TV on.

The new router is working like a champ although there have been some situations where firmware updates on it have caused glitches throughout the WiFi devices connected to it. Nothing particularly difficult to resolve, but as is always the case with computer equipment these glitches show up at the most inconvenient times. I’m enjoying the speeds the router provides. I don’t much notice the difference between WiFi and hardline connections. With the previous router, there was a noticeable difference and if I had to do anything intense, like downloading an OS or watching movies I always connected to the hardline. Now I’ve actually moved devices over to WiFi and been able to decommission some of the network switches.

When I reassemble the living room, I’ll be considering connecting everything WiFi and getting rid of cables that aren’t strictly necessary.

Lately, I’ve noticed that I’m not actually watching what little of the news I used to catch. I’ve even stopped reading the news online. It’s all gotten too crazy for me.

Masks, not masks. Vaccine, not vaccine. Mandated Vaccinations No Mandates. Members of Congress saying that they want to create a two class America over vaccination status.

It’s one thing if the media says stuff like that, you pretty much ignored it because they’re the media, BUT when members of Congress start saying stuff like this, it’s head snapping!

When our government starts asking for vaccination proof, we will be uncomfortably close to NAZI or Communist forms of government. Are we at the point that our Republic is already dead? Are we just scrabbling around in the carcass of what was once a great country? Where does that leave what used to be “Average Americans”?

It’s stuff like those questions that makes reading or watching the News an increasingly unpleasant experience. I’m down to looking at the insanity about once a week unless something really catches my attention. At least I’m not completely uninformed but I can’t be any more informed than once a week.