Weekend Open Thread
Here’s your chance to talk about whatever is on your mind. You can drop off links to news you want to discuss, or links to your own blog, exchange recipes, cuss me out for being absent – but Mom is visiting this weekend, so my attention is diverted for a while – knock yourselves out.
Category: Administrative
@35 If you read Colin Powell’s book…he talks about riding the subway in NYC with his .22 JROTC rifle.
I just took a Giduck
I just pasted a stone the shape and size of Alaska!
@55. Jonn who?
No one else seems willing to say it. This is where I can.
Jonn is cute.
Sorry 2/17 Air Cav above.
I was fiddling/diddling.
OUR Jonn is cute.
@50.
I actually miss chow halls.
Call me crazy, but you get used to them.
Cannot beat the price.
Breakfast chow as well.
Well stop fiddling and diddling Zero! At least, don’t be thinking of Jonn while you’re doing that! You haven’t crossed the street have you? They didn’t finally get to you, did they? Say it ain’t so, Zero. Say it ain’t so!
Ok some catching up to do:
1. TN – I will try that.
2. EX-PH2 – I am so short, if not for my soap box, I would not hit the urinal!
3. John – if you believe in UFO’s you belong in home.
4. TN – my son at 7 can do 25 perfect push ups. Up here that can land me in jail.
5. Hondo – my wife cooks wearing a hot lacey thing.
Master Chief – I have to stand on a chair to talk to someone eye to eye.
I’m so short, there are not enough platform heels in the world….
I can only measure up to my own expectations.
Even Shakespeare knew about short people: Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp… or what’s a heaven for?
Hey Chief. I only have one feeling and you have hurt it. I spent multiple comments insulting your backside and didn’t rate one remark? Crushed I am. Kay-rushed.
From 8 – 10 PM Saturdays, Pacific time on KFI AM 640, there is a radio program called “Dark Secret Place.” The host is Bryan Suits, he has a background as a medic and also as an artillery officer. Covers current events, has a bit of a military flavor to the program. Worth a listen, either streaming or podcast.
http://www.kfiam640.com/pages/Suits.html
@58 during my first tour in Germany (63-66) standard fare for Sunday evening meal was beans, sardines, and hard boiled eggs. That left a lot to be desired, but you got all you could eat.
Good ball game on Fox…Boston & Detroit tied 0-0 top of 4th.
This whole baseball playoffs is better ones i’ve seen in a while…just about every game close nailbiter. Too bad TV ratings suck – not lot of people are watching.
Air Cav,
Your crushed? I have been in tears all day becausae of your comments, have not left the couch all day and have gone through 2 boxes of Famous Amos
Army’s Terry Baggett sets school rushing record with 304-yard performance:
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/army-terry-baggett-sets-school-rushing-record-304-203442167–ncaaf.html
@66. Thanks. I feel much better now.
@66… Jeez, no wonder your ass is fat.
I just found this… on my doorstep. And remember: many Bothans died… to bring me this information.
http://news.msn.com/science-technology/growing-backlash-to-government-surveillance
Detvun-so far both league championship series have both been all about the pitching. Can’t believe that the Dodgers couldn’t scratch up a run in support of Kershaw.
I dropped another Phildo in the pot.
@60 – MCPO NYC USN (Ret.)
Didn’t you read the post?
I was having some fun writing about the moon coming up over Biloxi.
http://writesong.blogspot.com/2013/09/ufo-at-keesler-air-force-base.html
Don’t be so serious!
Det Tigers beat Bo Sox 1-0 in game one ALCS…was riveted to the TV – what a phucking game!
John. Chill brother. I am tracking about half the time.
Ex-PH2 – You have to join Facebook! I just posted a bunch of pictures from my family reunion this weekend in Lyons, Ga, and in every one of them I look like a giant compared to whomever I’m standing next to, except my own kids. I’m only 5’4 but look to be the tallest there, I’m not the tallest but the pictures are all so funny. Plus I have a very unattractive family. So there’s that.
Valkyrie – roger that FB, etc., next month.
Jonn said it was okay for me to post short jokes, but then… he’s taller than I am.
The monitor on my HP laptop gave out on me a few weeks back (which explained the Hack Stone embargo here). Not wanting to get bit again by HP, I was staying away from them. My personal laptop and work laptop were both HP’s, and the keys had a tendency to fall off for no particular reason. So, I went with a Toshiba Satellite S75, figuring a laptop is a laptop, but navigating on this laptop is like trying to get through the hedge maze in The Shining. I just want a regular Microsoft type page to display, with the ability to open multiple tabs at the top of the page. I was able to display that way once, but hell if I know how I got there, or how to get back. And another predicament, I never backed up all of my stuff on the HP laptop, so all of my drafts and completed tributes to Spandex Man are temporarily unavailable.
HackStone, it is for this reason, and my sister’s routine ‘need’ to replace her precious Macs, that I have NEVER bought a laptop and probably never will. I have a desktop that is 10 years old and still kicking. The only notebook I can think of worth the money is one that I can take with me on the trails to dump my photo images into, so that I can go on shooting.
But I do need to do my backup. Thanks for the reminder.
Ex-PH2: you could investigate a cheap netbook (if you can find one). Those are pretty small; a 10.5″ diagonal screen and weight of about 2 to 3 lbs is fairly typical, and can sometimes be found with a reasonably-sized hard drive (300GB range). Most have wireless and USB; some have internal card readers, and an external memory card reader is both light and cheap if needed. In a pinch they can serve as connectivity when (not if) your primary machine has issues.
One might drive you crazy due to the small screen and keyboard if you try to use it as a primary machine, though. They also don’t tend to have enough memory to do much more than one thing at a time. And most won’t run anything that requires lots of CPU (like Photoshop or other image-processing tools) worth a damn.
Still, as an emergency backup or portable photo repository one might work quite well.
I’d recommend you stay away from anything with Windows 8, though, unless you’re already running it (I’m assuming you’re not). MicroSoft IMO screwed up bigtime by totally redesigning the user interface in Win 8 – you’d have to relearn how to do damn near everything. But you can still find netbooks out there with Win 7.
You could also investigate a tablet. Those are about the same size and weight as a netbook, but if you type they might not be a good choice as an emergency machine (pen or touchscreen interface is most common). Don’t appeal to me whatsoever, so I haven’t investigated them much.
In any case, I’d recommend one with a hard drive and staying away from anything with a SSD if you’re planning to store photos on it. SSDs are reliable, extend battery life, and are fast – but they’re quite smallish. You’ll end up getting an external unit to store anything of note.
Just my unsolicited $0.02 worth, so ignore as you see fit. (smile)
Heavy Spammer Alert!!!!!!!!!
Completely off topic, Antenna TV carries the Jack Benny Show. I used to watch reruns of it when I was a kid in the 1970’s, but 50 years after first being broadcast, this show still makes me laugh out load. Especially any scene with Mel Blanc or Jimmy Stewart. Here is a short clip from his Palms Springs road trip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyoDhOrmIAo
I dare anyone to say this guy wasn’t a comedy genius.
EX-PH2. I have a LE buddy at work. His nane is Rafael. Short PR, former Marine, who always gets ribbed about his height. Here are few things I did to him a couple years ago.
At a formal LE brief for the RNC in NYC, he stood to intro himself. As soon as he stood up I yelled, “Ralph can you stand up? We can’t hear you back here!”
One night a bunch of us went out for beers and steak. There were 11 of us at a table for 10 and Ralph was without a seat. Being the gentleman that I am, I said, “Ralph, permit me, I will get you a chairm”. I returned with one of those wooden infant high chairs!
Ralph was out sick for about a week with a bad cold. When he returned he found a new office chair. A steal folding chair with the legs cut off and 4 phone books stacked on the seat.
Ralph is a hoot, he might kill me one day.
MCPO NYC USN (Ret.)@83, some good hearted ribbing going on there. I especially like the high chair.
Hail to the Redskins. Hail to DC.
Go Redskins!
Hondo, I always shoot jpg and RAW. SanDisk now makes cards up to 256 GB, which is more room than my computer actually has available, period, so you can see what I’m beginning to need a new computer. The files eat up my hard drive, and it’s about time to install the 1TB drive I got a year or two ago, because I am literally running out of room. However (and this is what drives me to write), HP has a desktop with an optional 16TB drive (have not seen that yet elsewhere) and I know it’s built for gaming, so it should be able to take a pounding. The cost will be what I paid for my completely reliable, still kicking-ass, Compaq Presario 10 years ago, about $1800. When I bought my 1TB backup drive, the price had dropped from $350 to $95 in barely 2 years’ time. Also, these new cameras that Canon and Nikon are building have CMOS sensors like my D300 (as opposed to the CCD in my Nikon D50), but they have up to 34.2 megapixels on a half-frame sensor (for amateur shooters) and 18.1 on the full-frame sensor for the Canon EOS1D-X and 16.2 on the full-frame sensor on the Nikon D4X (X means pro level). The D300 is a semipro camera. It’s the difference in image resolution. I can go in to a long, detailed discourse on the differences, but it’s not the number of megapixels on the sensor. It’s the size of the sensor. So that means that if you want higher resolution (sharper on extreme enlargement) in your images, and more leverage on ISO (film speed, sensor sensitivity), you go the extremely expensive route. You can’t just go to the camera shop and buy a finer grained, higher speed film. On the other hand, you don’t have to wait for or pay for film processing to see what your images are like. So because these cameras are being built to accomodate a demand for better resolution and higher speeds, they cost an arm and a leg, plus as many fingers and… Read more »
@86.
I have ben pondering a new opening in one of your novels.
(Think The Highlander intro)Enter stage right:
The Phildo and Jerry Vroombut attend a professional wrestling event to meet up with Popovic. The secret discussion is how to swindle to government and taxpayers out of some dollars, real estate and possibly electricity.
I know this sounds weak, but very true.
Anyway, in the ring we have Bob the Maggot wrestling “Golden Boy” Jake Dilberto.’
See? I am attempting to work these characters in.
Master Chief, you are snarky, devious, and as hard-assed as an armadillo. I am honored to be in your presence. I will sacrifice a glass of wine and another goat cheese to Bacchus on your behalf over chicken and pasta a olio and kalamta olives.
For those suffering the ills of old computers and/or lack of hard space memory and/or the pains of moving data from one machine to another:
I highly recommend external hard drives! For a relatively small price, you can get a lot of storage space, which is very easy to copy to a different hard drive, or plug into a new computer (USB port). Additionally by storing your files on the external harddrive (and the programs on the computer internal), you can expand the memory available on old computers, extending their useful life.
PH: external HD’s are particularly useful when storing quantities of large file pics.
Happy 238th birthday to the second service – The U.S. Navy.
DevTun. Thanks. USMC next onm 10 Nov.
Ex-PH2: what TN says above is indeed true. And if your machine has any USB ports (it should), adding an external drive is a snap. You literally plug it in to the USB port and the operating system recognizes it. Pretty much any operating system released in the last 10-15 years supports USB external drives.
An external 1TB or larger drive unit is CHEAP these days – I think I got a 1TB unit (USB 2.0 interface, Toshiba 2.5″ drive mechanism, 3 yr warranty) for around $65 plus tax at WalMart recently. You can also acquire a cheap (literally $5-$15, and sometimes available at a store like Big Lots) memory card reader, attach both to your computer simultaneously (you’ll need 2 USB ports, but virtually every machine I’ve ever seen with USB has at least 2 ports), and have the computer copy from memory card directly to external drive without storing any intermediate images on your basic system.
Transferring the files will be pretty damn slow if your USB ports are old enough to be ver 1.0, but the files will eventually get onto the external drive. And the process isn’t too too bad if the USB ports are ver 2.0. Takes a bit, but goes pretty smoothly and reliably. And you still have the originals on memory card until you delete those.
Another alternative is to get a small external NAS (network attached storage) unit, attach it to your home router, set it up for use (not that hard, really). That allows you to make the storage available to any machine on your network. Pricier, but if you have several machines that need to access the same data it’s a more convenient option than moving an external drive from system to system. Last time I checked, those went for about $150-$200 for NAS units in the 1TB range, and sometimes cheaper.
TN, I have two peripheral drives, one 500GB drive and a 1TB drive.
It’s the internet stuff, the online open this-and-that, that bogs down my machine.
Besides, when you’re used to working through a server system at work, you get spoiled about backup. And I’ve got 30 years worth of ‘spoiled’ to get over and stop whining.
And do you realize that now, an 8Gb thumb drive costs $10 at Staples, and those used to cost (3 years ago) $65 to $90?
My 1TB backup drive cost me less than my printer.
@87 EllTee GreenThumb, that would be in B&B#3. And throw in Jesse Ventura as the whiny, gravel-voiced coach from the gym that Rocky Balboa started out in .
@88, 91, and 92
DEVTUN and MCPO NYC USN (Ret.):
Due to the government shutdown, here at the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Mississippi, the Navy’s birthday party dinner dance was cancelled, as has been all other previously scheduled recreational activities and trips.
By the way, prior to it being named the Armed Forces Retirement Home, this place used to be the United States Naval Home, and only sailors and marines could live here.
Soldiers and airmen went to the Home that’s in Washington, D.C., which prior to being named the Armed Forces Retirement Home, it was the United States Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home.
Now, anyone from any military branch can live in either Home.
Ex-PH2:
Your detailed description of, “I will sacrifice a glass of wine and another goat cheese to Bacchus on your behalf over chicken and pasta a olio and kalamta olives”, somehow reminds me of the character, Hannibal Lector, in the novel and the Hollywood movie, “SILENCE OF THE LAMBS”.
I think I’ll stay away from your house.
By the way, I have ALL of the Hannibal Lector movies in my DVD collection (AND I also read the book), and my favorite television series is, “CRIMINAL MINDS”.
Ex-PH2:
Do you have any fava beans and a nice chianti?
Did you know that I was a serial killer?
My favorite cereals to murder are bowls of steaming cracked wheat with honey, and/or cream of wheat with brown sugar, and/or oatmeal with brown sugar.
The Irish call it, “stirabout”, as in, “Shut your gob and eat your stirabout!”.
Also, if we were watching a serial on television, I might kill it by telling you how it ends.
I wish you folks could be here to see what I’m seeing.
Here in my seventh floor apartment, I have a fantastic view of Biloxi, Keesler Air Force Base, the Gulf of Mexico (actually, it’s the Mississippi Sound), and the full sized model railroad set located right behind the Armed Forces Retirement Home, just below my balcony.
Right now, there’s a sudden storm brewing up, and I have a front row seat!
Boy, oh boy, am I ever well off!
I’m glad I’m not blind.
A blind person wouldn’t get to enjoy all this stuff.
Gosh, gee whillikers, just as quick as the storm got started, it dissipated, and the sun came out.
There’s sailboats out on the water, and another freight train just went rumbling by.
Life is good – – – , VERY good!