* Posts by jake

26585 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2007

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We're in a timeline where Dettol maker has to beg folks not to inject cleaning fluid into their veins. Thanks, Trump

jake Silver badge

Re: Trump's Base

What, all 300,000,000 of us? I'm shattered.

jake Silver badge

Re: Time to re ignite the "Make America Great Again" campaign

No.

jake Silver badge

Re: Time to re ignite the "Make America Great Again" campaign

"something that makes it not their fault"

Well, it turns out that the Idiot in Chief is a commie sympathizer. Who knew? Shirley no good, decent, Patriotic, God fearing Republican could possibly vote for THAT ... McCarthy must be spinning fast enough to light up the entire shoreline of Lake Michigan!

jake Silver badge

"Your awl fecks yews."

No, I used a chainsaw to take out the majority of the yews. An awl would take forever.

jake Silver badge

"qualified to lead the dumbest nation on Earth."

Do you really think that everybody in any given country is automatically "dumb" just because a minority of citizens voted an idiotic old man into office?

What country are you from, again?

jake Silver badge

"What is it about USians that they keep voting in complete morons?"

Probably the same thing that causes much of the rest of the developed world to keep voting in complete morons. Or is your country of choice exempt?

jake Silver badge

Re: POTUS Supporters

You're more likely to survive shooting the virus than shooting bleach ...

jake Silver badge

Re: "Orange Man Bad!"

Are you really this stupid, Dr. Ellen? Or are you just being sarcastic?

jake Silver badge

Re: "Orange Man Bad!"

As I've been saying for several decades (and around here for at least 11 years), Stupidity SHOULD hurt! ... On the bright side, we've got a chance of kicking the senile old git out of the Whitehouse come November.

jake Silver badge

Re: Trump's Base

About a week ago, in regard to something completely different, I wrote "The only issue is figuring out who is lying when they retroactively claim to be joking ... ". Simply replace the word joking with sarcastic.

I don't think it's all that difficult to spot the liar here. Perhaps we should call it "doing a donald" ... he's certainly trying to duck the well deserved criticism.

I can't believe there are still people trying to support him and his idiocy. The mind absolutely boggles.

jake Silver badge

Not mine.

At that point, the former Idiot in Chief will be spending time in NYC and Palm Beach, both about as far from me as he can possibly get in the Lower 48 ... Thankfully.

Elevating cost-cutting to a whole new level with million-dollar bar bills

jake Silver badge

Re: radio interferences

Nobody ever stayed at a Hilton. They did come and go, though.

jake Silver badge

That would be the Permanente Quarry.

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3121889,-122.0945717,5670m/data=!3m1!1e3

The Steven's Creek Quarry just south of the larger Permanente quarry also used to have blasts on the USGS page, but at more random intervals. I worked on the original USGS backend for the web page that your used to eyeball, contracting in the Menlo Park offices. It was a very early example of what the WWW was good for. A newer site is available here.

Note Apple's Infinite Loop campus in the upper right hand corner of the go ogle map.

jake Silver badge

Re: Another elevator anecdote.

The motor was in the basement. Behind the wall that the punch was up against. The lift wasn't a standard passenger lift, it was the heavy goods lift, and rarely used. The card punch was used as necessary, but wasn't always in use when the lift was in operation. Once I figured it out, and could reproduce the problem at will, a little shielding (spec'd, provided and installed by IBM, gratis!) made it go away permanently.

jake Silver badge

Re: Another elevator anecdote.

The machine in question was an IBM 1402. RS485 wasn't an option on that box. In fact, RS485 was rarer than hen's teeth in the mid '70s, when that story took place.

jake Silver badge

Re: "Cars of the day... " Harumph. I owned an original shape Ford Ka from new.

At least it came with the proper British Kent engine.

jake Silver badge

Re: Elevator interface

And how common was RS485 in the time frame of TOA?

jake Silver badge

Re: Never saw a car crash into a computer

For the Yanks in the audience, a "Fenwick" in this context is an approximation of a Yale Forklift (as built by the French), not a fishing rod.

This cross-pond translation service brought to you by the number e and the letter O.

jake Silver badge

Another elevator anecdote.

Picture a data center in the basement of a tall building in San Francisco's financial district. Card punch up against a wall, near the ancient Otis heavy goods lift. Every now and again, at seemingly random times, the punch generated errors for a couple characters. Nobody could figure out why, not even IBM's field circus dudes.

Until IBM was traipsing in and out one fine weekend, upgrading who knows what hardware, as only IBM could. Someone (ahem) noticed that the gibberish was being generated about ten seconds before the elevator doors opened.

Turned out that the motor for the lift was drawing so much current when it first started that it was inducing errors in the punch on the other side of the wall. Nobody put two and two together prior to this because the lift rarely went into the basement (that level was key-protected) ... until IBM was in and out that morning.

jake Silver badge

The fix was $600 line drivers.

And thus Gandalf worked a little magic to save the day yet again :-)

Move fast and break stuff, Windows Terminal style: Final update before release will nix your carefully crafted settings

jake Silver badge

Re: How about a poll?

To be fair, the Brits (and some derivations) in their infinite wisdom walk into the bottom floor of the building & call it the "ground floor". Then they go up to the second level and call it the first floor. The third level is the second floor, etc. To me this sounds suspiciously like a little thingie that us computer nerds call an off-by-one error.

jake Silver badge

Re: How about a poll?

There is a big difference between an OS acting on a file based on it's extension regardless of that file's actual content, and an application expecting specific extensions for certain operations.

jake Silver badge

Re: How about a poll?

To be fair, Redmond has never really embraced the concept of a magic number ... they still use meaningful filename extensions, which is mind-bogglingly brain-dead behavio(u)r for a modern operating system.

jake Silver badge

Re: Really!?

The fix is "Want us to make changes to your profile settings? If yes, we'll store a copy of your old file in settings.json.old just in case you change your mind. If no, we'll leave your settings alone and place our very well commented, self-documenting version in settings.json.new for your perusal ... Either way, we will not touch the now legacy file profiles.json, so you'll always have a copy to refer to as needed."

But that would be helpful to the enduser, so Redmond won't do it. Corporate policy, don'tcha know. Sorry lusers.

Getting a pizza the action, AS/400 style

jake Silver badge

Re: "Hopefully he also added a bit of text along the lines"

A supposed "need" on your part does not, in any way shape or form, equal a requirement on my part.

Put another way, I am not obliged to cater to your so-called "needs".

jake Silver badge

Re: Savagery?

"Also, cooks bacon from raw to crispy in 90 seconds."

Proper bacon is not "raw", it is cured and edible as-is, without cooking.

jake Silver badge

Re: Savagery?

To clarify, my "fresh" mozz for pizza is two days old ... I make it, then wrap it in one layer of cheese cloth and hang it in the walk-in for two days before using it. Drops the weight by about 25%, but retains the fresh taste and creamy mouth feel. You can do this at home in a standard fridge (stick a pan under it or you'll make a mess!). It'll keep for a couple days after hanging, if well wrapped.

Another method is to tear the cheese into roughly equal sized pieces and wrap in paper towels to remove the excess liquid. If your towels lend some flavo(u)r to the cheese, switch brands of towel. Or you can use large coffee filters, which are flavo(u)rless if stored properly (this gets spendy!). It takes about two hours to drop the same 25% as hanging, changing the paper a couple times.

If you are in a hurry, you can achieve similar results by placing about 6 pounds of #3 steel shot[0] into a large ziplock[1] and use that as a weight over the top layer of towels. The shot conforms to the cheese, giving it a more natural look and fairly uniform dryness level in the end result. You could probably use anything for weight (10" cast iron skillet comes to mind) if you don't mind a flattened look and non-uniform dryness. This takes about 20 minutes, changing the paper at the ten minute mark, to again drop the 25%.

I just fed the twelve adults who live on the Ranch lunch (featuring chivo243's variation on the theme ... Recommended). The three versions of fresh mozz were acceptable to all, with the hung in the fridge method getting the slight nod. Nothing was soggy. The store-bought dry mozz made especially for pizza came in a distant 4th, but was still quite edible.

Conclusion: Dry out your fresh mozzarella for best results!

[0] Any size shot will probably work, I had this on hand.

[1] I first put the shot into a 10 pound shot bag, and then put that into the ziplock.

jake Silver badge

Re: "Hopefully he also added a bit of text along the lines"

"Need." You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

jake Silver badge

Re: A real pizza

Russeting is a skin condition of some apple and pear varietals. Because of this, many different apple cultivars have russet as a part of their name. It's more a description appended to a name than an actual name, though.

Russet Potatoes are widely grown world-wide, primarily for the mass-production of fries/chips/crisps, but they also makes a good all-around potato for home use. See http://www.pvmi.org/ for more than you ever wanted to know about potatoes.

Hopefully you didn't flat-spot anything unnecessarily.

jake Silver badge

Re: "Hopefully he also added a bit of text along the lines"

Not even close. un*x is more like a 400+ piece mechanic's tool kit, OS/400 is like the kit you cobbled together out of your Dad's cast-offs to fix your bike when you were a kid.

Worse, OS/400 apparently corrupts people's brains to the point where they no longer understand how important pizza is.

jake Silver badge

Re: Pineapple good. Pepperoni bad.

"the original genuine article first created in Italy"

Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence.

jake Silver badge

Re: "Hopefully he also added a bit of text along the lines"

"Developing in UNIX is like flying. Developing in OS/400 was like hiking up a mountain. Either way you achieve some altitude, but it's a very different experience."

When I'm flying I prefer to go well over the top of the mountain, or to go around it completely ... Come to think of it, maybe your analogy is more apt than intended :-)

In the time frame of TOA, un*x/POSIX wasn't an option on the AS/400 (outside of Armonk, perhaps ... and maybe Murray Hill ... the BSD world was working on it, of course).

jake Silver badge
Pint

Re: Savagery?

The first modern pizzeria in the US opened in 1905.[0]

The Harry Warren/Jack Brooks song is from 1953 (Dean Martin just sang it; they did the hard work). Clearly it was a compound word in the common vernacular by that point.

My OED says the first reference to "pizza-pie" that it could find is 1939. I've seen references on the internet for the root of the word dating back to 1918. See here.

My gut feeling is that, as with many food-culture derived words, we'll be arguing the actual origins (over pizza and beer, natch!) for a long time ... Unless someone comes up with an old, yellowed bit of paper with an authenticated publication date, of course.

This round's on me :-)

[0] Lombardi's, in NYC. Corner of Spring & Mott Streets. Interesting in that it's supposedly the oldest such joint in the US, but a mediocre pie IMO. That's not to say it's bad, it's not, but it's not worth traveling 40 miles for, either. Eat at your local independent and save a buck ... unless you've never had NYC-style pizza from a coal-fired oven, which makes it worth the experience if nothing else.

jake Silver badge

Re: Pineapple good. Pepperoni bad.

Nutella? That stuff's a crime against humanity.

jake Silver badge

Re: Savagery?

Here in the US, a pizza is sometimes called a pizza-pie regardless of style. Theories abound as to the name's origin, but they all seem to suggest it's NY/NJ Italian-American dialect. Myself, I suspect it's probably an alliteration thing from the early days of mass-market advertising.

jake Silver badge

Re: A real pizza

Steak fries are wedges of a large potato, cut longitudinally. Take a half kilo Russet and cut it into eight equal pieces, skins left on. They are often oven baked, sometimes twice-cooked (see below). Nice with a steak, thus the name.

Most of the GreatUnwashed think of generic "fries" as the garbage they sell at fast so-called "food" joints the world over. Greasy salt bombs. Narsty.

The rest of us think of fries as pretty much the same thing you get down at your local chippy in size and shape, except we double cook them.

Start with Russets, leave the skins on (unless you're a wimp, in which case you can peel them). For best results, cut the night before and leave to soak in cold water until time to cook. Dry them and put into 325F (165C) oil until they just start showing a hint of colo(u)r, about 6-8 minutes. Remove, and set on a rack to drain as you continue cooking the rest of your spuds. Once this round is done, raise the heat to 375F (190C) and cook 'em again, this time until GB&D, about 2-3 minutes (play with it until YOU like the results!). Shake off excess oil, remove to a rack to continue draining, salt immediately, and enjoy.

I use a large dutch oven for this, cast iron works better than anything else. Find the setting on your range that will hold the oil at temperature. Don't try to chase the heat while cooking! Leave it at the setting above. Put the spuds in and let 'em cook. The oil will cool a bit, but don't worry about it. Wait until the oil comes back up to temp before putting in the next batch. Lather, rinse, repeat. Do it all over again for the second pass through the oil. Use enough oil so the spuds have a lot of room to move around, do NOT crowd the pot. Also, do not over-fill the pot with oil, remember that the spuds will displace the oil and the steam boiling out will create bubbels, which will further raise the level. I generally suggest not starting with more than half a pot of oil.

I use peanut oil or canola oil. Any high smoke-point oil will work. If you don't overheat the oil, you can reuse it. Once it's cool, run it through a filter to remove the bits. I use standard cone-shaped coffee filters that I first soak in water (the water wets the fibers, keeping the oil from doing the same and slowing down the drainage ... another tech-tip from my Grandfather). Store in the bottle you bought it in. It'll last longer in the fridge. I can usually manage several uses before it starts breaking down.

jake Silver badge

Re: In 1999 the Internet was thirty years old

"I believe that the first packets were exchanged within a year or two of that date."

Here's a picture of the specific page of the log:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/First-arpanet-imp-log.jpg

jake Silver badge

Re: Ahead of its time?

That was in 1990 ...

As a side note, Tony & Alba's still exists. You can still order over the Internet. They make good food, at a good price. But then, if you live within delivery distance you probably already know this ... Well worth patronizing if you ever visit near any of their locations. Highly recommended.

jake Silver badge

Re: Sales

That's an awful lot of unnecessary typing. Script it.

jake Silver badge

Re: WORST. PIZZA. EVER.

For you puzzled Brits: "Canadian Bacon" is a Yank term for a lean cut of back bacon, most often the tenderloin. It is usually wet cured & smoked, and is more like a city ham than actual bacon. The term is almost never used north of the 49th parallel. It is an excellent pizza topping, if you can find a properly made version. (Hint: National brands aren't properly made.)

I wouldn't feed Pizza Hut pizza to my hogs. Narsty, narsty stuff. Barely half a step above that abomination known as Domino's.

jake Silver badge

Re: In 1999 the Internet was thirty years old

Perhaps you believe that The Grand Canyon didn't exist before the U.S. Congress officially established Grand Canyon National Park in 1919?

We called the ARPANET "the internet" at least by 1970, mainly because it had become an internet ... By 1974, the word "Internet" was even ratified in the RFCs ... See Cerf & Kahn's take on the subject in RFC-675 ... and note that the research (read "bullshit sessions") that resulted in RFC-675 started several years earlier. The name was already embedded in the collective psyche by then.

Even if you take 1974 as "the date", it was still 25 years old by 1999, which is well over half the age that it is now.

Regardless, 1999 was hardly the "early days", now was it?

jake Silver badge

Re: A real pizza

What the fuck does Naples have to do with it?

Or have you bought into the bullshit that Naples was the first place that someone put food on top of a slab of dough and cooked it in an oven? Native Americans were doing that very thing over 4,000 years ago. So were the Egyptian pyramid builders.

jake Silver badge

Re: Pineapple good. Pepperoni bad.

"peperoncini, which are hot chilli peppers"

For very, very small values of "hot".

Pepperoni is New York/New Jersey Italian immigrants making dry sausage with the ingredients they had available, but to Grandma's recipe. They probably didn't think much of the end result, either, but as a dry-cured sausage it was meat preserved for lean times. Which was the point. As is usually the case, the recipe was modified over time, and now there are some very edible varietals. None of these are mass-produced, though, and you are highly unlikely to find an edible version on a pizza in Europe. Or in Blighty, for that matter.

jake Silver badge

Re: "Hopefully he also added a bit of text along the lines"

No, the ~ represents a shortcut to your home directory. Try echo ~ then su to some other user and echo ~ again. So basically, cd ~ switches you to the home directory of the current login, regardless of where in the directory structure you issue the command.

A sometimes useful option for admins is cd ~username, which changes to username's home directory from anywhere in the directory structure.

jake Silver badge

Re: WORST. PIZZA. EVER.

Early days? In 1999 the Internet was thirty years old ...

jake Silver badge

Re: All the sugar, twice the caffeine ...

Starting in the mid 1980s, most of Silly Con Valley was built on Pizza (any variety, as long as someone else was paying) and either Jolt or DrPepper, with a few Sprite holdouts. Coke and Pepsi didn't even get an honorable mention.

This hurts a ton-80: British darts champ knocked out of home tourney by lousy internet connection

jake Silver badge

Re: Home tournament?

To be fair, there are many possible games playable on a standard darts board.

A paper clip, a spool of phone wire and a recalcitrant RS-232 line: Going MacGyver in the wonderful world of hotel IT

jake Silver badge

Re: Common use machines should always use pigtail extension leads for USB

I still own and operate half a dozen of Microsoft's 1987 "Dove Soap" mouses/meese/whatever. To my hand, they are the best two button mouse ever made. It's pretty sad, when you think about it, that the world's largest software company has only made one decent product in it's entire history ... and it's a bit of peripheral hardware for an interface that has been depreciated.

jake Silver badge

Re: Proper lash up

"The "permanent” fix was to rub the male ferrule with 6B pencil lead."

Graphite wasn't an option ... we were often fishing for Steelhead in salt water and needed the grease for a little protection from corrosion.

jake Silver badge

Re: I remember things differently ...

That and the Lucas electrical ...

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