Posts by CrazyOldCatMan 6355 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Oct 2015
Even a stopped clock ...
The good old Italian[1] phrase "punto e basta" springs to mind..
[1] My dad worked for an Italian phrama company from 1969 until about 2005. He spoke fluent Italian (and Hebrew, some Hindi and some Russia) with a pronounced MIlan accent. That phrase was one of his favourites. And it has nothing to do with Fiat cars..
Still think 'runlevels' are a thing that sounded like a good idea at the time though
And mostly were. They were pretty simple in essence - the runlevel is linked to how the machine is used.
Runlevel 1 is single-user (mostly used to fix badly broken stuff)
Runlevel 3 is normal server mode (no GUI)
Runlevel 5 is normal desktop mode (ie GUI + all the services needed).
Each runlevel inherits the stuff from the lower runlevels - so runlevel 5 includes all the stuff from runlevel 3.
Can you tell I used to use old Redhat a lot before discovering Mandrake? (Essentially Redhat+customisations). The only linux I use nowadays (other than proxmox for my VM server and what used to be called Astaro for my firewall) is devuan..
broadly used for a variety of grains
Mostly wheat if you were an aristocrat, since that was primarily eaten by the upper classes. Or barley if you were someone that actually grew it.. (barley bread and beer were consumed by the lower classes since they were cheap. The upper classes generally drank wine (well watered if you were a child).
.. running your own OwnCloud instance where you can insta-upload all your photos and videos once they are taken (you can also restrict it to just on wifi if you like). You can also back up your contacts - and any directory on your phone if you feel the need to..
.. unlike some of his contemporaries (I'm looking at you - E.E. Doc Smith). Re-reading his books as an adult really, really made me cringe..
As to Asimov - unlike a lot of his contemporaries, he wrote *serious* Sci-fi (as in Sci-fi that was believable) without getting bogged down by technology.
being told that your call is very important to them
And that "you can always use our app or website to check your balance or transfer money". Unless (of course) the reason that you are phoning is because the app/website/twitter channel are all lying on their backs wondering which particular slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick just hit them..
It all comes doen to resources. Do you have enough people on the phones to cope with unusual demand[1]? Well no, because most of the time they are not needed. So you staff with the minimum needed to cope with demand at 2am with the expectation that, if it's really serious, people *will* hang on for an hour or so. And, since all your competitors do it too, no-one is going to move just because of your really, really bad phone support.
[1] You know - the unusual demand that happens every morning when people try to phone up before they go to work.. Or in the evening when they try to phone up after work.
while keeping it underfunded
Unfortunately, the problem isn't just the underfunding of the NHS (and the chronic lack of staff due to working conditions and the loss of a lot of the staff of EU origin), it's also the chronic lack of funding of the secondary care systems that are provided by local councils - all of whom have had their budgets slashed massively because of Tory centralisation (which means the local governments get deprived of funds while still having the same responsibilities and costs).
So all the local nursing homes are no longer run by the councils but by for-profit organisations paid for by the council money - which wastes money since the for-profit organisation want to make money and so charge more than the old council did. Even so, they go out of business regularly, dumping old and vulnerable people out. Those people then end up in hospital (along with people who, in the old days, would have gone into a nursing home post-treatment but can't any more because the council can't afford it) taking up beds that are needed for incoming patients - who end up on trolleys in hospitals waiting for a bed.
The problem isn't always the funding for primary care - it's the funding for *all* the bits of the care system, including secondary and tertiary care. So any politician that talks about 'record levels of funding for healthcare' is either lying outright or (at best) disingenuous. A pox on the lot of them.
UK population who are overweight
Of which I'm definately not one - nor was I before I lost the 15kg last year. However, I do have complex health needs due to unfortunate genetics[1] - none of which are due to lifestyle.
[1] Sadly, you can't chose your parents. You can (however) decide to never have offspring and (fortunately) marry someone who doesn't want kids either..
men over 50 will be getting adverts for Viagra and hair dye
Adverts? Whats dem? Oh yes - those things you fast-forward through when you have to watch a recording from a channel that has them..
Another request - no GDPR exemptions based on the old chums/brown envelope network..
"improvement chairwoman Baroness Dido Harding,"
There's a strange combination of words if there ever was one.
Depends what the "improving" refers to. Her corporate masters' bank accounts? The amount of data all the shadowy 3rd-party companies behind the headline companies get?
How many times the system(s) involved get hacked/malwared/stolen?
the official flavour is cheese and onion
Ew! If you like eating something that tastes like satans jockstrap after a particularly vigourous burning (I imagine - I lack direct experience since satan is only a human imagination..) then feel free to eat cheese and onion crisps.
They probably wouldn't taste as bad if they actually tasted of cheese and onion. But they don't. They taste far, far, far worse.
Anyone that doesn't think that salt and vinegar is the One True Crisp Flavour (with the occasional nod to ready salted) is an evil unredeemed heretic and will burn in the bonfire of (crisp packet) vanities. So there!
(And I refuse to mention the utter abomination that is the cocktail made from 'shrimp'. Because even thinking about it imperils my utterly mortal soul.)
And one that will get you kicked out of any real-world tabletop RPG game..
Yes, it might be amusing to kill other players (or NPCs) for kicks *once* but doing it again and again because you are bored is going to get you ejected ASAP. As will continuously making sexist and racist jokes, especially after being explictly asked not to. And no, it's not "just a bit of fun".
Yes, I've played with people like that and, without fail, they have been kicked out after a few sessions.The sad thing is, they often cause other, good players to quit too.
spam fritters, anyone?
*Shudder*.
However, my wife (who when we met, hated the thought of sausages because "you never know what's in them") loves them. And sometimes (when I'm away) fries spam to have in a sandwich.
For someone of usually impeccable taste[1] it's extremely odd.
[1] Her other major lapse was, of course, marrying me. Still, I'm not complaining!
you're aiming for that 100% assured fatality rate
Ah - you've met my wife then? She might only be 5' 2" but she has a death stare that would kill an enraged water buffalo..
Surprisingly, I'm still alive after being married to her for 32 years. She must be waiting for me to hit pension age before bumping me off..
But your wok has to be HOT
*Most* wok cooking (or at least, wok stir-frying) should be done with a very hot wok. Otherwise the stuff steams rather than fries.
Which is why induction hobs are a bad idea for wok cooking - it doesn't heat the lower sides of the wok properly so, as you move the food around in the wok, it comes into contact with the cooler sides and doesn't cook properly.
sprouts can be made tasty is to deep fry them in bacon fat
Au contraire - slicing them finely and flash-frying them with bacon strips (and, optionally, mushrooms) makes them quite tasty.
I do admit to eating them cooked normally though. Where 'normally' equates to 'cooking them so they stay al dente'.
Unlike parsnips/turnips/cabbage etc. Which should only ever be fed to food.
and the pizza skids across the floor
In my house the 5-second rule definately doesn't apply - usually because .25 of a second after the food hits the floor[1] there's usually a canine or feline head investigating it..
And no, I'm not going to pick it up and just try and cut of the dog-slobbered bit. I'm not *that* desperate.
[1] Even the stuff that dogs shouldn't eat. Making a bread pub and a bit of the batter (containing raisins - a definate no-no for dogs) dropped on the floor. One blur of black-and-tan later and Hey Presto! - clean(ish) floor.. Fortunately, said dog appeared to suffer no ill effects from the 1-2 small dried grapes..
Inductive chargers are terribly inefficient
Hopefully they can minimise some of the efficiencies by only having the charging circuit active when a device is detected.. It won't solve the inefficiency of the actual charging process but at least they won't waste power when there's no device present..
something in the GUI that adds gravity to icons that shouldn't be clicked
I'm still convinced that a GUI is just a device to force proper console sysadmins out of a job - only to be raised by someone from the point 'n drool generation.
But then, I'm old and proper computers in my day *had* to be controlled via the CLI. Even improper machines like the old BT on-premise PABX. (can't remember the name - they had an insanely complex set of command line commands that even a hardened unix sysadmin (let alone me) would have a job remembering..)
I once had a 350mile round trip because someone in our support department clicked "shutdown"
When I was last herding Slowlaris boxes I managed to get my employer to spring for a remotely-controlled power/serial switch[1] box (you used telnet to get in - that tells you how long ago it was..). They were spiffy - especially when one of my colleagues regularly would forget the -r parameter on the shutdown command..
[1] Each box had their power and serial console lines router via the box. Was especially useful when the box froze as the power box had a reasonable buffer for the serial console and you could often tell what had caused the box to freeze. And then power-cycle it remotely.
I also had a cat shut down a consumer grade small UPS
And I've had one shut down a consumer grade 24-port gigabit switch - turns out that cat vomit really, really doesn't help electronic devices maintain full functionality..
Which is why my home computer room has a pet-gate across the door - it's high enough that only the young, agile cats (ie the non-vomiting ones) can get in. Which greatly annoys the senior female cat since she requires access to all parts of her domain. Since it was she who supplied the vomit, I'm not about to relent.
I called mine "percyguards" - percy was a cat
We have a BrackenGuard over the gas controls on our gas hob - Bracken being one of the first generation[1] of cats we had that, on several occasions, managed to turn on one of the hob gas taps..
It didn't help that the hob doesn't have an auto-igniter. Said BrackenGuard is an old rectangular lidless tin that sits, upside-down, over the gas taps.
[1] Died at least 13 years ago and none of our current generation of cats ever walk over that area. However, my wife (being a professional paranoiac about home accidents) still requires that we use the guard. Next gas[2] hob will probably also require one.
[2] Don't like ceramic or induction hobs because they don't apply heat to the sides of a wok like a proper gas flame does.
Actually - 'dove' *is* the correct English past tense of 'to dive' Just like 'shone' is the correct past-tense of 'to shine' rather than the dreadful 'shined' that most young authors seem to use nowadays..
(I would quibble about the "dove up to" - surely is should be "dove down to"?)
that sounds suspiciously like most of the UK citizenry
Well, you can't be best frenemies for 1500-ish years (with the emphasis on the 'enemy' bit for most of that time - up to 1970-ish) without gaining a fair number of shared characteristics..
And the Bretons are just the Cornish who could swim :-)
(Kernow bys vikken!)
whilst the company destroys itself by the obvious cost cutting due to synergies
And, lets not forget, the merger/VC favourite of financing the merger with a huge and unsustainable debt load. Which means that the merged company will (almost) inevitably go under as it can't service the debt.
But Icahn and his predatory ilk will have long since parted company, having obtained their blood money.
Can you tell I'm not a fan?
That was inevitable as soon as Blair decided that he wanted 50% of youngsters to go to University
And the Universities obliged by generating all sorts of vanity degrees that had no real-world application..
I hope that prospective students are now savvy enough to look at the post-degree employment stats for their chosen degree *before* they start generating huge costs for themselves that they'll be paying back over the next 25 years of employment..
so how many of these devices are going to end up in landfill?
In this country - not many. Most will go for proper WEEE disposal during which anything useful/salvagable will get recovered..
(Assuming that it gets taken to the dump of course - if someone just puts it in their general rubbish it may well end up in landfill)
Tech *which works*, yes
And by 'which works' means (for me) tech that *I* can manage/admin/repair. Of course, all technology has a lifespan and sometimes it's better to move on (which is why my current SSD-based home VM server is sat on top of an old Dell 2950 server that predeced it..).
But simply going for something that has a fundamental impact on my life without thinking about the fact that someone else controls the utility and lifespan of it (and is using your information as something to gain them extra revenue) - nah. Not for me.
My parents can just about manage Facebook and they're only in their 60's. The people in their 80's aren't online, in general
I'm mid-50's and have been doing technology since I was 12. I might not be hip and savvy with the latest sochuul meeja trends[1] but I can tech better than any 20-year old that I know.
The pain and limited mobility I know all about having had psoriatic arthritis for the last 25 years. Doesn't stop me doing tech although I sometimes need help moving heavier things.
[1] Which I'm really, really not sorry about since most of it seems utterly shallow and vapid. I'd rather read a book (or watch Digging For Britain)
mains powered lights through dead, drying fuel full of accelerant?
No - LED lights on a low-voltage circuit wrapped around a living, bigger-each-year potted Christmas tree..
Which reminds me - time to bring it in to the utility room to let it get acclimatised to not being out in the frost before moving it into the warmest room in the house..
(I dislike the idea of killing a tree just to provide a spectacle and generating lots of waste. Even though it's a pain bringing the tree and pot in every years - especially as the pot gets heavier every year as the tree grows. I think that, over 31+ years of married life, we've only had 4 christmas trees - once they get too big to move around they get planted out - a friend of ours has a big garden and is always happy to add another tree since we don't have enough room for another one)
how are you turning your Christmas lights on this year?
By plugging them in when I/we are at home and unplugging them before we leave..(The Power That Is doesn't like unattended electronics being left on - especially non-essentials like Christmas lights. - to say that she's a tad paranoid about such things is an understatement. I think she imagines a whole series of unlikely events like the house burning down because of a single rogue LED..)
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