malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Sunday, March 23rd, 2025 06:40 am
My standard joke is usually "I can fix all your Windows problems with this install of Linux. Then you'll have Linux problems". Then I laugh maniacally.

I was doing a distro (distribution) upgrade going from Ubuntu Studio 22.04 to 24:04. I've done this with other versions of Ubuntu before and I've never had a serious issue. I have swapped graphics cards in this box moving from AMD to Nvidia so maybe I should backed up my data, wiped the disk and installed fresh.
But I've been tired lately so I just backed up my data and told Ubuntu to install the upgrade.

Now my dual monitor system is broken. I can still boot and get a display but it's not what I want and I can't seem to fix it. My system sees the correct card but won't install the correct driver. A little research suggests that I go to the command line (horrors!) and copy paste two commands to manually install the driver. This was late last night and I was too tired to fuss with it.

If worse comes to worse, I'll take a new disk, install fresh and transfer my files from my back ups. Although I'm not having any problems with my disk drive I considering a larger drive anyways.

UPDATE

Three command line commands. I copy pasted them off the Internet. First to check it was correctly identifying my graphics card (yes), second to auto install driver (told me the drivers were already install - fail), third to install the specific recommended driver (worked).

Reboot and I have the correct Nvidia drivers! I had to do a few tweaks and a few reboots to set them in place and my dual monitor system is working again!
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malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Thursday, March 20th, 2025 07:12 am
In my morning walk I saw a skunk. It was a biggie. Of course, half of it was tail but still, it was impressive.

It might have been the skunk I saw a few months ago but I don't know. We've always had skunks in the area. I just hope it's not a sign of a skunk explosion we had a few decades ago.
malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Monday, March 17th, 2025 07:10 am
"It is cheaper to feed you disinformation than it is to feed you and your family." - random Youtuber
malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Saturday, March 15th, 2025 06:14 pm
So I'm reading reports that American booze is being pulled from Canadian shelves. My drinking days are long over but I remember drinking American sh*t beer and for the Canadians to lose the ability to drink that swill, that's a plus for them.

And during Prohibition we used to accept Canadian whiskey - illegally but who cared? I'm sure their homegrown stuff is as good as the American booze. They'll be missing out on some fine wines but you can't win them all.

Go Canada!
malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Tuesday, March 11th, 2025 06:03 pm
In a post I made a while ago I compared many on the right - who worship Ayn Rand - not with her heroes but with her villains.

Someone agrees with me:

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/elon-musk-thinks-he-is-an-ayn-rand-hero-nope-one-of-her-villains-silicon-valley-thiel-andreessen

Although the poster - Paul Crider - ignores how rotten some of Rand's heroes could be, her villains are far worse and Crider uses Elon Musk as a prime example. While many of Rand's heroes struggled and worked their way up through their own hard work and merit, Musk was born into a rich family and bought his way up. He is a prime example of Rand's villain sucking on the government teat to become rich (Tesla and SpaceX subsidies). He is arrogant (not self-confident), bullying (not trading value for value) and a racist (aggrandizing himself merely because he's white). He's a moocher, a leech, a looter. Look at Twitter - changed from a well loved social media platform to a nest of haters and racists.

Don't kid yourselves - D.O.G.E. is just a facade for turning the government upside down and shaking all the cash he can out of it. He'll do it by cutting aid to hungry kids and people who need medicine. He is a villain.

Update: I read of lot of Ayn Rand when I was a teen. I grew out of it.
malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Sunday, March 9th, 2025 11:20 pm
The creator of the "Trump Gaza" video speaks! It's a parody!

Via the BBC:

https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cdrxkm6r856o
malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Sunday, March 9th, 2025 11:50 am
I've been able to shepherd my characters through most of the story and keep it on track but as I'm building up to Big Battle 1 where fists fly and blood is spilled (there's be a lesser Battle 2 but there's no fighting) the main characters want to take a leisurely day off to have sex.

Guys, I know it's in the plot for this to happen but I'm trying to keep the momentum mounting, not slowing down!

Just as an aside, there's a fair amount of sex going on but after the first kiss I skip to the characters getting dressed.

I get a big dig at religion too but that's for another post.

This is no YA book!
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malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Saturday, March 8th, 2025 11:53 am
Earlier in the week I decided to cook up lasagna for my housemate's mom's birthday. Now, I usually go shopping very early in the morning: fewer people, less traffic. This does mean I'm shopping soon after I wake up with no breakfast or coffee. This leads to occasionally not so bright decisions.

Since I wanted to make lasagna with lasagna noodles instead of the egg noodles I usually use, I didn't know how many packages to pick up. I got two. And since it been a while since I made it I bought extra sauce. And the meat? They didn't have the two pound package I usually use so I got the closest one at three pounds.

Cheese? Oh, lots. You can never have enough cheese.

It wasn't until I was boiling up the pasta that I realized I had a lot of pasta. A LOT of pasta. Usually I just keep making pan after pad until I run out of something. It wasn't going to be pasta. Same with the sauce - way too much sauce. Meat? Oh yeah I had a lot of meat and it was going to be glorious. Cheese? Honestly? I could have used more!

And while I was cooking up a storm I felt this little, satisfied smile on my face. It's that smile I get when I'm doing something constructive and I know it's going to turn out okay.

So I' ended up with three pans of meaty lasagna and one pan of cheese lasagna. They're out of the oven and cooling right now. Two pans will to Momma's tomorrow and the others will go in the freezer. And I have left over pasta: enough to make two more pans, easily. The sauce was still in jars so they'll keep. I ran out of meat and cheese. It looks like I'll have to buy more meat and cheese and make another batch of lasagna next Friday when I'm off from work.

I'm not really seeing a downside to this.

.
malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Friday, March 7th, 2025 08:50 am
StarShip goes BOOM again!

Elon said de-orbit the International Space Station and said, "Let's go to Mars."

Dude, you can't even get to orbit.

Space is hard, I get that. But dude, you suck. You've ruined X/Twitter, you bought into Tesla and ruined that with Cybertruck, and you're ruining SpaceX with StarShip.

You're ruining the government by random firings and lying about the savings you're (not) getting.

You can't spell FELON without ELON.
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malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Friday, March 7th, 2025 07:25 am
I'm not much of a flag waver. I put out the American flag on the Fourth of July, Veteran's Day, Memorial Day and Voting day. But wonder if I should switch it out for something else.

Right now I'm sort of torn between the Ukrainian flag and the Canadian flag - just to show who's side I'm on.
malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Tuesday, March 4th, 2025 07:51 am
I'm weirded out.

The garbage can that went missing has returned. It was placed by my side door.

I need to talk to my neighbor. I wonder if she found it blown down the street and saved it for me.
malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Tuesday, February 25th, 2025 06:02 pm
President Musk is getting a contract to fix the FAA!

Maybe he'll put in all the care he puts into his rockets!

Hindenburg anybody?

'Nuff said.
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malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Tuesday, February 25th, 2025 07:43 am
An AI (LLM) video of tRump kissing Elon Musk feet was seen broadcasting inside the TV screens in headquarters of HUD.

We know this is AI because in the video, Elon has two right feet.

Everyone knows Elon has two left feet.
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malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Tuesday, February 25th, 2025 07:15 am
To our old allies, I have a few words:

The United States is sick.

America has turned into the Sick Old Man: cranky, mean, losing it's memory. It is looking back at an imagined Golden (Gilded?) Age when Rich White Men were Rich White Men, women stayed in the kitchen (and worked) and brown people either didn't exist or were happy just to step and fetch.

America is no longer the beacon of freedom but a cesspool of corruption, greed and lies. We're sleeping with the autocrats and dictators and waking up with delusions.

You can't rely on us.

You're going to have to put on your adult pants and figure out how to move forward towards liberty and justice without us. For many of us Americans, we're at the bedside trying to nurse our country back to health but like a drunkard recovering from a car crash, there's been a lot of damage done and they still want another bottle and the keys to another car.

I can't say how long the sickness will last. Maybe after the leopards have eaten enough faces will the fever break. In the meantime, good luck.
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malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Saturday, February 22nd, 2025 08:12 pm
There's a lot of blather about the United States being a 'Christian" nation because all of its founding colonists were Christians.

This is a lot of nonsense.

First off, they were all illegal aliens. The Native Americans (what was left of them after smallpox and other imported illnesses destroyed them) did not invite the invasion of unwanted Europeans coming to their lands.

Second, many of the much ballyhooed immigrants were heretics in the lands they came from. Pilgrims? Heretics! Puritans? Heretics! Quakers? Heretics! Unitarians? Heretics! Anabaptists? Heretics! As one comic said, they'd all been thrown out of every decent country in Europe. They were all viewed as heretics.

Third, a number of the people who came to America were 'indentured servants'. That's the term used in most high school textbooks. They were convicts. Criminals. They were kept in old ships in London harbor since the jails were filled up. Eventually they were condemned to transport to the colonies and forced to work with minimum wages for seven years. And no, they didn't get to return home afterwards. After the Revolutionary War, England was forced to turn to Australia to dump their criminals.

Illegal aliens, heretics and criminals. That is what America was founded on.
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malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Thursday, February 20th, 2025 07:37 am
It was the first year or two after we moved into the neighborhood that someone stole my garbage can.

Really.

We bag all the weekly trash into one bag which goes into the can. We put it out at night. In the morning someone had pulled out the bag and absconded with the can and lid.

Weird.

Then next can I bought I painted my street address on both the can and lid. This was helpful a week ago when the wind took the lid and it ended up in a neighbor's yard. To prevent this happening again I drilled some holes so I could attach a bungee cord so the lid and can would stay together.

It was stolen the next time it went out. Lid, can, bungee cord - with the street address still painted on it.

What strikes me as really weird is I think the actually cased it first. I put the can out at night. That morning I left early and notice that the lid had been taken off. Had someone inspected it first before plundering it?

Yeah they stole my garbage can. Weird. At least it lasted about two decades before being stolen.
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malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Monday, February 17th, 2025 06:18 pm
Part of a post from (retch) Xitter:

------

Secretary Sean Duffy
[profile] secduffy

America deserves safe, state-of-the-art air travel, and President Trump has ordered that I deliver a new, world-class air traffic control system that will be the envy of the world.

To do that, I need advice from the brightest minds in America.

I’m asking for help from any high-tech American developer or company that is willing to give back to our country.

------

Yeah, first they fire union employees who already *know* the system and have complained about problems _for years_ about the equipment them have and the personnel they don't have.

Then Duffy asks for help from "any high tech American developer or company that is willing to give back to our country."

Translation: we want free stuff and free solutions. This is _air traffic control_. Computers? Yes, but radios, radar and people trained on using the equipment. You can't fix this with blockchain, A.I. or meme coin. I can see Musk's incel DOGEbros screwing this up massively.

It's going to take _money_. It's going to take _people_.

Forget air travel. It's going to get *dangerous* real soon, especially if seasoned staff decides to walk off the job before they get fired.
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malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Thursday, February 13th, 2025 07:44 am
After raging about how terrible electric cars are, it looks like tRump's state department is buying 400 million dollars worth of 'armored Teslas'.

The jokes, they write themselves.

Note to stupid people: electric cars are designed to be lighter than internal combustion vehicles. Armoring them would seriously degrade their performance. And I'm not sure what happens when lithium ion batteries get peppered with bullets but I'm betting it's no a good thing.

Safe prediction: none of these vehicles will see any combat. They'll be jazzed up a little bit - maybe a coat of camo paint - and used tRump's toadies to zoom around in.

All to line Elon's pocket with tax payer's money.
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malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Tuesday, February 11th, 2025 07:40 am
There's an old saying in computing: garbage in, garbage out. Most AIs are simply sampling programs with fancy algorithms attached to re-stitch things back together. Right now, the Large Language Models have thousands of years of human experience and culture to mess with. Then they can generate far greater quantities of 'product' in minuted than any poet, painter or musician could several lifetimes.

The problem I see is what happens when they run out of human input and start sampling 'AI' 'product'. It has to start happening soon as places like the internet is being flooded with 'AI' content. With deep fake audio, video, images being created - how is the 'AI' supposed to distinguish between human and artificial 'product'? Will there be a feedback loop until the only thing left will be 'AI' product being sampled by other 'AI's to create more 'AI' product? Will everything soon degenerate into the 'gray ooze' of 'product'?

Garbage in, garbage out.
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malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
Tuesday, February 4th, 2025 07:11 am
Still sick, coughing up gunk, but decided on a short walk this morning. While walking by a second of metal fencing that come right up to the sidewalk I suddenly came across a small skunk. I just stopped in my tracks as it was 3 feet away from me. It noticed me and slowly trotted away. Smelling skunks in our area is common - actually seeing them is rarer.

No harm no foul and no stinky.
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