malada

I'm still figuring out how to do this. Timing seems critical: I don't go to bed early enough I might miss the first 'dead sleep' and either not sleep at all for several hours or return to my 'normal' sleep pattern where I *don't* spend an hour and a half awake before dropping into 'second sleep'. The second sleep is much lighter and I wake up every hour or so but quickly drop back to sleep. It's annoying especially since my body wants to do another 'deep sleep' around 6 AM.

The storm wasn't too bad locally but my arms are still sore from shoveling.

Doing a deeper dive in Haiku OS. I'm going to have to try out some of my more powerful systems rather than the potatoes I've loaded it up in - I can see that the OS is struggling with multi media (video) programs. Still in beta - it's an interesting operating system.

-m

I won’t arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
I’ll sanitize the doorknob and make a cup of tea.
I won’t go down to the sea again; I won’t go out at all,
I’ll wander lonely as a cloud from the kitchen to the hall.
There’s a green-eyed yellow monster to the north of Katmandu
But I shan’t be seeing him just yet and nor, I think, will you.
While the dawn comes up like thunder on the road to Mandalay
I’ll make my bit of supper and eat it off a tray.
I shall not speed my bonnie boat across the sea to Skye
Or take the rolling English road from Birmingham to Rye.
About the woodland, just right now, I am not free to go
To see the Keep Out posters or the cherry hung with snow,
And no, I won’t be traveling much, within the realms of gold,
Or get me to Milford Haven. All that’s been put on hold.
Give me your hands, I shan’t request, albeit we are friends
Nor come within a mile of you, until this s**t show ends.

(author unknown)

From the New York Daily News:

"Former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin swore on Sunday she would only get vaccinated against COVID-19 “over my dead body.”"

Please proceed, Sarah.

-m

Co-worker: Ack! I have COVID! My wife and baby are okay but I'm working remotely... when I can.

Boss (to coworker): Please take care of yourselfT

Boss (to me): Are you working at home today?

Me: I'm already in the office.

Boss: You should go home and work there.

Me: Since I'm already here I'll do what I can then go home. Is this a 'work a few days at home' or a full 'bug-out until the Plague is gone'?

Boss: Let's try a week and see how that goes.


So I'll be working from home again... where the coffee is better and naps are allowed.

I'm not too worried - everyone at work is masked, socially distanced and vaccinated. Most have had booster shots. Okay, I'm a little worried as all the hospitals locally are full.

-m

I have books. In bookshelves. Some books I've read, some books I haven't. So... reading those I haven't and seeing if they're keepers.

"Hitler's Spies - German Military Intelligence in World War II" by David Kahn was plucked from the shelves because it was the biggest book and I needed the room. Kahn's research looks into the very convoluted and messy group of agencies that were used by the German military starting at the end of World War I. It covered a vast array of intelligence gathering from spies, aerial snooping. radio intercepts - really the whole field of intelligence. Time and again, the author points out that intelligence gathering was the sickly stepchild of the German military, always underfunded and understaffed, was increasingly staffed with Nazi party members instead of talented professionals, and were split up into competing agencies that rarely shared data. Reality was frequently disregarded if it conflicted with Nazi ideals or would upset the grand puppet master: Adolf Hitler.

Sure, they had ENIGMA - but the Allies broke ENIGMA. Rarely did the the Nazi break any of Allies codes.

Underfunded, inept, ignored, the many Nazi intelligence agencies fought more amongst each other than they did against the Allies.

Well, one book down... lots more to go.

-m

When I first heard of the Gay Republicans forming their own group, I had some small hope for the Republican party.

That was many moons ago. They were a pitiful group then, they're an even more pitiful group now.

After being (insert rude saying here)... well, being badly treated by most Republicans and Trump in particular, they go and shell out money (how much is not reported) to have a big party down in Mar-a-Lago - you know, Trump's resort - to hand out a plastic trophy to Trump's trophy wife and fawn over her.

Do you really expect the Trumps would agree to such a thing if they weren't being *paid* for it?

The most glamorous first lady ever? Seriously? I don't care... do U? Christmas layouts like a Red Wedding? Her outreach too... oh, I give up.

I don't know how low people will to go to get their tax cuts but the whole 'fiscally conservative' stance is sheer nonsense. Face it folks - you're not wanted in the GOP. You may be rich, you may be white, you may even be a gun totting NRA member, but the GOP is strictly a Straights only party. They'll take your money, they'll take your fawning, but you'll never *be* one of them.

They'll use you and abuse you and drop you like a rent boy when they're done with you. That's what fascists do.

-m

An extra hour of Not Doing Much of Anything is good. The booster is still making me tired and achy but all in all I'm okay.

The Haiku install on my lappy went surprisingly well... but it can't see the Internet. I tried it on a Pentium 4 desktop and it was crash city. Maybe the next beta will work better. Still... an interesting looking OS.

Last night I booted up my capture computer and discovered the CMOS battery had died. That's fair enough - the Dell Opiplex dates back to 2005. After replacing the button battery I discovered the disk drive was hosed. Well... refurbished HD... you expect trouble. So I swapped in another hard drive that I had installed Linux Mint on... ah... awhile ago?

So it wanted to do updates. No problem. Then it wanted to do an upgrade! Yeah, sure. And more updates! Since it has a standard SATA drive and not a zippy SSD all this took longer than I expected. Reinstall the NVidia drivers... and it wants to do another upgrade!

Yeah, not now.

I have to admit... the Optiplex 745 has done yeoman duties for me. After upgrading the BIOS I was able to install a Core 2 Duo and 8 gigs of memory. I also discovered that you can install a Q6600 processor giving you 4 cores... but it's not on the recommended list. It's not a high end gaming rig by any means but hey, it still works, works fairly well and has not been sent to the dump.

-m

It was pretty dreary weather wise so we didn't get a lot of people at our door. I wore a mask when handing out treats. This prompted one girl from a trio of witches to ask, "Why are you wearing a mask?"

One of the other little witches replied, "Because she wants to be safe!"

Sometimes, the kids are alright.

-m

Our kitchen has really weird lighting: fluorescent tube fixtures mounted onto the ceiling with a grid of clear plastic panels covering them. As the years have gone by the fixtures have failed one by one. Or mostly failed.

They're wired weird too... I can easily describe it... but there must be some four conductor wire in there so every other light is controlled by a different switch.

At last, tired of darkness and dead lights, me and my housemate wrestled one of the fixtures out - well, I did most of the wrestling up on the ladder while they handed me tools and used the flashlight - and replaced one dead fixture with an LED light. It took a few hours as the mounting holes were different and I had to cobble together a different mounting system. There were new fancy wire connectors that I've never seen before and it took me a while to figure out how they worked.

It throws *a lot* more light.

If I had the budget I'd have some professionals come in and tear the kitchen down to the original plaster and lathe. I'd leave the old plaster alone - just put up new plaster board, fix the lighting, replace the cabinets, rearrange the fridge and stove, and put in a proper vent. I swear, every time something goes wrong I have to fix the mess the former owners made when they remodeled.

I'll leave the hardwood floor alone. It's dinged and scarred but it's oak and it has character. They originally covered it with linoleum.... and then a shag rug. That was awful to take up but well worth the effort.

-m

Specifically, some people are being way to optimistic with the falling numbers of COVID deaths.

It's this simple, folks: we're still fighting a highly contagious variant, people are *still* resisting vaccines so we're no where near herd immunity and we're going into the winter season where people will be spending more time indoors where the chance of contagion is higher.

I would not be surprised to see more hospital ICUs buckling under the strain, more *children* dying from COVID and the total deaths to exceed 1 million in the United States within six months.

Stay masked, wash your hands, be careful out there. And if you're not vaccinated WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

-m