Even though it was announced in June, I only just learned Kaspersky software is no longer available for purchase in the United States. I’ve had Kaspersky Internet or Total Security for as long as I have been in the book writing business.
How I learned this? My subscription, which I buy through Amazon so to save money, is up in 95 days and I usually buy ahead of time. I went to Amazon and the page didn’t exist anymore nor did any other Kaspersky page. A little further digging by me and I found out why.
I’m probably going back to Bitdefender. Back around 2017 or 2018, I used BF for my non-business computer* but switched back to Kaspersky after a year.
Another PC related thing. Within a month I’ll buy a top of the line laptop for my book writing. The laptop I have now is 7 years old, uses Windows 10 and can’t be upgraded to Windows 11.
Yesterday I went to the cardiologist. I have a bundle branch. We also talked about my kidney and pancreas issues. Dr Borzak isn’t too concerned about my pancreas but my kidney worries him. The doctor I been referred to is supposed to be excellent but he doesn’t have an appointment till October 17. He is away or whatever.
Dr Borzak thinks I will need to have some form of surgery. He said kidney needle biopsies can result in false negatives but this other doctor will advise what is best. While kidney disease isn’t his field, Dr. Borzak seems well informed and we had a good talk.
* My subscription for this PC runs out in 69 days. As it does for a 3rd PC I have.
“There is not one rule for friends and another for foes, one rule for the powerful and another for the powerless, one rule for the rich and another for the poor, one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans, or different rules depending on one’s race or ethnicity,” the attorney general said.
This is just patently untrue. If it was true, Donald John Trump would be sitting in a prison right now.
Former long-shot presidential candidate Marianne Williamson expressed her belief in a conspiracy theory spread by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance about Haitian immigrants.
Can somebody with more technological skills than myself tell me when Ozark last posted? I feel like he’s been gone a long time, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t been able to keep up with all the threads!
In the reality show that has been the presidential candidate debate for the last quarter decade, Trump has the memes. Many images, but now the songs are coming out.. Had a kind of poetry to it.
“Lee said she never imagined her post would become fodder for conspiracy theories and hate. “I’m not a racist,” she said through heavy emotion, adding that her daughter is half Black and she herself is mixed race and a member of the LGBTQ community. “Everybody seems to be turning it into that, and that was not my intent.””
I mean, what the *bleepity bleeping bleep* did she think might happen???
I commented a couple of days ago about my family experience with cat eating. No one eats cats by choice. It is in no one’s culinary tradition. If cats are being eaten, then there is real human suffering and desperation behind it. People do that when their existence is being deeply threatened. Politicians are supposed to be working to improve the lives of their constituents. Why is Vance treating hunger and despair in his state as an opportunity for denigrating a community? It is plainly a moral failing on his part.
Perhaps, I can make this clear to you, JD. I grew up in the Midwest. Poor people from Appalachia were calumnized as toothless illiterates who drank moonshine, engaged in incest, and ate squirrels and raccoons. This was wrong wouldn’t you agree, JD? It was wrong to stigmatize your community; it is wrong to stigmatize other people, too.
Mr. Trump has been rich all of his life. Hunger and need are things he does not understand. All mouth, all sated appetite, and no empathy.
@Not the IT Dept.: The whole story is just so flimsy and stupid.
You know when you eat cats? When your country has failed and it’s burning down around you and you would literally starve if you didn’t eat a cat.
You know when you don’t eat cats? When you can go to the damn grocery store down the street and buy food there.
Nobody who has fled Haiti’s abysmal situation is going to be trapping their neighbor’s pets for food. It’s just ludicrous to even suggest they would. And yet, one candidate for the most powerful office in the world is amplifying this utter racist nonsense.
@Jax: I was wondering the same thing recently. You can restrict a google search to a specific site by prepending “site:” to the search string, and googling “site:outsidethebeltway.com OzarkHillbilly” shows his last post as August 28th (man I just started feeling like a stalker … nevertheless, onward!).
Hopefully all is well. I don’t know if his son (and his family) still lives here in New Orleans but we did just have a (thankfully minor for us) hurricane blow through.
No one eats cats by choice. It is in no one’s culinary tradition.
Lion steaks (löwensteak), while uncommon, are a thing in German cuisine, but as Trump demonstrates, the Germans have not been sending us their best. ;3
@Jon: They’re wondering where he is at Balloon Juice as well. One of the commenters has his info and emailed him yesterday, hopefully there’s some update soon.
According to Microsoft, I need to perform surgery on the registry, then remove OneDrive, then reinstall it, so it might possibly maybe work.
Seriously, setting up a new computer is always a PITA, but at least you have a new PC that will run great for a while and all. That’s not the same when you’re setting up an old computer again…
@Mikey: @Jon: Thanks, hopefully he’s just off visiting family or on an adventure….usually he lets us know, though. Update me if they hear anything from him over there at Balloon Juice, please!
On Smerconish today, one of the assertions was that mailed-in ballots cause delay in reporting election results.
How does that square with the assertion by SoS of Ohio that the first (Ohio) results reported are the mailed-in ballots?
The other bizarre assertion(made by the Kansas SoS) is that in Kansas, ballots that arrive BEFORE election day, but do not have a USPS postmark are rejected.
@Bobert: if they were dropped in ballot drop boxes or were handed in in person, they won’t have a postmark. So does this mean that perfectly valid ways of returning your ballot are being rejected?
@Jax: I recall, vaguely, Ozark talking about a significant caving trip coming soon a while back. I’m misanthropic enough that I don’t keep track of who’s present or absent, though.
Without checking his old posts I think that he has mentioned Salem and Cuba and St. James as towns he may be near. I think he has mentioned Franklin county.
Morbid fvck that I am I checked the obituaries for some of these locations the other day. I have no idea what his name is or what he looks like but I think he is about 8-10 years younger than me. Of course I came up with nothing.
@just nutha:
I’ve never been able to get a decisive answer to exactly what Ohio considered pre-processing.
And, you are correct, Ohio is one of several states that pre-process before election day.
It is concievable that Ohio, opens the outer envelope (the one that the USPS “sees”) and inspects the voter provided identification on the “security” envelope to check against the voter registration rolls. Having successfully done that, the election employee opens and removes the ballot and places it on a stack to be “counted” or cast at a later time. Alternatively, the ballot could be “cast” immediately and the results of these counted ballots be held secret until election day.
If the SoS of Ohio is accurate in his statement, I suspect that the later (ballots are cast and tallied) prior to election day maybe the actual practice.
One of the things that this practice avoids is the crush of activity that may be required on election day itself. Activity that I understand (from PA county election boards) requires that non-election employees be pressed into service to process these mailed-in ballots.
@just nutha: Several states have laws that they can’t start counting votes until Election Day.
It is idiotic. It was a fashionable law for Republicans about a decade ago when they realized that mail-in ballots favored Dems, so it built in a good way to question the results.
My Way. I was watching a video that compared and contrasted the Sid Vicious (Sex Pistols) and Shane MacGowan (The Pogues) cover versions of Frank Sinatra’s (Paul Anka wrote it specifically for him) of My Way.
Tl;Dr MacGowan is basically covering the Sid version, but with the original lyrics. The Vicious version is blatantly superior.
I was reading the comments and one really popped. This person gets it! I’m gonna give them a like. That’s an interesting take. I enjoyed that and it was enlightening.
It was on a comment I made two years ago….
In my defense, it was really bad-ass. Two-years ago me kinda rocked.
Mail ballots do slow things in Pennsylvania, but only because Republicans in the state legislature refuse to let the county election boards pre-canvas the mail ballots before election day.
IIRC Ozark lives in or near Sullivan, MO., checked the obits and no one that would be near his age, early 70’s and with his background has passed in the last month.
I do recall him talking about taking an extended trip.
In the reality show that has been the presidential candidate debate for the last quarter decade, Trump has the memes. Many images, but now the songs are coming out.. Had a kind of poetry to it.
Trump’s performances have a kind of Nuremburg Rally Spin Out poetry about them.
@Stormy Dragon:
Yes and I understand that the SoS and county election chiefs have been trying to get the
PA legislature to change that for some time.
However, you reference the term “pre-canvass” exactly what does that mean? Is it a complete processing of ballots, short of reporting results?.
It’s safe to say we all appreciate the concern, but it really isn’t any of our business. He can step away anytime for any reason
People drop in or out here at their pleasure. I truly understand the impulse to check in on folks, but unless you are his ICE or immediate family it’s really not your business.
If solid dude has indeed crossed the rainbow bridge I hope it was deep in a cave. Snuggled by earth.
Once, he shared that if push came to shove in re an undodgeable terminal diagnosis his plan was an epic swan dive off a cliff he knew in Mexico. That’s a valid exit I solidly approve of.
@ptfe:
One of those States is Pennsylvania. Voting integrity advocate have been pushing to change that policy for a long time. This year Democrats in the State’s House of Representative passed a bill to begin counting mail in ballots 7 days before the election.
To my knowledge it hasn’t passed the Republican controlled Senate. And PA Republicans have opposed the changes for years (largely because of the confusion created by the delay in results benefits Trump).
@Bobert:
Every state has different policies for when and how votes are counted. Likewise each State sets their own criteria for what constitutes a valid mail in vote (and what errors will disqualify a ballot).
Pre-canvasing means the process of verifying the ballot was submitted by a registered voter, the signature matches, that there is a valid date, etc.
That is, making sure they have a pile of “known good ballots” that can just be run through the scanner on election day instead of having to be individually verified
@Stormy Dragon: And Pennsylvania Republicans specifically banned this in 2020, knowing the mail-in ballots would skew Democratic, and the lengthy process starting on election day would create the false appearance of a big swing in votes that would assist Trump in creating the Big Lie. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Can someone tell me why printers today are just as shitty as they were 20 years ago?
Well, 20 years ago I has a basic HP Laserjet printer, black and white only. It was a workhorse, never failed, and good quality printing all the time. Lasted us many years. Then, we had an Epson color printer for a while, and it was quirky, especially if the color inkjet cartridges were running low (seemed very often even though we’re not intensive users). Got to be expensive to keep it running optimally. So, I’ve got another HP now and it’s B/W with a toner cartridge, and the simplicity suits us fine. Very reliable.
I think a problem is that printers are generally far less expensive than 20 years ago, but the companies now realize a big profit on operation and maintenance – i.e, inkjet and toner catridges, eco-tank refills etc.
Also, companies can’t resist messing with a good thing. So, making older printer models ‘obsolete’ so that we’ll buy newer models more frequently becomes the way. Kind of like the way Detroit decided to take a 60’s classic ca, like the Mustang or the Impala, and redesign them into oblivion.
@MarkedMan:
The Privy Council consists of all living current and former holders of ministerial office, current and former leaders of the two largest opposition parties in the Commons, current and former Archbishops of Canterbury, York and London, some senior judges and civil servants, and some members of the Royal Household.
Anybody with the formal rank of “Right Honorable”
It is not, itself, a decision making body.
But the Prime Minister is entitled to brief and consult any other members, and in particular key opposition politicians and former senior ministers, on “Privy Council Terms”, that is, on condition of absolute secrecy, with no minutes kept.
Even the process of consultation itself is secret, and usually gets noted only after the event, and informally. Such consultations are usually held on key issues of national security.
Given Westminster and Whitehall’s normal tendency to leak, it remains remarkably successfully secretive.
For instance, it is known that Tony Blair held meetings on Privy Council Terms with Ian Duncan Smith and Charles Kennedy regarding Iraq in 2003. The actual substance of those conversations is not known, and pretty certainly never will be.
In my un-humble opinion, it’s a stone cold certainty that both Johnson and Sunak held PCT meetings with Starmer, and most likely other former ministers, on the subject of Ukraine, from 2022 onward at least.
The positions of the leadership of all three major UK parties on Ukraine since Feb 2022 have been identical.
@Michael Reynolds: That’s not my experience with printers. Each printer I’ve owned was better than the previous one. Of course, the last printer I purchased (for ~$30 on clearance) is 8 years old and still on its first toner cartridge, so I may not be using my printers enough to reveal their weaknesses.
@Michael Reynolds: I currently have two dead printers that are waiting for me to re-enact the scene from Office Space.
One lasted almost 10 years, not bad except the last 8 were only because I manually fed it one sheet at a time, otherwise it would split one page over 2-3 sheets most of the time. The other printer lasted about 13 months, just beyond the warranty period. I only needed to print a couple things per week, so not heavy usage. I agree they’re still pieces of crap.
A very good friend of mine is in his very last days. Bone cancer, multiple sites. He will not make it to the end of the year. He is in great constant pain and is medicated to the gills. He has someone to check on him daily.
I ask after his health, but try not to make a big deal out of it. It is. My tactic is to get a genuine laugh out of him. Remember when we were on Scott’s boat on Lake Winnibigoshish and ….. ? Just a true laugh.
The cool thing is I only need like 4 stories and just rotate them because of his meds. He doesn’t really store new memories anymore.
My goal is to get him to truly laugh a few more times before he dies.
Because if it were easy it wouldn’t be called hardware?
My last personal printer was an HP inkjet over 15 years ago. That’s when it broke, I bought it earlier. Since I’m close to the office and our department has 7 laser copier/printers, 4 of them color, I do all my personal printing there. Of course, it doesn’t amount to more than a few dozen sheets per year.
That said, we’ve cycled over several such machines through the years. All of them had issues of some sort. Some are slow, some jam often, some require an expert to configure the sample labels, some are a major PITA for printing anything other than letter size paper, etc.
What I find really annoying over the last decade, is that all these machines display an alert when you open the cover to place something for copying/scanning on the cristal. The alert is “the cover is open.” WTF?
@JohnSF:
The oath taken by a Privy Councillor on induction:
You do swear by Almighty God to be a true and faithful Servant unto The King’s Majesty as one of His Majesty’s Privy Council.
You will not know or understand of any manner of thing to be attempted, done or
spoken against His Majesty’s Person, Honour, Crown or Dignity Royal, but you will lett and withstand the same to the uttermost of your power, and either cause it to be revealed to His Majesty Himself, or to such of His Privy Council as shall advertise His Majesty of the same.
You will in all things to be moved, treated and debated in Council, faithfully and truly declare your Mind and Opinion, according to your Heart and Conscience; and will keep secret all Matters committed and revealed unto you, or that shall be treated of secretly in Council.
And if any of the said Treaties or Counsels shall touch any of the Counsellors you will not
reveal it unto him but will keep the same until such time as, by the consent of His Majesty or of the Council, Publication shall be made thereof.
You will to your uttermost bear Faith and Allegiance to the King’s Majesty; and will assist and defend all civil and temporal Jurisdictions, Pre-eminences, and Authorities, granted to His Majesty and annexed to the Crown by Acts of Parliament, or otherwise, against all Foreign Princes, Persons, Prelates, States, or Potentates.
And generally in all things you will do as a faithful and true Servant ought to do to His Majesty
SO HELP YOU GOD.
The basic form of the oath dates to 1571.
(There’s also an affirmation version, for those unable to give an oath)
In addition the Ministers get the Oath of Allegiance and Oath of Office.
Oaths, we haz them.
I bought an entry level professional Brother printer about 6 years ago for our home office. We do a lot of printing and scanning – its been an absolute champ. Cost 7x as much as an el cheapo from Best Buy, totally worth it.
@de stijl: We worry about our regulars around here, just like you worry about your friend who’s dying. Some of us….OTB is all we have when we live in red states. I would mourn you if you died, even though I’ve never met you in person.
@JohnSF:
JohnSF, can you explain what this means?
More stuff
Even though it was announced in June, I only just learned Kaspersky software is no longer available for purchase in the United States. I’ve had Kaspersky Internet or Total Security for as long as I have been in the book writing business.
How I learned this? My subscription, which I buy through Amazon so to save money, is up in 95 days and I usually buy ahead of time. I went to Amazon and the page didn’t exist anymore nor did any other Kaspersky page. A little further digging by me and I found out why.
I’m probably going back to Bitdefender. Back around 2017 or 2018, I used BF for my non-business computer* but switched back to Kaspersky after a year.
Another PC related thing. Within a month I’ll buy a top of the line laptop for my book writing. The laptop I have now is 7 years old, uses Windows 10 and can’t be upgraded to Windows 11.
Yesterday I went to the cardiologist. I have a bundle branch. We also talked about my kidney and pancreas issues. Dr Borzak isn’t too concerned about my pancreas but my kidney worries him. The doctor I been referred to is supposed to be excellent but he doesn’t have an appointment till October 17. He is away or whatever.
Dr Borzak thinks I will need to have some form of surgery. He said kidney needle biopsies can result in false negatives but this other doctor will advise what is best. While kidney disease isn’t his field, Dr. Borzak seems well informed and we had a good talk.
* My subscription for this PC runs out in 69 days. As it does for a 3rd PC I have.
Here’s the Mythbusters traffic ep.
Past the shock wave traffic “myth,” I really appreciated the test of staying in one lane vs weaving in and out of lanes in heavy traffic.
This is just patently untrue. If it was true, Donald John Trump would be sitting in a prison right now.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/12/politics/garland-condemn-attacks-on-justice-department-speech/index.html
The “lefty woo merchant to fascist” pipeline is real:
‘Voodoo is real’: Ex-Dem candidate calls own party ‘elite jerks’ for dismissing pet hoax
@Kathy:..Mythbusters…
when I click on the link you posted I get this message:
Found this video on you tube.
Which Is Faster: Weaving in Traffic or Staying in One Lane? | MythBusters
I think I ran that route from San Francisco to San Jose when I was living in SF. It was 50 years ago so I can’t reliably report the drive.
Can somebody with more technological skills than myself tell me when Ozark last posted? I feel like he’s been gone a long time, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t been able to keep up with all the threads!
In the reality show that has been the presidential candidate debate for the last quarter decade, Trump has the memes. Many images, but now the songs are coming out.. Had a kind of poetry to it.
@Stormy Dragon: Some local whackjob on Next Door went on and on about Haitian voodoo. She said she read a lot about Springfield on Telegram. Sigh.
Yes, we are under attack from within and without.
Laura Loomer: “the White House will smell like curry”
My reaction to this is the same as my reaction to 2016 comment on the dangers of a “taco truck on every corner”:
That would be amazing!
@JKB:
Did you decide it was safe to crawl out from under your rock? Cool.
Explain how school nurses are performing sex change operations at school.
@Scott:
I know, I’m thinking plain naan or garlic naan?
Woman who started the cat-eating story on Facebook now regrets the whole thing:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/-just-exploded-springfield-woman-says-never-meant-spark-rumors-haitian-rcna171099
“Lee said she never imagined her post would become fodder for conspiracy theories and hate. “I’m not a racist,” she said through heavy emotion, adding that her daughter is half Black and she herself is mixed race and a member of the LGBTQ community. “Everybody seems to be turning it into that, and that was not my intent.””
I mean, what the *bleepity bleeping bleep* did she think might happen???
@Michael Reynolds: Can’t resist garlic naan. Then again, in my palate, there is no such thing as too much garlic.
I commented a couple of days ago about my family experience with cat eating. No one eats cats by choice. It is in no one’s culinary tradition. If cats are being eaten, then there is real human suffering and desperation behind it. People do that when their existence is being deeply threatened. Politicians are supposed to be working to improve the lives of their constituents. Why is Vance treating hunger and despair in his state as an opportunity for denigrating a community? It is plainly a moral failing on his part.
Perhaps, I can make this clear to you, JD. I grew up in the Midwest. Poor people from Appalachia were calumnized as toothless illiterates who drank moonshine, engaged in incest, and ate squirrels and raccoons. This was wrong wouldn’t you agree, JD? It was wrong to stigmatize your community; it is wrong to stigmatize other people, too.
Mr. Trump has been rich all of his life. Hunger and need are things he does not understand. All mouth, all sated appetite, and no empathy.
@Not the IT Dept.: The whole story is just so flimsy and stupid.
You know when you eat cats? When your country has failed and it’s burning down around you and you would literally starve if you didn’t eat a cat.
You know when you don’t eat cats? When you can go to the damn grocery store down the street and buy food there.
Nobody who has fled Haiti’s abysmal situation is going to be trapping their neighbor’s pets for food. It’s just ludicrous to even suggest they would. And yet, one candidate for the most powerful office in the world is amplifying this utter racist nonsense.
@Jax: I was wondering the same thing recently. You can restrict a google search to a specific site by prepending “site:” to the search string, and googling “site:outsidethebeltway.com OzarkHillbilly” shows his last post as August 28th (man I just started feeling like a stalker … nevertheless, onward!).
Hopefully all is well. I don’t know if his son (and his family) still lives here in New Orleans but we did just have a (thankfully minor for us) hurricane blow through.
@Slugger:
Lion steaks (löwensteak), while uncommon, are a thing in German cuisine, but as Trump demonstrates, the Germans have not been sending us their best. ;3
@Jon: They’re wondering where he is at Balloon Juice as well. One of the commenters has his info and emailed him yesterday, hopefully there’s some update soon.
According to Microsoft, I need to perform surgery on the registry, then remove OneDrive, then reinstall it, so it might possibly maybe work.
Seriously, setting up a new computer is always a PITA, but at least you have a new PC that will run great for a while and all. That’s not the same when you’re setting up an old computer again…
Well, if Trump is having it off with Loomer, I’m sure it’s with Melania’s blessing.
@Mikey: @Jon: Thanks, hopefully he’s just off visiting family or on an adventure….usually he lets us know, though. Update me if they hear anything from him over there at Balloon Juice, please!
@Mikey:
Fingers crossed he’s fine.
@Mikey: Thanks! I did a cursory check there as well myself and came up blank.
On Smerconish today, one of the assertions was that mailed-in ballots cause delay in reporting election results.
How does that square with the assertion by SoS of Ohio that the first (Ohio) results reported are the mailed-in ballots?
The other bizarre assertion(made by the Kansas SoS) is that in Kansas, ballots that arrive BEFORE election day, but do not have a USPS postmark are rejected.
“The entree consists of boiled dog.”
Republicans are failing the Voight-Kampff test.
@Jax: I’ve also been wondering about KM. I know she got a cancer diagnosis, but anyone know how she is doing?
@JKB: Ummm… You do get that she’s mocking your candidate, right?
@Bobert: if they were dropped in ballot drop boxes or were handed in in person, they won’t have a postmark. So does this mean that perfectly valid ways of returning your ballot are being rejected?
@Jax: I recall, vaguely, Ozark talking about a significant caving trip coming soon a while back. I’m misanthropic enough that I don’t keep track of who’s present or absent, though.
@Bobert: Maybe Ohio counts and secures mail ballots as they come in and other states don’t?
@CSK:
I’m sure it’s with Melania’s money.
@Kathy:
Oh, no. Melania would never allow that.
@Jon:..I just started feeling like a stalker … nevertheless,..
@Jax:
@CSK:
@just nutha:
@Mikey:
Without checking his old posts I think that he has mentioned Salem and Cuba and St. James as towns he may be near. I think he has mentioned Franklin county.
Morbid fvck that I am I checked the obituaries for some of these locations the other day. I have no idea what his name is or what he looks like but I think he is about 8-10 years younger than me. Of course I came up with nothing.
@just nutha:
I’ve never been able to get a decisive answer to exactly what Ohio considered pre-processing.
And, you are correct, Ohio is one of several states that pre-process before election day.
It is concievable that Ohio, opens the outer envelope (the one that the USPS “sees”) and inspects the voter provided identification on the “security” envelope to check against the voter registration rolls. Having successfully done that, the election employee opens and removes the ballot and places it on a stack to be “counted” or cast at a later time. Alternatively, the ballot could be “cast” immediately and the results of these counted ballots be held secret until election day.
If the SoS of Ohio is accurate in his statement, I suspect that the later (ballots are cast and tallied) prior to election day maybe the actual practice.
One of the things that this practice avoids is the crush of activity that may be required on election day itself. Activity that I understand (from PA county election boards) requires that non-election employees be pressed into service to process these mailed-in ballots.
@Mister Bluster:
Well, thanks for looking. I think Ozark’s first name is Tom.
@just nutha: Several states have laws that they can’t start counting votes until Election Day.
It is idiotic. It was a fashionable law for Republicans about a decade ago when they realized that mail-in ballots favored Dems, so it built in a good way to question the results.
My Way. I was watching a video that compared and contrasted the Sid Vicious (Sex Pistols) and Shane MacGowan (The Pogues) cover versions of Frank Sinatra’s (Paul Anka wrote it specifically for him) of My Way.
Tl;Dr MacGowan is basically covering the Sid version, but with the original lyrics. The Vicious version is blatantly superior.
I was reading the comments and one really popped. This person gets it! I’m gonna give them a like. That’s an interesting take. I enjoyed that and it was enlightening.
It was on a comment I made two years ago….
In my defense, it was really bad-ass. Two-years ago me kinda rocked.
@Bobert:
Mail ballots do slow things in Pennsylvania, but only because Republicans in the state legislature refuse to let the county election boards pre-canvas the mail ballots before election day.
IIRC Ozark lives in or near Sullivan, MO., checked the obits and no one that would be near his age, early 70’s and with his background has passed in the last month.
I do recall him talking about taking an extended trip.
@CSK:
Really? You don’t think Melania would pay the Loon to bang the Felon so she won’t have to?
At Clifford/McDougal Rates, it’s like 100 grand a pop. Or about 3 grand per second.
@JKB:
Trump’s performances have a kind of Nuremburg Rally Spin Out poetry about them.
@CSK:..
@Sleeping Dog:..
Thank you both.
Of course I knew that Tom and Sullivan were the correct answers. It’s just that my memory is basically shot.
@Kathy:
Well, she certainly wouldn’t pay Loomer with her OWN money, of which I understand she has 50 million socked away in her name.
@Stormy Dragon:
Yes and I understand that the SoS and county election chiefs have been trying to get the
PA legislature to change that for some time.
However, you reference the term “pre-canvass” exactly what does that mean? Is it a complete processing of ballots, short of reporting results?.
@Sleeping Dog: & others above….
It’s safe to say we all appreciate the concern, but it really isn’t any of our business. He can step away anytime for any reason
People drop in or out here at their pleasure. I truly understand the impulse to check in on folks, but unless you are his ICE or immediate family it’s really not your business.
If solid dude has indeed crossed the rainbow bridge I hope it was deep in a cave. Snuggled by earth.
Once, he shared that if push came to shove in re an undodgeable terminal diagnosis his plan was an epic swan dive off a cliff he knew in Mexico. That’s a valid exit I solidly approve of.
He might just be AFK.
@ptfe:
One of those States is Pennsylvania. Voting integrity advocate have been pushing to change that policy for a long time. This year Democrats in the State’s House of Representative passed a bill to begin counting mail in ballots 7 days before the election.
To my knowledge it hasn’t passed the Republican controlled Senate. And PA Republicans have opposed the changes for years (largely because of the confusion created by the delay in results benefits Trump).
@Bobert:
Every state has different policies for when and how votes are counted. Likewise each State sets their own criteria for what constitutes a valid mail in vote (and what errors will disqualify a ballot).
@Bobert:
Pre-canvasing means the process of verifying the ballot was submitted by a registered voter, the signature matches, that there is a valid date, etc.
That is, making sure they have a pile of “known good ballots” that can just be run through the scanner on election day instead of having to be individually verified
@Stormy Dragon: And Pennsylvania Republicans specifically banned this in 2020, knowing the mail-in ballots would skew Democratic, and the lengthy process starting on election day would create the false appearance of a big swing in votes that would assist Trump in creating the Big Lie. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Can someone tell me why printers today are just as shitty as they were 20 years ago?
@Michael Reynolds:
Well, 20 years ago I has a basic HP Laserjet printer, black and white only. It was a workhorse, never failed, and good quality printing all the time. Lasted us many years. Then, we had an Epson color printer for a while, and it was quirky, especially if the color inkjet cartridges were running low (seemed very often even though we’re not intensive users). Got to be expensive to keep it running optimally. So, I’ve got another HP now and it’s B/W with a toner cartridge, and the simplicity suits us fine. Very reliable.
I think a problem is that printers are generally far less expensive than 20 years ago, but the companies now realize a big profit on operation and maintenance – i.e, inkjet and toner catridges, eco-tank refills etc.
Also, companies can’t resist messing with a good thing. So, making older printer models ‘obsolete’ so that we’ll buy newer models more frequently becomes the way. Kind of like the way Detroit decided to take a 60’s classic ca, like the Mustang or the Impala, and redesign them into oblivion.
That’s my 2 Euros on this topic.
@Michael Reynolds:
What the fuck is “PC load letter”?
@Michael Reynolds:
Now I really want garlic naan. And a nice red ginger curry with chicken thighs.
On my grocery list for next trip is curry fixings.
Why is naan so good when lefse is so blah?
@MarkedMan:
The Privy Council consists of all living current and former holders of ministerial office, current and former leaders of the two largest opposition parties in the Commons, current and former Archbishops of Canterbury, York and London, some senior judges and civil servants, and some members of the Royal Household.
Anybody with the formal rank of “Right Honorable”
It is not, itself, a decision making body.
But the Prime Minister is entitled to brief and consult any other members, and in particular key opposition politicians and former senior ministers, on “Privy Council Terms”, that is, on condition of absolute secrecy, with no minutes kept.
Even the process of consultation itself is secret, and usually gets noted only after the event, and informally. Such consultations are usually held on key issues of national security.
Given Westminster and Whitehall’s normal tendency to leak, it remains remarkably successfully secretive.
For instance, it is known that Tony Blair held meetings on Privy Council Terms with Ian Duncan Smith and Charles Kennedy regarding Iraq in 2003. The actual substance of those conversations is not known, and pretty certainly never will be.
In my un-humble opinion, it’s a stone cold certainty that both Johnson and Sunak held PCT meetings with Starmer, and most likely other former ministers, on the subject of Ukraine, from 2022 onward at least.
The positions of the leadership of all three major UK parties on Ukraine since Feb 2022 have been identical.
@Michael Reynolds: That’s not my experience with printers. Each printer I’ve owned was better than the previous one. Of course, the last printer I purchased (for ~$30 on clearance) is 8 years old and still on its first toner cartridge, so I may not be using my printers enough to reveal their weaknesses.
@Michael Reynolds: I currently have two dead printers that are waiting for me to re-enact the scene from Office Space.
One lasted almost 10 years, not bad except the last 8 were only because I manually fed it one sheet at a time, otherwise it would split one page over 2-3 sheets most of the time. The other printer lasted about 13 months, just beyond the warranty period. I only needed to print a couple things per week, so not heavy usage. I agree they’re still pieces of crap.
@de stijl:
A very good friend of mine is in his very last days. Bone cancer, multiple sites. He will not make it to the end of the year. He is in great constant pain and is medicated to the gills. He has someone to check on him daily.
I ask after his health, but try not to make a big deal out of it. It is. My tactic is to get a genuine laugh out of him. Remember when we were on Scott’s boat on Lake Winnibigoshish and ….. ? Just a true laugh.
The cool thing is I only need like 4 stories and just rotate them because of his meds. He doesn’t really store new memories anymore.
My goal is to get him to truly laugh a few more times before he dies.
@Michael Reynolds:
Because if it were easy it wouldn’t be called hardware?
My last personal printer was an HP inkjet over 15 years ago. That’s when it broke, I bought it earlier. Since I’m close to the office and our department has 7 laser copier/printers, 4 of them color, I do all my personal printing there. Of course, it doesn’t amount to more than a few dozen sheets per year.
That said, we’ve cycled over several such machines through the years. All of them had issues of some sort. Some are slow, some jam often, some require an expert to configure the sample labels, some are a major PITA for printing anything other than letter size paper, etc.
What I find really annoying over the last decade, is that all these machines display an alert when you open the cover to place something for copying/scanning on the cristal. The alert is “the cover is open.” WTF?
BTW, I got OneDrive up and running.
@JohnSF:
The oath taken by a Privy Councillor on induction:
The basic form of the oath dates to 1571.
(There’s also an affirmation version, for those unable to give an oath)
In addition the Ministers get the Oath of Allegiance and Oath of Office.
Oaths, we haz them.
I bought an entry level professional Brother printer about 6 years ago for our home office. We do a lot of printing and scanning – its been an absolute champ. Cost 7x as much as an el cheapo from Best Buy, totally worth it.
@JKB:
It’s unsurprising that you don’t know when you are being laughed at.
@de stijl: We worry about our regulars around here, just like you worry about your friend who’s dying. Some of us….OTB is all we have when we live in red states. I would mourn you if you died, even though I’ve never met you in person.
So there. 🙂 🙂