- the joys of trying to get the little yellow plastic thingie into the 45 so it will play on your record player
- pay phones
- 8 track tapes and sometimes cassettes
- a bigass home stereo system with huge speakers and Serious Wattage
- dial phones
- home phones
- watches
- alarm clocks
- cars without seatbelts
- leaded gas
- vacuum tube appliances that had to warm up before coming on
- non-flat screen televisions
- purchasing porn, music, and movies
- (relative) privacy
Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead. - Ben Franklin
- Veterans Memorial Park, in Belle Plaine, Minnesota has a controversial monument with a cross. The Freedom from Religion Foundation is at the head of a movement to have it removed, as it goes counter to the First Amendment. City officials voted to keep it in the park (because apparently cities can vote to approve unconstitutional things).
- You know what happened next, right? The satanists submitted a proposal for their own display. In almost every case, this is enough to get the original item removed, but Belle Plain is apparently special. The priest started Panic Mode<tm>, about how this will encourage children to try satanism and will bring the end of morality to the world.
- The satanic display will go up as scheduled.
- Quite frankly, I'd be more scared of the priest and his buddies. A lot of their shenanigans have come to light lately....
GAB, the right-leaning, zero-censorship Twitter replacement cannot get a mobile app going on iOS. The developers have worked tirelessly but Apple will not approve the app for their store. Excuses aside, take one guess why... I mentioned to the GAB folks that it would be a badge of pride not having an iOS app, but for some unknown reason, they didn't share my enthusiasm.
- The election in England is over. Many hands are wringing. There are new and old office holders. And I understand absolutely none of it. The one bright side is that Monty Python prepared me for the election by introducing the Silly Party and the Very Silly Party. They are actual candidates, one with a bucket on his head. Yes, this is part of their elections, and a welcome part, as far as we're concerned.
- I would like our friends in the UK to note that absolutely no one in the US protested, burned flags, burned people, or rioted over their elections, unlike their mad, unruly protests over our election. This point would be much better made if I had any UK readers.
One of the most controversial tweets in the history of Twitter.
- Gender Studies is basically an exercise in observing a penis only once, and blaming it for everything bad.
In case you were bored, we just sent up a spy satellite to spy on spy satellites. Funny as this is, we really don't want to know what that cost. And we won't.
- It got somewhat less boring over the weekend. Started with a new medicine that made the wife nuts. Then a 2am trip to the emergency vet because Marshall was whining constantly. Nothing was found. Then a crack in the windshield most of the way across. Today we get to watch that service that comes to your house and installs the glass. Fortunately we have so much money that this won't be an issue.
Mrs lefty says to me she saw it raining. Well, not raining, but leaking from the telephone pole. Leaking? Yeah, the pickle bucket at the top of the pole.
Uh-oh.
I called the electrical utility's "You better check this out" hotline and they assured me they'd get their best people on this soonest.
You see, the pickle bucket is a transformer. Surrounding the transformer is vegetable oil (you think I'm being silly, but this one time I'm not). The oil was leaking from the transformer case, which really isn't a good thing. There's really a frightening amount of voltage and current up there and we only need a small fraction down here.
Within hours, the utility rushed some of their best people to the area to swiftly knock out the power to the entire block. An hour later, we were back in business. Yay repair guys!
A utility person we know told us this has been a problem forever and they never fixed it. Apparently the load from everybody using their air conditioners in the 95 degree high-humidity heat set it over the edge.
This, of course, brings up very important side effects of power loss: OMG - THE INTERNET! Even on a laptop or phone, if your router/wireless doesn't have battery backup, you're screwed. The phone can use 3G/4G/4.796G, the computer is black, and the laptop will last as long as its battery. Remember this. Some providers install a backup battery for the modem/router. Never mind air conditioning or breathing - we need internet!
I formally apologize for that.
Uh-oh.
I called the electrical utility's "You better check this out" hotline and they assured me they'd get their best people on this soonest.
You see, the pickle bucket is a transformer. Surrounding the transformer is vegetable oil (you think I'm being silly, but this one time I'm not). The oil was leaking from the transformer case, which really isn't a good thing. There's really a frightening amount of voltage and current up there and we only need a small fraction down here.
Within hours, the utility rushed some of their best people to the area to swiftly knock out the power to the entire block. An hour later, we were back in business. Yay repair guys!
A utility person we know told us this has been a problem forever and they never fixed it. Apparently the load from everybody using their air conditioners in the 95 degree high-humidity heat set it over the edge.
This, of course, brings up very important side effects of power loss: OMG - THE INTERNET! Even on a laptop or phone, if your router/wireless doesn't have battery backup, you're screwed. The phone can use 3G/4G/4.796G, the computer is black, and the laptop will last as long as its battery. Remember this. Some providers install a backup battery for the modem/router. Never mind air conditioning or breathing - we need internet!
I formally apologize for that.
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