It's Black Cyber Giving Tech Monday Week

 

Your love is like   a spaceship to Uranus

Her:  I put the sugarbowl in the sink - it needs to be washed.

Him:  All that sugar made it dirty? 

Today I identify as  a female Philadelphia Eagle

I made the mistake of looking out of my window today. Very little good happens when I look out my window, so I try not to do it often. It's just that Mrs. lefty was telling me her favorite shoe store called, asking if she was ok because they haven't seen her this week. I was doing my husbandly duty - standing there, nodding my head and pretending to be absorbing something. It was precisely that moment that I looked out my side window. A sundeck had appeared. Not attached to my house, heaven forbid. It belonged to the new neighbor. Perhaps because I don't look out much, I didn't know what they were building. Perhaps the helicopters flew it in under the cover of night. I asked Wife the difference between patio and sundeck... she said sundeck is elevated. The joke is on Neighbor: it would have to be elevated a couple hundred feet to be of any use. We don't get sun here. I guess he didn't read the Sun Clause in his sale contract. He'd have to build one of those space elevator things to reach it. Or a stupidly high elevator, hopefully without an open back. I may not know when or how it got there, but I can tell you it was placed by his house at the precise position to create the maximum amount of noise to my house. That might explain the Men in Black, walking around with sound meters last week.

Speaking of space, three Chinese astronauts arrived on Wednesday at China's space station for the first in-orbit crew rotation in Chinese space history.

China announced they have achieved Orbital Superiority and farted in the general direction of the West. China also announced that the Flying AIDS originated in the International  space station, as yet more subterfuge from the Americans. The Chinese astronauts should be back on Earth "as soon as they clean that little matter up." In the meantime, the Chinese astronauts must wear a mask on all spacewalks.

Top Senators want controls on US contractors using Chinese chips

What do you mean the horses left the barn a few years ago?

Lobbying Group for U.S Semiconductor Industry: Government Assistance Necessary to Maintain Global Leadership

After Biden gave them billions, they're back at the trough.

Great new software?

I found this program that lets you take notes in your own handwriting.

I dunno about you, but I use my phone and computers because no one can read my handwriting (me included).

There's an app for documenting where you put stuff, so you don't lose it.

By the time I'm done opening the app, I won't remember why I'm standing there.

Then there's "Mind-Mapping" software. Yeah, like the software can do what the doctors haven't been able to do for 20 years.....

An app to keep track of your vacation days

We less sophisticated hourly laborers call that a calendar  

Impractical Jokes

If you want to good-naturedly prank your boss or coworkers, there are a number of easy ways to go about it.

1. set their Windows language to Mandarin
2. rotate Windows so it's upside down or sideways
3. pull their shirt off
4. get a live USB of linux, plug it into his USB drive, and reboot. When he looks, he'll see Ubuntu - login   and will think someone blew out his computer and installed linux. I did this once. The look was priceless.

There are many ways to prank nasty, but I can't think of any that don't involve unemployment and the police. 

--> at the bar:

Bob, how are ya?

Good. You?

Great. How are you and the missus getting along?

Come to think of it, everything's been really smooth lately. Not a single fight. I'm pretty happy about it.

What's your secret?

She's at her mother's for the week.

Nuclear submarine 'buzzed by underwater object travelling faster than speed of sound'

Before I stated reading this, I'm thinking that something of this nature doesn't usually get released. Oh, it was 1998. And it came from someone on the sub, not through official channels. If you're curious, look up USOs. There's a lot of them about.

DHL is buying 2,000 electric Ford E-Transits as delivery vans

Good for them. I still want to know how much it will cost to generate the electricity to charge them - both financially and climatewise.

I can't imagine why, but Parler and Twitter jettisoned Kanye after he said "I like Hitler."

Let's try to make something positive out of this. Hitler... well... he was very successful, for one. He certainly put that mustache on the map. He understood how to get attention (like Kanye?). He did wonders for the rail industry. I'll stop now.

A Jewish MMA fighter said he'd fight Kanye.

Hang on.... Jewish MMA fighter? He hangs out with the female hockey player and the Korean basketball guy. Must be Israeli.

There's a measles outbreak in Ohio.

So... you know.... stay out of Ohio. Which is probably good advice all the time.

Tesla finally delivered its first electric semi truck to Pepsi, years late.

Do you think Musk can do something to make Pepsi taste good, or is that beyond even his abilities?

• The dog suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder: she doesn't get enough attention.

Monarch Tractor Launches First Commercially Available Electric, Driver Optional Smart Tractor

Well, I hope they don't expect any sales in Kentucky, where drunk tractor racing in the state sport.

 

 I found a gadget. It's pretty damn cool and pretty damn cheap. It's a little vise-like thing that holds circuit boards so you can work on them. It was a BLACK FRIDAY sale, which somehow got extended and extended. Or something time traveled again, but I just can't go there now. The gadget is $25. Perfectly reasonable. The PA sales tax is $2.50. Perfectly unreasonable. PA doesn't need its fat fingers any further in my pocket. Shipping is $17.50. My $25 gadget now costs me $45 and will arrive between next week and next December. I could wait til next year, but by then, PA will have doubled the sales tax. 

How's my errant laptop?

I'm glad you asked.

They generated an RMA and I paid a return shipping fee. Or rather, I tried to pay a return shipping fee. I put my details in and it kinda look like it might have taken. I asked them for confirmation.

As with any online transaction I make, it completely failed. My brother recently suggested I get the spirits of the dead people out of my house. How come spirits of dead people aren't helpful?  You never hear that dead people helped a person win the lottery or found their lost pet; only that they made things impossible for the homeowner. I hope to get them exorcised, as it were. If this goes on much longer, I may join them. 

So now we're weeks into Laptop Hell and it's still sitting on my desk. Meanwhile I'm still relying upon the ancient laptop that is what we call anemic, underpowered, and the little engine that tried its best and got a trophy. I really like it, though. I tried something to make it run better. The browser and email program immediately started crashing. So much for that brilliant, absolutely standard, works for everybody else idea. After my main laptop gets fixed, I'll reluctantly have to buy a medium-performance laptop as a backup, so this doesn't happen again. Wife told me a long time ago, you have to buy quality tools because you work with them so much. Bright woman, her taste in men aside.

This happened at work. It's my job to check anomalies.

Me: Hey, did you try to login a bunch of times yesterday and fail?

Him: What do you mean?

Me: You know... log into your computer. About 8am?

Him: Sometimes I have to log in a few times before I get in

Me: And that was your machine, at 8am?

Him: I don't always get in the first time

Me: were you using your email address to log in?

Him: I use 2 factor authentication

Me: If I called you, how is it that you're pranking me?

Him: I log in every morning.

Me: So that was you? Around 8?

Him: I was off yesterday afternoon.

Me: Who taught you to tell time? They should probably be shot. Did you log in at all yesterday?

Him: My computer doesn't let me log in til later, if at all. I'm off Friday.

The machines work fine; it's the people I worry about.