Barbara Streisand, inspiration for the
Streisand Effect, says she '
can't live' in US if Trump becomes president. (apparently no one told her Trump was
already president)
Although this would at first seem like a present, we must remember just four or eight years ago, when over 100 celebrities large and small pledged they would move to Canada if Trump got elected. How many of them moved? Absolutely zero. None. Nada. Zip. So much for the promises of celebrities.
Streisand goes on to praise President Giveaway, saying he has done a good job and supports the right things. Huh? If Babs so desperately loves the way Biden gives away her money, perhaps she should just give it away to us or the deficit. And he supports the right things. Yay - I voted him in because he supports the right things, even if he doesn't support them in office. I want to tell the aged singer that politicians lie, but don't want to give her that sort of shock at this time in her life. She also refers to Bill and Hillary Clinton as "the most appealing couple." Who taught this lady how to vote? Obviously nobody. Barbara needs to get with the people who keep Kamilla Harris quiet; they would be perfect for her.
Barbara's empty threat comes at the perfect time, as the actors' strike is over, so the poor unfortunates can afford to move. Has anybody called Canada yet? Oh, poor thing, the Canadians hate us too, so the over-privileged will have to find a different country for emigration purposes. Never mind the Canadians hate Trump - you are painted with the same brush because you're an American. We don't do this in America, or we'd think every Canadian was a rights-grabbing pussy who was way too in touch with his feminine side.
PS Vote Green Pen or libertarian. R or D won't help us anymore than it has.
So you have to know it's Laptop Time.
Silly person, it's always Laptop Time at ThermionicMansion.
At the moment, there is exactly one laptop that performs as advertised; an ancient 13" Dell, with vacuum tubes. Being a 32 bit machine, not everything will run on it, but at least linux keeps it running fast.
Just the other day, I picked up some laundry to fold and a shirt grazed a large glass of chocolate milk, hurling the brown liquid all over the place. In 6 months, I'll still be finding chocolate milk stains. Without hesitation, I grabbed the large plastic glass and saved a few ounces of the chocolate goodness, after which I hurled it across the room, depositing chocolate milk upon the rest of the things in the living room (and basement and roof). It left a huge hole in the glass too, which would make it a great joke glass, but I left it on the floor for a few days, to let it think about its error and how it would behave better in its next life.
An hour later, the Dell laptop seized. Needing a logical opinion, I dug up Sir Arthur Conan Holmes, who examined the situation and said that it was categorically the chocolate milk that affected the Dell. I looked at him kinda funny, and not only because he was dead. There were 4 drops of liquid on the keyboard, which hadn't dropped into the laptop. Nevertheless, when I went to reboot, it made all sorts of hideous noises, shrieks, and beeps. Motherboards have a beep code to tell you what's wrong. I was going to look it up, but 15 seconds of too many beeps to count put me off the idea. So I did the only logical thing I could under the circumstances: I cried.
The next day I felt up to a challenge, albeit not one as large as getting a laptop fixed, but I'm brave, also known as Stupid, and have no fear. I went over that laptop top to bottom. I did exactly what Dell technicians told me to do on every call I ever made: reseat the memory. This is Dell's answer to everything. After we manage to blow up the planet, there will only exist cockroaches, Keith Richards, and Dell Service. When you call Dell to tell them the planet just blew up, they'll immediately suggest you open the small door on the bottom and reseat the memory.
After that little exercise (exercise being fatal), I got the amount of beeps down to a few hundred and somehow made the laptop boot up. I was well pleased with myself (chuffed in England, huffing in certain parts of Philadelphia). Later when I turned it on again, I discovered there was a small issue: the keyboard didn't work. Like I said, the tiniest of problems. The laptop suggested I hit F3 to bring up the onscreen keyboard. Ummmm... if the keyboard is broken, I can't use it to bring up the digital keyboard, can I? I dared not call Dell, because I had already reseated the memory. So the laptop is now fully functional, unless I want to do something that involves typing. Boy did I duck that bullet.
I could check email on my android tablet, but it takes 23 hours to charge, goes through the battery in 2 hours, and the big one; I couldn't find it. The more-than-likely broken power jack laptop has applied for a replacement jack and been selected for one, at $25 for the jack and THIRTY DOLLARS TO SHIP IT A FEW STATES AWAY. It will still take a week.
There is actually another laptop, that can best be called functional. Better yet, semi-functional. It is also old, and weighs more than a Kenworth truck. The only reason it's not my main laptop is its annoying habit of overheating and freezing up at the slightest provocation, like looking at it the wrong way, or going hmmmpf on certain days of the week. While this is perfectly ok for a work laptop, I need a personal laptop that more or less stays on while I'm working on it. My requirements are unreasonable, but that's why I get the Big Bucks (no I don't). As it is an old, large laptop, it's missing the 47 screws it would take to enter it if it were a newer laptop. In fact, it opens right up. This is when I notice there are two huge fans, which are currently entertaining themselves by not working. I replaced them already, which means it's not the fans. Being Brave (Stupid) ends here: we're now well above my pay grade.
There are these really cool laptop board fans that are supposed to cool your laptop. Naturally I don't have one, but they're really cool. I've pretty much narrowed down the problem to lack of working fan, so this would be the ideal solution (as buying more laptops clearly didn't work). I knew what I had to do: put on my Bob Villa/Fred Sanford hat and make some sort of external fan cooling system. When I say 'external fan cooling system' I mean putting a fan near the heat vent.
This is where things got really interesting (or earth-shatteringly boring). I needed to search my Fred Sanford junk palace to make things work. After 3 hours, I discovered I had ripped my pants AND I had no fans. I have a very large 24" room fan, but something told me it might be a little loud (and windy). AHA - I said to myself, because when I say it out loud, it frightens people. That broken computer power supply has a FAN in it. This was the 2nd part of my Wonderful Journey... all I needed was one of those old wildlife experts to lead me around, looking for parts, and telling me what the Great Horned Fan does in its natural habitat (it eats boats). With the discovery of the fan came the discovery that it needed to come out of the power supply, largely involving wirecutters and a small screwdriver. Since wirecutters are like pens (never there except when you don't want them), I continued on my Jungle Discovery, wherein the aged host led me up on the roof to locate the wild wirecutter in its natural habitat. The joke was on him, as we need a new roof, so all the wirecutters abandoned it last year. I've been in electronics since I was old enough to electrocute myself, so I have developed quite a store of wirecutters, only I have no idea where they are. My house is a large and scary place, made moreso by my presence. There are floors beneath floors that aren't even on the blueprints. Wife says there's a whole city full of guitar stores under the basement but I tell her it's not true. The city of guitar stores is in the Guitar Room - no need for elevators.
Finally there occurred a distant spark in my gray matter (grey matter in England). If I got out the backhoe to where I keep the guitar cases, there might be wirecutters to cut strings. Keep in mind that so far I've been to the basement, guitar room, and computer office, and all I have is a fan in a power supply and a pair of wirecutters. But we're not even close to done: the wirecutters are so old, they're locked together, so it's off to the back room to find WD40 to unlock the cutters. Back in the office, I removed the humongous fan from the power supply and discovered it was a 12 volt fan and the laptops only provide 5 volts. Back to the basement, to find a wall wart that put out 12 volts. This project was like inadvertent exercise; every step involved 45 steps (and 3 floors). I tested for voltage, wired it up, and BOOM - an external cooling system. Well, although I didn't electrocute myself, I did have 2 wires sitting out that probably shouldn't come together, lest my cooler get really hotter. So... HEY - WHERE'S MY FRIGGIN' DUCT TAPE? No duct tape, no fabric tape, no Scotch tape, none of those little wire nuts that always fall off anyway. Off to yet another room where tape is occasionally found. 2" wide clear tape is now keeping the wires from shorting. The bonus is that you can see them, like they're under glass or something exotic. The aged animal show host would have lost his mind on this, but he's taking his nappy and he lost his mind many years ago. Whenever he sees a lion, his staff has to physically keep him from going to pet the nice doggy.
So there it was: 3 little parts, from every room in the house. Here's the hard bit (you mean it gets better?): there aren't a lot of hole slot thingies on the laptop, so it's hard to figure out where to put the fan (that is now 3x too tall for the laptop) and to figure out whether it needs to suck or blow (that's what she said). It didn't seem to matter, so after eating an entire day, I had a free, fan-based, external cooling system for a laptop. Translated, that means I can now go spend $50 on a lapboard laptop fan thingie to cool the laptop down. With that kind of time waste, I should be in government.
The above great idea worked for 2 days, then was 'slightly interrupted' by Overly Friendly Cocker Spaniel. She MUST be right in the middle of things, so when I stood, she walked away, taking the fan with her and pulling some wires that looked important.
