Random Thoughts

Now that the cat is gone, I use a temporary gate to keep the dogs out of the back of the house. I take it away when I get up, so they have the run of the place. I’m not used to a cold wet nose on my ass when I’m standing at the sink after showering.

Feinstein pulled the croak chain last week. Good. She needed to be out of the senate nearly a decade ago, maybe two of them. Those corrupt geezers need to be run out of the place, and she was one of the queens. You know, the fourth turning model didn’t account for these ancient fossils still being in power. Wonder who was her Grima Wormtongue? I heard it was the birth daughter.

Supposedly David Cassidy’s last words were “I’ve wasted so much time…” Wonder if Feinstein had any?

I resent all these plastic covered keys:

Who else loves the smell of these markers? Brings me back to kindergarten when the teachers would use them:

When I need only one or two things, I’ll hit the Tom Thumb that’s on the same road that passes by my house. It’s a mile away or so. What I liked about it was that it was staffed with older granny type ladies that would banter with you as you check out. The other help was young, college students – super friendly and helpful. Last time I was there the head cashier was training a ‘teen’ (ahem) to do checkout.

My first thought was, “Awesome. Just getting started and he’s already indifferent to customers”. He wasn’t paying attention and started running the the lady behind me’s stuff on my tab. When he checked out, he thrust the receipt out towards me, without uttering a word. That wasn’t the funny part. The funny part was him picking up my celery and asking if it were cabbage.

Really? You got to late teens and don’t know what celery is?

I should have taken his trainer aside and counseled her that utter lack of customer skills will make me shop elsewhere forever. Better start there.

Speaking of incompetence and indifference, I’m having a hernia fixed next week. All the medical technology, the cloud, the portals, and you’ll still get a call from an office asking for your credit card number to pay. I never, ever pay when someone calls me.

Once a month we have a pancake breakfast at the Church. It generates a fair amount of garbage. My crew handles the ‘front of the house’. So we take out the trash. If the breakfast follows another event, the dumpster will be full. I pride myself in being able to chuck the bags on top with one pitch. Behold:

Nothin’ but net. BTW – not shown is the dumpster is on a platform 18″ above the parking lot. So I had a handicap. Aaah… the simple pleasures in life.

As IT moves more and more crap to the cloud – specifically Azure, you’ll get more and more emails like this:

As we do more and more lab development on the Azure platform, it is more and more important that we try to control costs as much as possible.

As you probably know, there is a shutdown rule that will deallocate your dev/test (a.k.a., R&D) VMs at 8 PM local time.  This rule is put in place as a backstop in case you accidentally leave your VM running.  Unfortunately, as a group it seems we are relying too heavily on this backstop and not being diligent enough in shutting down the VMs manually when we are finished using them.

In the past month, about 30% of our VM shutdowns were initiated from the shutdown rule as opposed to manually Stopping the VMs.  I’d like to see us hit a target of no more than 10%.

Since we are charged for each additional minute of runtime whether you are connected or not, I am asking for your cooperation in making sure that you Stop your VMs whenever you are not actually using them.

An IT dude

Couple thoughts here. You don’t always know when you are finished using the machines, for one. And I see Azure as a horrible platform. Some of the software I support uses a lot of processor power and needs fast disk access. Those machines are pricey. I myself have a server running VMware, with a dozen or so machines. I can leave it running as much as I like.

Biden abuses his dogs?

The dog reportedly has been removed from the White House after its most recent attack on a Secret Service agent and other White House staff. According to a Judicial Watch source, President Biden has mistreated his dogs. Judicial Watch has learned he has punched and kicked his dogs.

Stephen Green article

I don’t doubt it for a second. Two different dogs exhibit the same behavior? Shepherd’s are protective, and friendly, from my experience. But doing what he’s reported to be doing will change that. Could be also that the secret service dudes have bad energy and are handling him rough. But I doubt it.

Where’s the 6 figure a year dog minder, like Obama had?

I miss Kenny’s Straight Up White Trash, God Bless ’em posts. He had one the other day, the first in a long while. I forgot how funny they are.

Ever seen a doofus Lab mix play with a toad? I laughed my ass off the other morning watching Winston chase a toad. Yesterday morning here’s what I see:

Gottdamm toad in the house. Out he went, over the fence. He seemed to be alive.

I think I poached that from Irish.

Love this:

In honor of the Texas State Fair, that opened up last week:

Just in time for Halloween:

Windows 11 crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.

Yesterday it worked,
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.

Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire,
The network is down.

Have a good weekend. I’ll remember the truck reservation this time, and move my crap out.