And while “velociraptors in a mansion” isn’t the worst idea, the film’s lackluster story and absence of character development made audiences even more nostalgic for the days of Laura Dern and Sam Neill.
And that is the best of comments about these movies. I guess it is a good thing I did not shell out to see them in a theatre.
An unfunded, unopened government sure is expensive
One email came to a friend from a contractor employee in Loveland, Colorado, who operates a large federal data center. The employee said the agency wants the servers turned off to avoid overheating. How’s that? The agency believes it can’t pay the electric utility so the cooling equipment, and hence the servers, will have to be shut off.
Trouble is, with the agency closed no federal employees can go on site. So the contractors can’t go in and do the power-down.
If you are scratching your head, let me put it this way, the contractors cannot be paid. The agencies do not really know what they can and cannot do. And so services may or may not be available when you need them.
Good luck, and ...
As we approach the end of 2018, only people that have not been around the Internet for more than a microsecond are not wondering what will become of social media. In case you have not been paying attention, we are down to two social media players. Failbook (and their associated properties) and Twitter. So that, ladies and gentlemen, is it. On December 17, the exodus from Tumblr, the last pseudo-independent platform began as Verizon ordered all adult content remove. Now Verizon owns three failed platforms - the remains of AOL, the bad parts of Yahoo, and Tumblr. Zuckerbergland is composed of Failbook, Instasomething, and Whywoudyouuseitapp. Twitter is hanging on by a thread, but it is skating on thin ice. Snapchat is circling the drain, and other companies like MeWe and Diaspora are trying, unsuccessfully to fill the gap. G+? Well, Google is shutting it down, and it was a ghost town anyway (at least according to the technical press) and with a second data leak, Google has announced that it is closing G+ by April, instead of later in the year as they had originally announced. Not that it matters, most of the G+ communities have already shuttered their circles and moved on to Plusporia and similar nodes.
So why the end of social media? Well, you probably were asleep when Australia announced it is demanding the ability to crack encrypted streams. They claim, at the moment, that they are not asking for backdoors, but as a member of Five Eyes, it is only a matter of time before the US asks for a similar ability. Then do you think any encryption is valid? Meaning that anything you post online, you might as well post on a postcard and send it to your nearest newspaper. Many have already been doing this of course, but if you are not a fan of walled gardens, then does it matter?
I am not, nor have I ever been a fan of walled gardens. So as we go into 2019, and my options are reduced to Zuckerbergland or ... well, this site, I am choosing this site. My G+ ID will remain for a bit. I am debating closing that account, but I have begun the process of closing all my other online profiles, Twitter, and email accounts. I do not need them, and they do not offer any value beyond taking up bandwidth, so why maintain them.
A return to the real Internet may be just what the doctor ordered. What about you?
Trump: Mattis out as of Jan. 1; deputy to be acting chief
Irritated with the criticism and fallout from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' resignation, President Donald Trump on Sunday pushed the Pentagon chief out the door two months earlier than planned, an acrimonious end to a tense relationship that had been eroding in recent months.
If I was the next guy I would make sure my resume is current.
Mulvaney said that through the new agreement, "American workers are going to do better, the government is going to do better, and you could make the argument that Mexico is paying for it in that fashion."
Seriously? This is how the current administration is justifying taking five billion dollars from the US taxpayer for a device to prevent border crossings. A device that the Chinese will tell you did not work as advertised, but did employ a lot of people. Mostly slaves.
I can think of a lot of things that five billion dollars can buy that will do a lot more good for the US economy. And for those playing the home game, five billion is the buy in. Current estimates are north of $20 bn for actual completion. For that the US could make Dominica a State. With cash left over. Or how about 50,000 teachers for a decade? No? 50,000 miles of road repairs. Surely that is just as important, and the follow on spending would boost a number of local economies. How about feed 3.4 million people for a year. We always hear about the homeless, many of whom are veterans in need of more than just food. We could also house some 300k of them.
Clearly preventing a tiny percentage of illegals has a cost (yes, tiny. The Census estimates less than 20 million illegals are in the US. That is the population of the state of Texas or a bit more than 4 times the population of New York City. A drop in the bucket) but the cost of building an ineffective preventative wall is even higher when you consider what can be built with it. (The next aircraft carrier is only $13 bn).
Let's go Congress, show some leadership. Fix immigration.
When I first created my PGP keys, all those years ago, I created them with PGP. And for some reason, that I am not sure of, they were created as only 1024 bit keys. So as part of my new year clean up, I have revoked my keys and issued new ones at 4096 bit.
The revoked fingerprints are as follows:
For the ARRL account:
5C44 E28D 49FE 24D6 A9DA 1545 CD57 C291 0A53 3C19
For my Gmail account:
2428 CE82 2E0C E6B7 E1E3 8D84 85BD BF93 B6CF CE1B
The new fingerprints are:
For the ARRL account:
7AB2 2840 5C8F 7427 78E3 9105 9DCE F014 AE06 230B
and for my Gmail account:
1E01 F6F2 E5C7 9405 336C 4E89 4128 6E0B 102B 8367
As usual, the keys are at your neighborhood public key server or you can download them below. These keys were generated with GPG, but they will be usable in any PGP/GPG program.
ARRL:
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gmail:
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As many people know, I spend my spare time cooking. I bake, and lately, I have been expanding out into full meal cooking. Moreover, as I do this, many people are asking for me the recipes for the various dishes I make. Rather than responding to each person individually, I decided to add a section to this blog, so anyone who wants to can make it themselves.
To start with, let’s dive into the appetizers from Saturday’s Italian dinner walk through. The menu was as follows:
Appetizer: Prosciutto and Cheese Fritters and a Virginia sparkling
Main: Fettuccine Carbonara and a Chianti (Nipozzano)
Dessert: Italian cookies and Sambuca
I will be posting other recipes as the week goes by, but let us start with the fritters.
1 cup water
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
5 large eggs
2 oz prosciutto crudo, diced
1/2 cup grated caciocavallo cheese
2 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley
lard
salt
Heat the water, salt, and butter in a saucepan, preferably of copper, and when it boils, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the flour with a wooden spoon. Return the pan to the heat and work the mixture continuously with the spoon; after a great deal of stirring the mixture will have formed a solid and homogeneous ball of dough. Let it cool, then incorporate the eggs one at a time, constantly kneading (using a mixer can save some of this effort).
When the dough forms bubbles, work in the prosciutto, caciocavallo, and parsley. When this is done, set the dough aside in a cool place.
Heat several inches of lard in a high-sided pan until hot (but not smoking), then drop in 1-inch balls of dough. (You can make the balls with a spoon or spread out the dough and cut it into cylinders to roll directly into the pan.) Let these fry slowly, reducing the heat if they start to brown too quickly
Remove them with a slotted spoon, put them on a serving plate covered with paper towels, and serve hot.
Enjoy!
Even though it snowed in Metro Washington, DC yesterday, it is still only the middle of November. And while many of you probably do not support my position that the Christmas Season should be restricted to the two weeks from December 15 to December 26, I am confident that many of you, especially those in retail, think that the push of Christmas into almost September in many cases, is excessive.
Today, while sipping my latte from a Christmas themed cup, I noticed that the music playing was, indeed, Christmas carols.
To me, this is excessive.
I grew up in Canada. The Thanksgiving dinner, held in the United States in November is held in mid-October in Canada. Then it is Hallowe’en. Many a Hallowe’en saw me trick-or-treating with a coat under my costume. But no Christmas ornaments were competing with the jack-o-lanterns for attention. And it was not until late November or early December when the Christmas decorations began to arrive.
In the US, it seems to be entirely different. Over the last decade, we have seen Christmas decorations arrive earlier and stay up longer, and incorporate the themes of the holidays it is stepping on. A turkey in a Christmas sweater is very jarring. And of course, the carols. Those insidious earworms that flood the background sonics to the point where they cannot be ignored.
Further, as the Christmas season expands (balloons), we are hearing complaints about it stepping on the sanctity of Thanksgiving. I wrote a post about that fallacy back in 2014, and it is as relevant today as it was then. You cannot have it both ways.
Maybe someday, the economic cycle will be less focused on the fourth quarter as the retail make or break quarter, but until that happens, I cannot see any way to avoid starting Christmas as soon as possible, but could we wait until Black Friday? This Christmas year round is really getting tiring. And I am so tired of hearing Run Run Rudolph.
I noticed the number of posts about the hottest month on record has dropped. Could that be because it has not been very hot, or that, at least here in the US, where it is hot is being balanced (slammed) by the areas that it is not.
Take the Eastern Seaboard. Our Augusts are normally hot, humid. Not pleasant. Between hurricanes and constant rain since June, I am struggling to remember any days over 90 this year and certainly only on or two near 100. DC looks more like Seattle at the moment with the overabundance of rain and very little sun. The wines from Virginia just won’t be for 2018.
And then, there is this. Snow. Inches of snow. According to Al Roker, the DC area has not had measurable snow this early since the late 1980s. The last couple of years we have been wearing light jackets well into January.
Climate is changing. It does. That is the nature of climate. But I am not liking the weather much either.
Yesterday, Apple announced the biggest iPhone ever, with stunning new displays. They also introduced a new watch that will read your EKG better, stronger, faster. Yawn. Sorry, what?
If this morning's mullet wrappers (as an old boss used to call the tech press) are any indication, they are less thrilled then I am about the new Apple hardware. Lead on Computerworld this morning? A review of five digital whiteboards. Apple's releases were the fifth bullet down behind Slack adds enterprise key management and How you can train for your MCSA and MCSE certifications (a house ad).
A couple of days ago, one of the luminaries in the Apple world asked Has Apple lost its shine? A valid question, especially related to the release yesterday. Sure, there are those that will go gaga over the new hardware, but those of us that have been in IT for more than a couple of months don't pay attention to new processors unless we need a feature in that new processor. And when it is only a tock (speed, security) upgrade, we really do not get excited.
Apple will continue to promote its new devices. The iDevice market is a considerable part of their revenue stream so they really cannot do anything else. But when the most exciting thing is the camera (and I can buy better glass for my DSLR for less money then they will ever be able to stuff in a phone case), perhaps Apple really has lost its way.
One minor thing of note. In iOS 12, there will now be almost complete support for the reading of NFC tags. I say this is a slight note because the NFC people have been asking for this for more than a decade when it first appeared in Android devices. Thanks for joining the planet Apple.