The weather for today

Wet.  With continued wet throughout the day.  It's Florida in hurricane season, right?

And to answer Graybeard's question, yes we are within the white cone:

So yeah, it's raining.  But it's not so bad.  Consider:

• It was supposed to start hammering down rain from midnight last night.  I kept waking up because there wasn't noise of rain on the roof.
• While it looks like it will rain most of the rest of the day, it looks like the worst is already over.  It's more than a drizzle, but there's not a lot of wind.
• Back when Wolfgang was still alive, there were times that he didn't want to go out because it was raining so hard.  This isn't one of those rain storms.
  

So we're fine.  My generator started up first pull a couple weeks back (you do run it every month, don't you?) so we weren't worried about all the TV  ZOMGwe'reallgoingtodie!!!11!!

I mean, it's Florida in hurricane season, right?

Anyway, it looks like Graybeard is going to have a more interesting week than I will:

The other is that back in May, I got a reminder from "the system" that I'm due for a routine colonoscopy. The appointment, made well in advance, is for Tuesday. Those of you who have been through this know that the worst part of it is the night before, which is Monday night. With luck, the storm will stay on that track and be centered somewhere near the Georgia/South Carolina border. With bad luck, I'll be having to be working outside while the storm is clearing out - or stalled too close for comfort. Bad luck could mean not being able to put the tower back up for days.

The last time I went through this, I found that some car seat belts would prevent "liftoff" off the toilet seat and the troublesome, messy aspects of uncontrolled flight around the bathroom. The hardware is still bolted to the floor in the bathroom, I just need to remove a nut, put down the belt, and tighten the nut back down. One on each side of the toilet. It's a five minute job but can save hours of cleaning.

I wonder if this is something that NASA and Boeing can use to try to fix the Starliner thruster problem ...

UPDATE 4 AUGUST 2024 14:48: A day like this is perfect to just not go anywhere and watch old movies.  For example, the 1944 Arsenic and Old Lace starring Cary Grant*.  We hadn't seen this in forever, and both of us laughed out loud all the way through it.  Makes you wonder why they can't make films like that anymore.

Arsenic wasn't nominated for any Oscars that year, which seems odd until you think about the other films that were nominated - Double Indemnity and Gaslight to name only two.  Ingrid Bergman (deservedly) won Best Actress that year for Gaslight; interestingly, Cary Grant was nominated for Best Actor but for a different film that year, losing to Bing Crosby in Going My Way.  Just a casual year of films all of which were better than anything produced in the last decade. [/rant]

Oh, and a quick note to all the Florida newbies: it's summer, we get storms here.  Don't panic.  This isn't a snowstorm up north where nobody can drive for a week until the roads get plowed.  It doesn't do you any good to buy out the milk and frozen goods if the hurricane takes out everyone's power for a week.  Don't go to the grocery store for your panic buying, get a darn generator.

To those of you considering moving here from up north, don't.  It's too perilous.

And gas for it.**

* And also Edward Everitt Horton, best know (to old farts like us) as the narrator of Fractured Fairy Tales on Bullwinkle.

** Dual fuel is even better, with propane tanks.

Happy blogiversary to Dwight

15 years looking at obituaries and which coaches got fired.   Congrats, buddy!

Sweet Sixteen

This blog is sixteen years old today.  Dang, in a couple of years it will be able to vote.

Lots of changes in the last sixteen years.  I started blogging because of the Heller decision.  The gun control wars continue, but it's an entirely different landscape today than it was then.  Good.

I do miss a bunch of the old regular blogs I used to link to - Gormogons, Aretae, Fosetti, a bunch of others.  Miguel has now joined them.  I can understand the feeling as I came within a whisker of giving up myself 9 or 10 years ago.

It's weird that the blog has been around long enough that it saw Wolfgang's entire life, from when I first got him to that last awful day.  I still go back through the "Wolfgang" tag once in a while.  He's a dog that is taking some getting over.

The blog saw me move from Massachusetts to Atlanta to Maryland to Florida.  That's a lot of moving around in not a lot of time.

And it let me introduce The Queen Of The World to you.  She kind of scratched her head at the whole blogging thing at first, but she's the one who suggested I post about film scores and Dad Jokes.  I need to do more of both of those.

Because the old passionate topics - gun control, global warming, politics - have gone stale for me.  I've said pretty much all I have to say on them, and have come to realize that the world has gone mad and shouting into the wind is just adding hot air to cold.  I actually feel better doing Dad Jokes, not getting myself all wound up.  

The Queen Of The World has helped here as well.

I emailed Miguel when he hung up his blogging spurs to tell him that I was sorry to see him stop but understood his motivation.  He was very gracious in his reply, complimenting my stuff - but I am convinced that my best blogging days were long ago, 2009-2012 or so.  That's a decade in the rear view mirror.

So apologies if this place isn't what it used to be.  I'm not what I used to be, and that is probably a good thing.

In any case, when I put up my first post, what I did not expect at all was:

16 years
Almost 14,000 posts
Over 50,000 comments (!!!)
Over 14 Million page views (!)

I guess that predicting the future is hard, especially about things that haven't happened yet ...

Anyway, thank you to everyone who stops by here.  It's the readers - and especially the commenters - that make this place what it is, and keeps me coming back.

Vaya con Dios, Miguel

Miguel is hanging up his blogging spurs, which is a shame - but I understand his motivation.

Thanks for the free Internet ice cream, buddy.

Slow Salute

Big Country chases down how his Great Uncle died in World War II.  Rest in peace, Lieutenant.

The (Blog) year in review

Goodbye 2023, and good riddance.  Hello 2024 - may it be better than the last year.

2023 saw 1.5M page views which was pretty good.  Strangely, a lot of this was traffic spikes (mostly from Google) to more or less random old posts.  The steady-state traffic seems to be around 2500 page views a day.  Still pretty good especially considering how infrequently I post these days.

2023 saw all of you leave over 1600 comments, which is great.  I don't do a great job replying to comments but read (and appreciate) them all.

Top posts from 2023:

Picking a strong password
I am TJIC (from 2011)
Unplug your Ring cameras
For Sale, NASA Security Van
Breaking the Youtube ad/spy algorithm
New Jersey Supremes to cops: get a wiretap order
S.S. Minnow still going strong after 60 years
Finally some better medical device cyber security
Be careful with Ring doorbell video cameras
The Renaissance is being blogged (from 2010)

Unsurprisingly, these are all security related (well, the ones from 2023).  That makes sense.

Thanks to the top referring sites: Knuckeldraggin My Life Away, The Ferrel Irishman, Raconteur Report, Normal American, The Silicon Graybeard, Gun Blog Blacklist, Busted Knuckles, Captain Capitalism, and Old NFO.

15th Blogiversary

Actually it was a couple days ago.  Seems like kind of a long time.

Thanks to co-blogger and Brother-From-Another-Mother ASM826 who also started his blog around the same time but who has been writing here for years and years.

Also, I'm trying to convince The Queen Of The World to write here sometimes.  Leave a comment on what you think of that idea.

A message to commeter Birdchaser

You will remember the header at the cop of the comment box: Remember your manners when you post.

You didn't.  Boy, howdy.

Your comment didn't make it through moderation because of your very disrespectful and profane attack on me.  This is my place, not yours.  I don't care that you feel really really strongly about Donald Trump.  Cathedra mea, regulae meae.

I've only banned one person in the 15 year run of this blog (my abusive ex-wife).  Congratulations - you're number two.

Go away and don't come back.  All comments from you will be nuked without being read.

Congratulations to OldNFO

He's been blogging for 16 years.  Wow. 

Big Country will be off the air for a couple weeks

He asked me to tell everyone that his blog will be down for a couple weeks.  More when we know more. 

Congratulations to the Silicon Graybeard

His blog is celebrating its lucky 13th blogiversary. 

Help Big Country save his Grand-daughter

This post is going on the side bar until BCE has his Gran back, but for those who haven't heard, be's in a legal battle royale with his (step) daughter and her boyfriend to get custody of his Granddaughter, Ariana.  She used to live with BCE and Wifey but the Mom took her from Florida to Tennessee.

Never one to walk away from the Good Fight, BCE is fighting (in Court) to get her back.  As you can imagine, this take a LOT of coin.

Here's the description of the situation from the GiveSendGo page:

Adriana Grace came into this world on October 26, 2020 in Kingsport Tennessee. She's a beautiful and inquisitive 22 month old, who means the world to her Gigi and Papi. Unfortunately, her parents are completely incapable, if not downright dangerous. Her birth father/donor she was born to is an abusive person, small minded, petty and viscous. He suffers from 'small man syndrome' (4'11-5ft only) and enjoys hurting smaller and weaker people, especially women and children. He's also someone who has previously lost custody of her older sister Kylie, as well as his child from a previous relationship. He has a slew of arrests for Domestic Violence, (8 arrests, one felony conviction) and her Mother, my step-daughter, Emily suffers from extremely well documented mental health issues from the age of 5 until present day, never mind that she's lazy, entitled and incapable of any sort of basic human decency. Needless to say, they should NOT be raising this child.

I knwo that the economy is in the toilet and money is tight, but even $5 or $10 helps.  BCE is a good man, and this is a Good Fight.

@#$%! Google

There are a lot of blogs on the blogroll here that Google won't display.  Sure, it let's you add them to the blogroll but it only displays ten.  When the heck did they start that?

Apologies to those of you who mysteriously dropped off - it looks like I'm going to have to do major surgery to get everyone back.

The Internet interprets censorship as damage

It routes around it.  Big Brother Google (you do love Big Brother, don't you?) cast Big Country into the Outer Darkness, yea with bell, book, and candle.

He's baaaaaaaack.

Looks like this may have wedged Divemedic's blog, though.

UPDATE 24 October 2022 11:53: Divemedic's blog is back.

14 years around the sun

Today is our 14th blogiversary.

It's a bit odd to still be blogging - most folks have moved on to other, more modern platforms.  Some have hung it up, like Miguel.  Others don't post much, or about anything of note - Not Clauswitz only posts about the weather.

I can't say that I blame them.  Say Uncle used to say that he did this for him, not for you.  It's a good rule but I can understand the feeling that you've said pretty much everything you have to say, twice.

The Queen Of The World has helped - it was her idea to post Dad Jokes which has lightened the mood here.  She also suggested movie soundtracks on Sunday when I was quite simply running out of ideas for what classical music to post.  She's not just a pretty face, she's pretty smart and creative.

Quite frankly, it's hard to keep the creativity up year in and year out, so I'm thankful for all the help I get from her.  And I'm grateful to co-blogger ASM826 who's been helping out here for eight years now.

14 years, 13316 posts, 49483 comments, 11,355,369 views - it's been quite a ride.  I'm very grateful for all of you who stop by.  As a thank you to our regular readers, all blog content will be 100% free of charge today!

Congratulations to Old NFO

Blogging 15 years.  I believe that there were still Wooly Mammoths on the Blogosphere steppe back then.

It's hard to keep active and productive after blogging a long time, maybe harder than you might think.  This is quite an accomplishment.

Dad Joke CLXXXXVII - special Outer Space Edition

If athletes get Athlete's Foot, what do astronauts get?

Missile toe.

Blogging has been sparse because we went to Cape Canaveral to see a rocket launch.  It was (ahem) a blast.  It was also made more enjoyable by the visit of The Silicon Graybeard and Mrs. The Silicon Graybeard who live over on this side of the State.  He is exactly the same in life as on his blog, and the two of them mixed equal portions of graciousness and wicked-smartness.

Yesterday was spent at the Kennedy Space Center which was way more interesting than I had expected.  Their display of the Space Shuttle Atlantis is not to be missed, and has perhaps the most dramatic and theatrical entrance to the exhibit that I've ever experienced.  Well done, NASA.

Oh, and the Visitor's Center is 100% funded by entrance fees, so once again well done, NASA.

Damn

Tam says that New Jovian Thunderbolt has died. 

Happy blogiversary to The Silicon Graybeard

His place just turned 12 years old.   He's your go-to guy for Space news.

Twelve years is a long time in blogging.

Please pray for Brock Townsend

Brock runs the blog Free North Carolina. It went radio silent 10 days ago.

There's an update at NC Renegade; I wish the news were better.