The conservatives need the babies alive so they can be sent overseas to be killed. It's the new american way.

Disgusting pigs. All of em.

I think that 'Star Trek - The Next Generation' covered this very dilemma with (S2E18) Up The Long Ladder. In one hand you have stagnancy and in the other pure chaos. I don't envy you for having to tackle issues like this because there is no perfect solution, but I would encourage you to find a balance. Balance is a prerequisite to longevity.

You would not have enjoyed holiday dinners at my house. While my parents were good people, you can't pick your relatives. We had the infamous Uncle Tom and Aunt Janet, who would swallow anything and everything you had in the bathroom medicine cabinet, even if it landed them in the emergency room later. And Grandma, a devout catholic that spent every Sunday at church learning how to love thy neighbor, who would go on long cuss ridden tirades insulting and slurring on minorities. And then there was Uncle Pete, who was thrown out of Bob Evans on Easter Sunday for announcing to the entire dining room that 'He could puke better than this sausage gravy'. I do actually miss Uncle Pete. He did have a hell of a way of getting his point across, and that sausage gravy was totally bunk.

While thinking about it all still raises my blood pressure even 40 years later, those moments brought their behaviors from my subconscious to my conscious where I could take notice of it. It did empower me to actively NOT be like that. I saw first-hand several of my future potential selves and chose to take a higher road. I find a bit of comfort in that. I wonder if I wasn't exposed to those behaviors from a third person perspective, would I have been able to avoid them.

Oh, and sorry about dropping that bomb the other day. I was in a rare mood. I removed it as you rightfully requested of me. In my defense, I used the word appropriately, but I totally understand.

You seem like a decent enough fellow. Best of luck.

I built a PC for my little sister in 2007. She was starting college and didn't have a computer. It totaled 2805 and some change, custom built through Antares Digital (When you know, you Lili). These were all top of the line components (Asus M2N32-WS PRO, Amd athlon64 X2 AM2 5200, Corsair Memory). Not a cheapy system in its day.

Three nights before I was to deliver it to her, I completed all of the setup, had all the software ready to go, even setting up a custom theme for her (We were both metalheads). My folks said that she would need a printer/fax/copy/scanner as well, so last minute, I ended up buying an HP 5610 at target for 192 dollars.

The HP instructions didn't say that if you connected the cable between the printer and the PC before you had installed the drivers, the printer would not mount as a device. In fact, it would never connect to that PC ever again. Apparently, it ruined the registry until you reformatted and reinstalled the OS.

To be fair, the manual did say to install the drivers first, then the cable, but this was not the norm back then and they didn't really emphasize it in any way, nor did it mention that you were about to be FITA big time. Had to scramble to completely reformat the drive, reinstall all the software... Essentially, starting over from a blank slate and getting done in 2 days for delivery to her dorm on move in day. It did connect second time around.

I wrote them an angry letter regarding the poor deployment, but of course I never heard back from them. Never bought another HP for myself or anyone else ever again. I go out of my way to encourage people to not buy anything from HP. If I happen to be somewhere and see someone looking at an HP printer, I'll just approach them, introduce myself, and tell them my story to discourage them from buying it.

I don't think she could figure out how to roll a bowling ball.

I use Brave Browser (with Ublock Origin and AdBlock) and rarely have any issues. I do have Freetube downloaded, installed and ready to go for when they escalate their game (and they will). For certain other applications, a youtube downloader can be quite handy.

Ads truly are the most annoying, counterproductive and least creative way of putting yourself out there. Even worse, they can never seem to match an ad with the content it gets forced upon, and this serves only to train people to associate their brand with uselessness and irrelevance. Even if you have a product that is good, you've just presented yourself as an obstructing pair of clown shoes and that becomes your first and long-lasting impression. When the time comes that they may need it, most people will not remember your product from that ad, only that your brand is a pair of clown shoes.

The simple truth is, if you have a good product, you do not need advertising. You only need advertising if you have a bad product and you are worried that negative word of mouth will spread faster than you can dupe your share of people into buying it.

Edit: Replaced a word that may be taken as a slur.

Wow, very cool.

As a refractory designer, nearly every day of my life for the last seventeen years has been spent createing linings or shapes for large complex industrial vessels, mostly steel, glass or cement, and this hits me where I live.

I also find the math and geometry of my work quite soothing. You haven't lived until you've calculated a brick dome manually. The math is so pure.

Ahh, I had forgotten about the beginning and also the hidden track. I buy CD's but I use a PC or mp3 player for sound these days so I rip it before shelving it. I separated my mp3 track into 3 different tracks years ago. It was weird at the office when my computer would play mariachi music. I'm listening to it again in order now. Yeah, I like the extreme transitions in the single track. A numbing followed by a sock in the face and then finished with a raspberry. Kind of a 1-2-3 punch.

Yeah, I'm onboard now.

They trip all over themselves just to seemingly not use the phrase "open source" huh?

No, but on the brightside you got a much better chance of it having a 10 Forward.

We knew what was going to happen verbatim, and yet we laughed hysterically anyways.

I am from Pittsburgh and it's a huge party at Gobbler's Knob, Pennsylvania. Shut down the town kind of party. An absolute sea of people. It's been like that long before the movie, but then there's not much to do in February.

This years Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring but do note that marmots are not exactly qualified to make to make meterological forecasts. It's a mostly cute tradition with a hint of madness, kinda like sticking a tree in your living room and hanging up socks to celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas. Makes total sense when you're drinking.

For the record, Groundhogs (or woodchucks) are pretty docile and cute. They are also excellent climbers. This little fellow was quite curious about me, and why I was hiding in his field (taking pictures of birds).

I definitely need to get better at blender. This is impressive for sure. Thanks for posting it.

CDs are still king with me. 1,957 and still counting. I feel cheated if I don't get to enjoy that romance of flipping through the liner notes while listening to the CD that first time. I rip the songs I like after a few days of listening to it. I suspect the day will come when MP3's will not be free.

DVD's too. Almost 1,400 of them as well.

I did have to let the cassette tapes go. I kept some of the rarer ones, but they weren't meant to last 40 years and would not likely survive another rewind.

Gorgeous photography. Thanks for posting.

I look at the most recent activity and suspect that either a new fissure has opened in the town proper or the southern fissure has lengthened. There exists a mini cluster of larger earthquakes in this area. The best case scenario is that this is a new structure on fire. All three scenarios are rotten-a-f. It is getting hard to tell due to gasses, smoke and darkness.

That is most likely a RUV news helicopter in the foreground. It's footage may be available shorty. You can also read their english blog here. Drones are once again banned 4km from town.

That'd be a great band name.

'... We're Hot Testicle Hypothesis and this is our new single "Coming In Quarts" ...'

You're one of them, aren't you?

Professional geologist Shawn Willsey posted a graphic of the approximate location of the newest fissure on his livestream. This fissure and flow is not likely to be a threat to the town of Grindavik, but it is a threat to both the blue lagoon and the powerplant.

Say what you want, but Georgio got some great hair. It deserves it's own zip code.

This is punk rock all day long, but it's a great song on a great album from an epic band.

Their remake of 'Alannah Myles - Black Velvet' is good as well.

The Dorothy Eady always stuck with me. It's fairly well documented.

After falling down the steps at home, she nearly died. When she came back to life, memories were unlocked of a prior life in Egypt in which she was a priestess in an egyptian temple. She would go on to have a very successful career working in Egyptian antiquities.

As for the really really weird shizz, anyones guess. I try not to just arbitrarily cut someone down, but it's unlikely there would be proof of her having a conversation to an ancient diety.

Iced Earth - Seven Headed Whore from the album Incorruptable came on today at work and I enjoyed it so much that just before it ended, I restarted it. It was worth it. I got a few additional Autocad commands in trying to keep pace with the drumming.

The lead singers an idiot, but the band is phenominal.

I still buy CDs. I have a quite large CD collection. It's large enough that I've had to buy multiple pieces of furniture to accommodate it. For me, there's a particular romance with listening to the disc that first time, in order, and while flipping through the liner notes. After that, I'll listen to it in the car or at work for a few weeks, taking note of which songs to record into my mp3 playlist. Eventually, I'll record any songs I want in my home playlist and shelf the CD with the others so that no harm comes to it.

I'm not buying it. I don't think the human race has the potential to move water in a manner where it would affect the spin of the earth in any significant manner.

The chemical reaction that binds concrete in a matrix takes place after you add the water and continues until you dry it out. Anything you put in the crack will be a temporary fix only. The material will work itself out over time, and you will additionally be trapping a certain amount of moisture in the crack with it. You will now have a concrete pad with a 'pocket' and a 'plug' made from different materials. Materials that are likely to expand and contract at different rates exposing an opening for moisture and debris at least once through the year.

You only get (1) chance to successfully pour concrete i'm afraid. Your pad is damaged for all time. The crack will certainly grow from thermal conditions alone. It's incapable of healing itself. What you need to stave that off is good chemistry for binding and something that expands and contracts at approx. the same rate as the concrete. I'd call the company that poured it. They'll know what repair product best matches their chemistry. If you put the wrong products in it, it's going to accelerate the degradation.

I am a refractory designer, and the company I work for makes several 'patch' type products of different chemistries. They all have a use. Temperature, application, chemistry, elevation even. While these do work, they are again only temporary.

They come in different consistencies. One of those is what we call a plastic. It is very much like a putty until it dries. It does contain some moisture so it will shrink as it dries out. It does not contain as much moisture as a self flowing castable would.

Farewell sir. Thanks for all the laughs.

Kevin Pollack's fantastic story about torturing Alan Arkin. Skip to 1:30 if you want to hear his answering machine prank.

I enjoy programming but I get kinda OC when learning something new, and have to remind myself to be patient. I usually plan projects that are way over my skill level (just a hobbyist).

Most of my successful programs have started out very small and then re-written numerous times over a couple years, gradually becoming large in both scope and complexity as my mind. This allows my mind to envision the programs entirety and make better choices instead of immediate results.

At that time, no one knew what was going to happen. They didn't want to chance it so they upgraded nearly everyone.

Whatever the reason, it made my decade. I experienced no problems at all on any of my machines.

The aftermath of the January 14 2024 volcanic eruption which has now officially been declared to be over.

The Map

This is a combination of Agust Gudmundsson's Satellite Map and the 2D quake map. I used Autocad to import each image and then known features to match the scales and orientations, but it's still an approximation. Additionally, the satellite image is greyscale and low resolution so the perimeter of the lava field gets hard to discern in some areas with little to no color contrast.

The Fissures and Lava Fields

The two eruptive fissures (north[900m] and south[150m]) are shown in red. It ejected quite a bit of lava, but the experts say they were lucky that the eruption was as weak as it was. The new lava fields from each are in orange. The initial fissure to the north grew in its size as the eruption continued and extended itself underneath the original berm. This extension and the area where the berm crossed the highway allowed lava behind the ber.

The southern fissure was completely unexpected and it was heartbreaking to witness. While it released a smaller amount of lava at a lower pressure than the north, but due to its proximity to the village, it was enough to destroy at least (2) homes.

The Berms

The berms are shown in blue, both the original (lite blue) and the two new additional ones (medium blue).

The original 10-15 meter high [32-48 foot] berm held up strong and most likely saved the village from much more damage. However, it was not completely effective. A small portion of the berm at the highway had been left open for travel until the day of the eruption when emergency crews plugged it last minute.

During and since the eruption, the emergency crews have built (2) new berms on the west side of Grindavik to further deflect lava and protect the village.

The Infrastructure

The town is still under evacuation order due to the uncertainty of future eruptions and the dangers inside the village due to subsidence and instability.

Electricity seems to be back on in town.

The geothermal pipeline that runs tandem (a few meters west) to the north-to-south highway and was destroyed by lava. This is significant in that this supplies Grindavik it's most abundant heat source, hot water. Homes that were not in harms way are still going to have moderate damage due to frozen pipes. [Edit Jan 21 2024] It was reported that just yesterday emergency crews bypassed the destroyed section of pipe restoring water both hot and cold.

Two of the reported three homes that were destroyed by lava are shown in white. The north home does not appear on many maps. It was reported to be a new home that was yet unoccupied. The south home was occupied and appeared to be a complete loss. I am still unsure about the third home.

The greenhouse, shown in green, survived seemingly undamaged thanks the the original berm. It was reported to have had all of its equipment removed prior to the eruption.

I heard a report that the local government is probably going to be able to offer Grindavik residents a buyout for their homes and property but all I can find is a report that it may be possible.

250 abandoned sheep were reported to have been rescued and removed on Tuesday Jan 16.

The Next Chapter

The future of Grindavik is not looking so good. The data seems to point towards yet another eruption, and likely within the next few weeks.

The Svartsengi GPS Station is near the power plant (north of Grindavik). This is the region where the experts suspect the ultimate source of the magma. It is feeding the magma chamber under Grindavik which is where the eruptive fissures from both December and January formed. It will take months or years of inactivity for this to cool and plug itself. While the system is fed, the pressure will increase. As the pressure builds, the chances of the magma moving or erupting increase. There is no real way known to man as to what exactly is going on down there.

Earthquakes have been very quiet in the area which is to be expected after the balance of pressure. They have ramped back up through the week but are still low in frequency, size and depth. During the eruption, there were numerous mini-clusters of earthquakes near Grindavik (Locations with a high concentration of earthquakes). One of these locations ultimately became where the southern fissure erupted. There were (2) other mini-clusters south of that fissure well inside of Grindavik. Both of these areas of mini-clusters are above the magma chamber and could be places of a future eruption. With the damage to the area, it could just be stress related fractures.

Send hope and prayers to the great and brave people of Grindavik.

I have the surfans F20 as well. Good sound quality for sure. It is the best in it's class for that.

There was no evidence presented, just a calculation that bridged a gap and one that I am unsure if it's even right given all the forces in the universe that can affect a planetoid. I've no idea whether or not it accounts for the volume of space junk in orbit or how that acts as a sink to slow us down. It doesn't even mention the moon or where it was. Still not buying it.

In my old party days circa 2000, I had a nice party house in the hood. The neighborhood wasn't all that great, but it was a nice big house for cheap rent. Lots of rooms and space. I was young and had more knowledge of computers than money, and this meant I could bus to work instead of driving and paying to park.

I worked at a large engineering company. They upgraded their computers for the Y2K bug. This left them with an extraordinary amount of old PC's they had to actually pay to dispose of properly. To save money, they yanked the hard drives and raffled them off to the employees. We're talking nearly 400 PCs. 386's, 486's and even some (then highly coveted) 486-dx2's.

A few people that won just gave me their PC. They didn't want it since it wasn't usable without a hard drive but knew I did. I cashed in a few favors here and there to get a few of those choice 486-dx2's from those that won them where I could. In all, I made (6) pretty decent Dell PC's and set them up in various rooms in the house. I also had my cadd workstation and my roommate had his PC as well. I put Windows 98SE, VNC and Twisted Metal 2 on each.

I lan'd together all (8) PC's into a home network using a partial reel of CAT6 cable that I got from another friend in exchange for devising and assembling his wife a new PC for her birthday. He was in the IBEW and the cable was scrap surplus from construction at a major airport. He gave me some speaker wire as well. In hindsight, it was for a public address system and was not the best for musical range but it did work. I borrowed a crimper and helped myself to some RJ45 connectors from our IT department. I ran the lan cables to network the PC's. I placed a speaker in every room and wired them into the home stereo. Mono, but I only had so many speakers. I then converted my workstation to more of a home theater, running a video out to the TV. PC audio was outputted to the home stereo as auxiliary.

It made for a kick ass home theater system for the year 2000. In it's day, it was pretty hip. We had some great multiplayer games for years to come and nearly everyone had their own room to play in. TM2 was really neat in that it could take up to 8 players.

VNC gave you control over any computer from any computer. You could watch a movie on the Home Theater in any room you want to, or all of em even. Kick on winamp with milkdrop and just jam out. Put on 'The cat sitter' and get the cat all riled up. Ahh, good times.

In all, and not accounting for any time spent or software licenses, I may have invested 30 dollars for a new corded drill (which I still have today). Beer was probably the highest total expenditure for the project. There were some wire coat hangers that got away fishing the wires through the walls that are probably still there.

Also, I totally agree with you on Chrono Trigger. It has another title set in that same world that can be tricky to find called Chrono Cross. I personally think Trigger was the better of the two titles but Cross is play worthy.