bluewing
@bluewing@lemm.ee
- Comment on Do you use your blinker in a car? 2 days ago:
If you are wondering if others are on the road with you, you’re doing it wrong.
- Comment on Do you use your blinker in a car? 4 days ago:
Turn signals are cool. But let’s ignore the fact I live in a very rural area and there is often no one within miles of me when driving. In that case, who am I going to signal to? That suicidal deer in the ditch? That’s the last SOB I want to have any clue about where I’m going. But anywhere I meet or see traffic I do use them. And definitely the once a month trip I make to a real town.
I do not, as a rule, place any great amount of faith in turn signals. And that paranoia has saved me more than once. Far too often I have seen a driver with a turn signal blinking merrily blow past me either straight ahead or turn in the opposite direction. Had I believed those signals, I would have been tee-boned.
The only thing I believe in is the direction your steer tires are turned. Turns out your vehicle will go in the direction they are pointing. Any of you new drivers, this is an excellent safe driving tip. Pay attention to the steer tires. Those tires will tell you the truth about the real intentions of another driver.
In any case always remember-- it’s just as easy to be dead being dead right as it is being dead wrong. Be safe out there…
- Comment on 6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux? 1 week ago:
So many perfectly working older computers are going to be headed to the landfill as e-waste. That’s the horrible part.
What a waste tech dollars just to play some stupid game.
- Comment on shrimp colour drama 1 week ago:
They still taste good. So they got that going for them I guess.
- Comment on Today's Survey. One point for everything that you have NEVER DONE 2 weeks ago:
I grew up a poor farm boy, so we never had a VCR when I was a kid. And they really weren’t a thing anyway when I was young. And according to my Father, us kids were the remote!
Did you ever peer into the back of the TV when a tube would burn out and your Dad would pull the cabinet out, then remove the back and try to see which tube didn’t light up when the set was powered up? It was a marvelous sight! It often took us a few days before we would get to town before we could stop into the local drug store that had a tube tester and had a selection of the common tubes to buy.
- Comment on Clean butt 2 weeks ago:
That’s what I love about mine. Automatic lid raise and lower as you walk in, heated ring and water, (both adjustable temp), air dry, (again heated), and charcoal filtered air filtration to minimize the stench from that drive through burrito.
It’s the posh life. Very nearly the equal to having your own chamberlain.
- Comment on Clean butt 2 weeks ago:
You need to use the power washer setting. Takes the paint right off the wall…
- Comment on Today's Survey. One point for everything that you have NEVER DONE 2 weeks ago:
I was thinking of even older things.
The feel of the keys and staccato sounds of a mechanical typewriter.
The sound of a wringer/washer machine
The muffled sound of my am band 9 transistor pocket radio “hiding” under my pillow late at night for as long as the 9V battery would last (I loved the Mystery Radio Theater show that started at 10pm)
The soft crackling sound of a tube black and white TV as all the tubes warmed up. (And the time it took to do so)
The sound and smell of the percolator coffee pot in the morning
The sound of a wooden screen slamming shut
The smell and sound of a mimeograph machine printing copies in the school/church office (And the slight buzz you could get from copy fluid-- Petroleum aromatics Yum!)
Doing my math homework with a slide rule.
The smell of a fresh fired paper hull shotgun shell on a cold crisp late fall morning
And so much more that no longer exists.
- Comment on Today's Survey. One point for everything that you have NEVER DONE 2 weeks ago:
A perfect zero. I have done all of those things and more that the creator of that list can’t even imagine. Things that were everyday common but have faded beyond memory, (and aren’t missed at all).
- Comment on Virgin Physicists 2 weeks ago:
Maybe round it up yo 4 just to be safe…
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 5 weeks ago:
Ask your city clerk about it. That person can tell you what the city/county/township meeting format is and how to participate. But basically, you go to the meeting, bring some photos to support your claim, and discuss the matter like a civil human being. It’s not rocket surgery. You don’t need a lawyer either.
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 5 weeks ago:
It’s pretty easy to dodge property taxes also.
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 5 weeks ago:
I went and argued my taxes at my annual township tax assessment meeting. I was being assessed for a new deck and ramp. That added about $200 to my taxes. What I did do was move the wheelchair ramp out away from the house a bit for better winter time safety and repaired the steps, ramp boards, and railings.
Should I have been taxed for a whole new deck and ramp when I just did repairs and made safety changes?
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 5 weeks ago:
You certainly can argue about your property taxes and win concessions if you have a good reason. It’s not hard to do. You just need to get off your ass and attend the annual tax assessment meeting.
It’s why that annual meeting exists.
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 5 weeks ago:
I have taught math for 4 years in my local school. The iPads were used by the 3rd and 4th grade students. And they never left the classrooms and were well supervised during use.
Starting in 5th grade, they were issued Chromebooks. Google Classroom was used for assignments and other communications. And since Mommy and Daddy had to pay for them IF they were damaged, they held up quite well. The IBM Education model is very robust. Not fast, but robust.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 month ago:
Which businesses? Foreign companies or local ones? Do you wish to have your money shipped overseas to purchase a vacuum cleaner? Or would you rather pay a bit more and have you hard earned dollars stay here in at home to help pay wages to your neighbors?
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 month ago:
There is a balance to it. Yes, local manufacturing will make things more expensive. But making more durable goods tends to pay better wages for more people. And let’s be honest here, most people can’t be a doctor or write code. High paying collage degrees are beyond them. Or we can maintain low paying retail jobs for the majority of people.
But the is a balance and it can’t be done over night without causing large amounts of economic pain to many people.
- Comment on Leo knew it was a joke and laughed because it was just a joke 1 month ago:
So you want to take agency away from every adult so they conform to your views only?
- Comment on Patch this Bish! 2 months ago:
I think “Patch this Bish” is kind of how we got to this point.
- Comment on How did a simple phone call become so problematic? 2 months ago:
Think of it as a way to say you have no clue how to communicate correctly through the written word. By the time I’m forced to wade through your lack of punctuation, misspellings and the autocorrect blunders and the stupid emojis to decipher what you REALLY meant, I already have equated your IQ to be around the range of my old orange tabby cat.
If you send me a text, I will consider it of such low priority that I might get back to you in a week or so.
- Comment on How did a simple phone call become so problematic? 2 months ago:
I absolutely detest text messaging or emails. You have a problem? Call me because I can probably solve your issue in one minute of phone call. I have been almost always been subjected to texting sessions that lasted for several hours because the dumbass on the other end lacked the spelling and vocab skills to provide an accurate written description of the problem.
Time is money and even sometimes life threatening unless the fastest method of communication is use. And fastest ain’t an email or text.
- Comment on Anon has an antique revolver 2 months ago:
Antique firearms are often fiddly to take apart, repair and reassemble. After all, they weren’t the most optimized designs and often required a lot of hand fitting to get things to work as compared to today. But they aren’t that complex nor were they designed like an iPhone to be near impossible to take apart and reassemble.
But, like most mechanical things, you really only need to be 5% smarter than the machine to actually work with it. A high bar for some I suppose.
- Comment on moms rule 2 months ago:
The French tried to impose “metric” time way back in the day. Even they learned that was a bad idea and quietly dropped it. The solar system seems to prefer it’s base12 time.
I think it maybe helped give rise the the saying: “The French follow no one. And no one follows the French.”
- Comment on Boomers with their loud Samsung phone sounds 2 months ago:
I already wear a smart watch and use the vibrate reminders. It’s not particularly effective. After a lifetime in the harsh sun, there ain’t a lot of feeling left. Maybe once out of three times I might notice the vibration if I’m not distracted doing life things.
- Comment on Boomers with their loud Samsung phone sounds 2 months ago:
As a boomer with tinnitus, (I’ve had since maybe 4 years old), and now hearing loss, I can’t hear shit on my cell phone at 50% volume. And I have alarms set to remind me to take certain inhalers at set times during the day, (Thanks Long Covid!). So, yeah, I have the volume up enough to probably piss you off. It pisses me off too-- I hate those things and having to live like this. But it’s not like turning the volume off or down is really an option for me.
But chances are I probably forgot the damn thing at home anyway.
- Comment on Vibes based cooking 2 months ago:
There is soon a great winnowing of craft distilleries coming also. There is a glut of barrels growing in rick houses are we speak and production is dropping. MGP, (probably the largest producer of custom/aged spirits for “craft” whisk(e)y brands in the US), has announced large cut backs in their production. The market share for spirits is declining in the US as the younger customers are swinging away from spirits to other types of intoxicants.
- Comment on Vibes based cooking 2 months ago:
Mostly because they can’t be good at all of them. And there were/are a lot of bad brewers out there that don’t care about mastering the craft.
- Comment on Vibes based cooking 2 months ago:
The “craft” part got killed in the commercialization of the genre. So it’s become the modern version of Pabst. And there is a contraction of micro breweries at the moment as beer drinkers are slowly learning to pass on all the crap out there.
- Comment on Vibes based cooking 2 months ago:
It’s not that I hate IPAs, I don’t per se. I’ve home brewed IPAs for myself even though I prefer ales. The problem started with micro breweries trying to out do each other in seeing just how much hopps could be jackhammered into a beer. And it’s turned beer drinkers in pretentious snobs because they have no clue in what the reason is for IPAs to even exist in the first place or even how it’s supposed to originally taste.
- Comment on Vibes based cooking 2 months ago:
I almost always follow a new recipe the first time around to understand what the dish is generally supposed to be. After that, I start riffing off of it to make it what I want it to be. But you gotta know which general direction the dish was originally headed before you can successfully play with it if you’re a Home Gamer in the kitchen.