My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on January 16, 2019

Although we hear (or at least I read) about cyber attacks to the U.S. electrical grid and utilities on a regular basis … but I’m not sure we take these events seriously enough?

I’ve blogged on this ever since reading One Second After, a detailed factual-fiction story about just how devastating, vulnerable and dependent we are to our connected devices that control infrastructure. One only needs to look at how citizens who are overly dependent on “services of all kinds” function with a “forecasted” storm or short power outage to realize what could happen IF we were to be devastatingly attacked or naturally impacted by an Electromagnetic Pulse. Obviously those involved in our national defense or cyberwarfare understand the threat and impact such a disruption. Personally I’m more fearful of my fellow citizen and how they will behave without fresh water, food deliveries, heat, electricity and medical care than I am of the day to day difficulty in taking care of my family and neighbors.

Food for thought when asked to support our government in planning for and hardening our grid and emergency preparations. Also, perhaps a simple family plan for short term disruptions or long term prepping … and self-defense (CCW reminder).

What actions should you take following an EMP strike? 

So what actions should you take immediately following an EMP strike?  Remember that time will be critical, the first few hours (days at most) will enable you to get a jump on everyone else and set the stage for your success.  You will immediately know that an EMP, be it from a nuclear weapon or massive solar flare, will have struck your area.  Your car will no longer work, your cell phone won’t work, the power will be out everywhere, planes will have fallen from the sky.  You will know it was an EMP but the vast majority of the public will not, they will be quite literally sitting around waiting for someone to tell them what to do.  You won’t know how large the scope of the strike is but you will have to assume the worst, which would be a nationwide outage.

First things first…

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Category: Energy, Millitary, News, Video-TV | No Comments »
Tags: american, china, cyberwarfare, defense, electrical, emp, foxbusiness, grid, international, News, russia, sun, van hipp, varneyco, video

Posted By RichC on January 15, 2019

With a “heavy snowfall” that amounted to about 10 inches before melting a bit, I was thankful to have put the snow blower on the tractor last week.  It was about the wettest snow I’ve ever tried to blow and that’s saying something since I’ve been removing snow with the John Deere 330 since the mid-1980s when we lived in Hudson, OH. It was good to have put a heavy duty belt on last year as there were times the chute plugged and belt slipped (probably stopped to dig out the chute a dozen times).

This weekend also saw a little service on my son’s BMW 528i AWD sedan. He puts a lot more miles on his car that I do nowadays and is glad to have a warm garage and a helping hand to do a little work. We replace his faulty plugs and did another oil change which seems to happy way too often now that he’s driving to Columbus on a regular basis … like father, like son – a reference to my dating Brenda back in 1981.

New Bosch pre-gapped spark plugs vs older well seasoned NGK. Seems to be a miss,
so we will be replacing coil packs. Still wondering about the plugs? (chart)

As for the heavy snow, I’m concerned we may lose the pool cover this year; there is so much weigh that I’m sure the aging straps and material are going to fail.

Category: Automotive, BMW, Personal, Photos, Weather | No Comments »
Tags: BMW, cover, family, john deere, oil change, pool, service, snow, snowblower, spark plugs, taylor, tune up, weather, winter

Posted By RichC on January 14, 2019

This content is restricted.

Category: Archive, Blogs, Music, Video | No Comments »
Tags: annalyn, baby, family, katelyn, kids, Music, music monday, musicmonday, shark, song, Technology, video, youtube

Posted By RichC on January 13, 2019

With incentives, South Dakota and Minnesota compete for tiny trū Shrimp and its promise of indoor shrimp farms.

A company named trū Shrimp Co. had planned to break ground this spring in Luverne, Minn., on a $330 million to $360 million indoor shrimp farm. It aims to produce 8 million pounds of shrimp a year in stacked ponds that are about 12 inches deep, 12 feet wide and nearly the length of two football fields.

Last week, the company suddenly shifted gears and said it would build what it says will be the first in a string of such facilities in nearby Madison, S.D., citing Minnesota’s tough environmental permitting process.

READ

The Minnesota deal “unraveled in recent weeks after trū Shrimp officials said they couldn’t meet a strict limit on chloride in its discharge water—and the time it would take to resolve issues with its permit was longer than its board could tolerate.”
At least we know why shrimp were working out on treadmills a few years ago.

Category: Business, Financial, Misc, News | No Comments »
Tags: ani gif, animated, Business, gif, incentives, minnesota, regulations, shrimp, south dakota, taxes, tru shrimp

Posted By RichC on January 12, 2019

The Raspberry Pi Cam photo automatically captured the backyard snow during a break in the falling snowflakes. The storm was well forecasted, so decided it was time to put the snowblower on the old John Deere 330 diesel tractor. I hope the wet snow will “blow” as my preliminary shoveling has me thinking it might not? We’ll see tomorrow.

Category: Misc, Photos, Raspberry Pi, Weather | No Comments »
Tags: Cam, john deere, photo, raspberry pi, snow, snowblower, weather

Posted By RichC on January 12, 2019

There is one thing that is consistent in Washington DC … politicians and bureaucrats love spending other people’s money.

It doesn’t matter whether they are a Democrats or a Republicans …  socialists or capitalists … politicians all want someone else to pay for their ideas. The current top two politicians in the news are newly elected socialist-Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez (D-NY) who is proposing big … really big …government programs (no surprise as she is a Democrat and socialist believer to boot) … and President Trump wanting his “big beautiful wall” on our southern border.

First, Representative Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t precisely worked out the numbers, even with Washington DC type fuzzy math. She merely tosses out to 60-minutes that “taxing the rich” more is a solution; this is not unlike the far-left approach in the past, EXCEPT this time they would need $40 TRILLION.

On the capitalist side, President Trump wants $5 Billion for southern border protection and his signature “WALL” … $5 Billion sounds modest in comparison to Ocsasia-Cortez’s dollar figure and would likely be do-able considering congress regularly spends like drunken sailors on far more frivolous pet projects when negotiating for votes – will they this time? BUT like @AOC, our @POTUS wants someone else to pay for it – in this case our southern neighbor, Mexico – are they feeling bullied yet?

With all the bloviating and theater, if it were not OUR hard earned tax dollars paying for it, this would be humorous. What a sad state of affairs in Washington DC … and you wonder why so many of us want smaller government?

Category: Financial, News, Politics | No Comments »
Tags: budget, bureaucracy, capitalism, democrat, government, Ocasia-Cortez, opinion, Politics, republican, socialism, spending, taxes, trump, wall

Posted By RichC on January 11, 2019

The Amazon Echo in Kitchen/Great Room and the new Echo Dot 3rd Gen in my workshop

Not a day goes by without Amazon’s Echo devices doing something for us in our home … and it is only a matter of time before “she” (Alexa) will be assisting me in the car too. It is almost embarrassing that in a very short time that I have added … with the aiding and abetting of Katelyn and Drew … a couple more Echo Dots to other rooms in the house in order to control lights, TV, add to a list, play music or just function as a virtual assistant. Using Alexa productively has progressed faster than our even adopting personal computers in the 1980s. Computing and technology advancements in my lifetime have been amazing.

There has also been another device which I appreciate and love … likely because of my Meniere’s induced hearing loss, so YMMV. It is the AfterShokz Bluetooth headset has replaced wired earbuds, my old Bluetooth earpieces that I’ve used for years like the Jawbone, Jawbone Prime and Plantronics Savor M1100. It is not because the Aftershokz is smaller or does more than previous devices, but it is because it transmits sound partially through bone conduction … and for me that is a game changer. I can’t really “hear” sound better, but it gives me a far fuller sense of music and voice AND being deaf in one ear, it still enables me to hear what is going on around me (my “good ear” is still uncovered unlike in or over the ear devices). Perhaps only those who have struggled for years, or decades, without having cataracts removed or those with hearing loss and finding the perfect hearing aid will understand the improvement. (that “cataracts removed” reference was to my father-in-law commenting that it was as if he was no longer looking through a jar of honey or molasses.) All I know is that I appreciate this $100 headset and will likely buy the smaller and lighter Trekz Air someday (would love to do a product review if Aftershokz wants to send me one – hint, hint).

The only problem for me is that I keep my iPhone in my pocket, so when answering phone calls I don’t know who is calling. I pick up far too many unknown SPAM calls (the Do-Not-Call Registry is worthless) and often sound far too business-like when answering calls from my family. So … a suggestion would be to voice announce the caller ID info on the AfterShokz headset. A software improvement or downloadable app?

Category: Health, Innovation, Personal, Productivity, Software, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: aftershokz, Alexa, assistant, device, drew, echo, hearing, iphone, katelyn, lifechanger, tech friday, techfriday, virtual

Posted By RichC on January 10, 2019

While reading a few interesting older blog posts at Consumer Guide, my Twitter friend Tom Appel (@Car_Guy_Tom) post got me thinking about the strange company that seemed to be trying to revitalize the Packard car brand. The company built a prototype some years ago and by attending a few shows, generated some attention with the thought they might be trying revitalized the brand … or at least promote what they called the Packard Twelve, but likely generated just as much attention from car collectors as to if they could legally use the Packard name as they have no problem connecting their company to the original. The Arizona Corporation is offering the Packard Name Trademark for sale. Hm?)

For information about Packard® Holdings Inc. and the Packard Name Trademark, please contact:
Roy Gullickson
e-mail: rg@packardmotors.com
1 866 840-2766
Cell: (403) 317-0748

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Category: Automotive, Packard, Photos, Social Media, TBT, Video | No Comments »
Tags: advertising, brands, cars, classic, collector, consumer, guide, packard, TBT, tom appel, trademark, twelve, twitter, youtube

Posted By RichC on January 9, 2019

It was a somewhat frustrating end of year scrabble to get my iPhone 7 battery replaced under the Apple “program” after their throttling older iPhones was disclosed in 2017. My battery was still holding up, but who wants a phone with only 85% “Maximum Capacity” or hidden software artificially slowing down my now older iPhone 7 plus?

So I scheduled my appointment with Apple by phone, drove 30 minutes to the Apple store at my appointed time on 12/31/2017, only to have them tell me they didn’t have any batteries for my phone. Hm, for a company that prides themselves on accuracy and efficiency from their customer service, this was disappointing … as well as inconvenient.

Thankfully, they at least honored the warranty and took care of me after the program expired in 2019 … free of charge (well, I do have AppleCare on my iPhone 7 Plus). I know this model is no longer the latest and greatest, or as fast as a new iPhone XR, but frankly I’m not interested in buying an overpriced new phone. So now with the new battery in my older phone, I should be able to stretch this one until 5G is widespread and supported by Apple – at least that’s the plan!

Category: Apple, Cellphone | No Comments »
Tags: 7plus, apple, applecare, battery, capacity, customer, iphone, replacement, service, store, throttling, warranty

Posted By RichC on January 9, 2019

Photo from history website pulled from Reddit

Machu Picchu, an ancient Inca settlement in Peru, wasn’t discovered by someone with a camera until 1911. American archeologist Hiram Bingham took the first known photo when he visited in 1911. Bingham arrived in Peru with a small team of explorers to search for the famous “lost” cities of the Incas. It is now one of the top tourist destinations in the world.

I’m adding a new category to the MyDesultoryBlog for 2019 — To-Do. It will be a place to post things to do as well as places to go.

Category: History, Photography, Photos, To-Do, Travel | No Comments »
Tags: acheology, ancient, bingham, cities, History, incas, list, peru, photographer, to-do