Wordle 803 Hint

Hint: At a wedding, she does.

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First Letter: B

The Best Kind of Letdown

Well, the lights flickered a couple of times. But that was the worst of Hurricane Idalia for my neck of the woods.

I was up at oh dark thirty, about the time the winds really became noticeable, figuring I'd get as much work as possible done before we lost power. I finally went and took a nap around noon.

The storm track seems to have "wobbled" just a hair more north-northeast  than northeast. I know (from watching live video) that Cedar Key, 50 miles west of me, got hellacious storm surge, but around here all I saw were some very small tree branches blown down.

I declare myself duly grateful to any notional intelligent power or powers behind the workings of nature.

Wordle 802 Hint

Hint: Video's great, but it's better when accompanied by this.

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First Letter: A

Looks Like We're In For A Dark and Stormy Night

Catch y'all on the other side ASAP.

Wordle 801 Hint

Hint: You might find this included as an ingredient in an Italian-style salad, or see it used to describe a film like The Italian Job.

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First Letter: C

I Don't Enjoy Hurricane Prep Very Much

But I guess it's better than getting e.g. a wheelbarrow through the front window.

Got some cases of bottled water and a few other "might need" food items arriving via Instacart shortly, and Tamara and I will go out tonight for some rope/bungee cords/tarps, etc. I've got convenient containers of water freezing in the freezer, for use in coolers if (let's be honest, when) the power goes out.

Tomorrow morning I'll be covering, tying down, tarping, etc. anything in the yard that seems like it could plausibly be lifted and sent flying by high winds.

As of the last I saw, the most likely future is:

• The storm makes landfall as a Category 3 hurricane about 50 miles west of me on Wednesday morning; then
• Rapidly loses energy, passing over me as a Category 1.

But I wouldn't count on the latter. For all I know, it may pick up enough energy from the warm Gulf water to land as a Cat 4 and still be a Cat 4 or 3 when it hits me. Or it could take a left turn and head right at Pensacola or even New Orleans. We'll be making decisions tonight as to whether to evacuate, and if so to where, or whether to ride it out here at home. Since we have animals, bugging out is a real pain in the ass. Our daughter and her boyfriend usually go to a friend's house, which is supposedly as close to stormproof as humanly possible, when we have incoming. Our church is usually open as a shelter, but it's usually also not on the expected direct path, and most of the people who shelter there are usually from out of town.

Speaking of which, I hear that our pastor got a lovely birthday present -- a getaway weekend in Cedar Key. This weekend. Cedar Key is pretty much dead center of the likely landing spot, so she'll be rescheduling. There probably won't be much working in that town for a month or so if it goes where they say it's going at the strength they say it's going to arrive at.

To me, one of the worst parts of hurricanes is that usually I'm without electricity for several days ... but the outage somehow never seems to affect my next power bill by anything like the percentage of the month it comprises.

OK, I'm gonna go see if I can find a little cheese to go with this whine.

Not Really a Reason For Me, But YMMV

I'm a huge Linux fan, and have been for 20 years. Any time a friend or loved one complains about their Windows machine, I tell them to switch to f*cking Linux, even if it's just ChromeOS (yes, that runs on a Linux kernel).

But this explainer on why Linux is cooler than your OS doesn't really do much for me: If your Linux box freezes, you can go to another computer, remote into your Linux desktop with Secure Shell, and kill whatever process is causing the problem.

I do command line stuff when it's needed, but that seems like an unnccessarily difficult way of handling the situation when just force re-booting (even with this guy's described hardware difficulties) gets the job done.

And I can't remember the last time I had to force reboot. I'm sure it wasn't THAT long ago, probably when I was doing battle with a bad installation, but it's extremely infrequent.

Unlike some Linux bros, I prefer the GUI to the command line, and I've enjoyed watching Linux get as good as, then better than, Windows and MacOS on that front.

And yes, I know that some of you are enslaved to proprietary software that's made for Windows or MacOS, that either won't run in a virtual machine in Linux or that you don't want to mess with running on a virtual machine in Linux. But if you don't resemble that remark, not switching to Linux is just being unnecessarily hard on yourself.

News About a Mentor Who Didn't Know He Was One

Dan Sanchez is ill, in about the worst way one can imagine. I don't know him personally, and don't recall ever corresponding directly with him, but I've admired his writing (at Antiwar.com, the Foundation for Economic Education, etc.) for many years. He's among those I consider my unknowing mentors in that skill.

He's got a really good attitude about it all, and he and his family will surely appreciate such support as you are willing and able to send.

Wordle 800 Hint

Hint: Some people do this with words, others with musical notes.

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First Letter: W

And Yet Another COVID Update

OK, this morning, I still feel weak, but I don't feel tired. I don't know if that's due to spending something like 36 hours out of 48 in bed, or if the Vitamin D is finally kicking in, or what.

What I do know is that previously, each day I've felt better I've decided to go back to walking 11,000 steps in a day. After which I felt worse the next day. So I'm going to take it easy for at least another day or two.

I may get a weekend column out after all, unless the brain fog descends again.

File under "if it weren't for bad luck ...": Now that I finally seem to be getting over the COVID, there's apparently an incoming hurricane. Oh, joy.

Another Good Piece on Oliver Anthony ...

... and not just because it mentions my piece on Oliver Anthony -- from David Yearsley in CounterPunch. Money line:

Anthony claims that he’s just “an idiot with a guitar.” He’s not. His music unleashes that most dangerous of all forces: authenticity.

It does bring up something I've been wanting to mention, and to mention in the same vein as that quote above:

This week the English singer-songwriter and activist Billy Bragg generously provided his own song in answer to the anger of Anthony’s “Rich Men.” Bragg took Anthony to task for directing his resentment at unfortunate folks rather than the billionaires of his song’s title.

I just don't see how Billy Bragg gets to lecture Oliver Anthony on "working class" values.

Billy Bragg sings about the working class, but his main connection to it seems to be that he did some odd jobs while trying to make it as a musician.

Oliver Anthony is the working class -- and "the unfortunate folk" Bragg speaks of. He got his skull fractured while working in a factory. Hard to get more authentically "working class" or "unfortunate" than that.

Far from "resenting" the "unfortunate folks," Anthony seems to regard them as victims of domination/manipulation by those "rich men north of Richmond." He's really on the same "class struggle" page as Bragg. But he recognizes a tragic agency on the part of those people, his people, instead of just using them as props.

Wordle 799 Hint

Hint: Some people like theirs with quiet.

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First Letter: P

Wordle 798 Hint

Hint: The Mormon Tabernacle has a famous one.

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First Letter: C

Still Not Liking the whole COVID-19 Thing

I haven't tested again, because there's not really any need to. It's not like I go out a lot or anything.

Tamara didn't test positive until several days after me, and as of this morning was still testing positive (she has to work from home until she has a negative test).

Nine days after testing positive, every time I think I've "turned the corner" I start feeling like hell again. One day I'll make my goal of 11,000 steps, the next I feel like I got run over by a truck by the time I've walked maybe 3,000.

Today, I decided to see if I can rest my way through this thing. Spent pretty much all day in bed, and am planning to head back that way shortly. And if I still feel completely worn out in the morning, I'll probably do a bunch of napping tomorrow  as well.

Update, Saturday evening:  I'm now about 36 hours into a "do the absolute minimum I need to do, go back to bed" thing. I doubt I've rested this much in 30 years. Still feeling tired and hazy, though. And tomorrow I really have to get back to regular work.

New HTTP Status Code Proposal

For addition to the HTTP standard:

215 -- As reported by Donald J. Trump, treat with extreme skepticism

In booking information, he "pre-reported" his height as 6'3" (one inch taller than when he was booked in Manhattan in April) and weight 215 pounds (25 pounds lighter than in April).

I'm four inches shorter than he claims to be, and when I weighed a few days ago I came in at 225 (one of the negative consequences of quitting smoking). He's visibly fatter than me by quite a bit.

There's no weigh in hell that tub of lard ways 215 pounds. 255, maybe.

But then, we knew he'd lie, didn't we? Because that's what he does.

I wonder if that "self-reporting" form is attested to under penalty of perjury?

Wordle 797 Hint

Hint: Today's Wordle is very large and full of water.

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First Letter: O

Wordle 796 Hint

Hint: Today's Wordle is both verbose and, for lack of a couple of Ls, not of this world.

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First Letter: W

For Your Convenience: First 2024 GOP Presidential Nomination Debate

If the embed below works correctly, you should be able to watch Rumble's livestream of the first GOP debate right here (live coverage begins at 7:30pm EDT) ... 

 

If I bother to stay up for it, I will live-blog either in the form of updates to this post or comments below it.

Unless There's a Last-Minute Change, I was Wrong

And when I'm wrong, I like to admit it ASAP instead of being like some people who continually explain why they weren't REALLY wrong, just misunderstood.

On August 13, I predicted that Donald Trump would participate in the first GOP presidential primary debate (while explaining why he shouldn't do so).

As of this moment (the morning of debate day), Trump says he won't be there.

I suppose he could be lying and planning to show up and surprise everyone. You just never know what that guy's gonna do. But I'm provisionally admitting error.

Trump not showing up is probably bad for Ron DeSantis. I bet this piece from this morning's Daily Beast is in front of the other participants' debate prep teams even as we speak.

And I really do wish that Kevin D. Williamson was going to be the moderator.

So, should I bother to watch this thing? Live-blog it? I'm disinclined to do either, but might be persuaded.

Wordle 795 Hint

Hint: If you've got the nerve to not swerve, solving today's Wordle is just a matter of energy and enthusiasm.

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First Letter: V

Over the COVID?

I don't think I'm quite over it. I still feel fairly bedraggled. But today should be my second day in a row of getting back to walking 11,000+ steps, it's been several days since I spiked a fever, the congestion seems to be clearing up, etc.

I've had worse experiences with e.g. influenza. Thankfully, my senses of taste and smell seem unaffected. For some reason, those are the reported symptoms I find most frightening.

Doing It Anyway, Might as Well Get the Asterisk

As of this morning's puzzle, I've made the switch to playing Wordle in "hard mode" as opposed to "regular mode."

What's the difference? In "hard mode," if you guess a letter and its position correctly, you must use that letter, in that position, in subsequent guesses.

So, say that your first guess is "TORSE" (that's my everyday starter word), and you find that "E" is indeed the correct letter for the final position (it's shown in green).

After that, every guess must end with "E." You can't go with "PLAID" or "CLANK."

Why am I changing to "hard mode?" Because really, that's how I generally play anyway.

Some people like to throw out guesses not including letters they've already discovered, for the sake of maximizing their NEW letter discoveries.

But I think I've only done that once or twice across nearly 800 daily puzzles.

And if you do it the "hard" way, you get a little asterisk next to your winning result (for example, today, instead of "Wordle 794 4/6," I got "Wordle 794 4/6*). Yay, prize!

Wordle 794 Hint

Hint: Scary and Posh are both this kind of girl.

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First Letter: S

Wordle 793 Hint

Hint: Five historically memorable ones are Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword.

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First Letter: B

Wordle 792 Hint

Hint: This tribe, which it turned out could indeed kick it, was discovered living in Queens in the 1980s.

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First Letter: Q

OK, Let's Talk About That Song ...

You know the one:

It seems to have both found an audience and stirred a little controversy.

On the controversy side, I don't really find much to dislike. I'm not exactly sure who's "milking" welfare. Not saying it doesn't happen, but I suspect that's on the small end of the problem and maybe mars the song's perfection just a little. I'm not sure it really captures my politics entirely, but it gets at some things people really should be upset about.

But I'm really more interested in the music and the musician.

I've heard the song called "bluegrass." I wouldn't call it that. Bluegrass is generally played by combos (guitar -- regular and/or "dobro" -- banjo, mandolin, fiddle, bass fiddle). It's also usually up-tempo.

This is a slow song, and it's just a singer and his Gretsch resonator guitar ("dobro" style, although not the brand name the term comes from; I want that damn guitar, btw).

I'd just call this hillbilly music. Related to bluegrass, certainly. And I like all varieties of hillbilly music, bluegrass included.

It's just hands down a good song in my opinion. Relatively simple guitar line, heartfelt lyrics. I don't have to agree with every jot and tittle of the politics to like it.

As for the singer, he's a factory worker who supposedly turned down big-time  record deal offers. "I don't want to play stadium shows, I don't want to be in the spotlight. ... No editing, no agent, no bullshit. Just some idiot and his guitar. The style of music that we should never have gotten away from in the first place."

Amen. I'm just an idiot with a guitar (OK, several guitars), too and I wish I had this guy's obvious talent.

Wordle 791 Hint

Hint: It's the precursor form of lava.

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First Letter: M

Wordle 790 Hint

Hint: When solving today's Wordle, "close" isn't good enough.

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First Letter: E

Summer Coffee Decisions

When it's hot out, I prefer my morning coffee cold.

Most of the time, I "cold brew" -- put some regular-grind dark roast coffee in my French press, add water, and stick it in the fridge 12-18 hours before I'll be getting up and wanting my coffee. Get up, press the plunger, pour, enjoy.

But I'm used to four shots of espresso to start my day. I'd have to drink four cups of regular coffee to get that amount of caffeine. So sometimes I make a couple of four-shot pots the night before and stick them in a jar in the fridge. It's easier than futzing around with pouring the stuff over ice, etc., especially at 4:30am when I just got up and just want my damn coffee.

I'd probably try to find a happy medium by buying pre-made jugs of cold brew concentrate and adding more concentrate to less water than the instructions call for ... but that shit is expensive in a way that doesn't make much sense to me.

Anyone have any interesting cold brew or cold espresso tricks to share?

Slowdown, Not Stoppage

I won't be writing a Garrison Center column today. I don't trust myself to be in good form. The fever (which reached at least 102.6 last night) seems to have broken*, but I still feel lousy.

Which doesn't mean I'm not working. I am. Slowly, and with a short nap every hour or two. Hopefully whatever COVID variant I have won't be too long-lasting.

* When I say "broken" I mean it's down in the "kind of a fever, but not especially" range -- 99 to 99.5.

Wordle 789 Hint

Hint: Something about today's Wordle is just not quite right.

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First Letter: A

Hey, Look What I Finally Got!

One star, do not recommend.

Wordle 788 Hint

Hint: A surgeon does this before getting to work.

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First Letter: S

Firefox Oddity or Another X (The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter) Problem?

The Firefox shakedown cruise continues, and there's some weirdness going on.

Until recently, I seldom had occasion to log into Rational Review News Digest's Twitter account.

Until a few months ago, JetPack just published posts from the web site to Twitter in real time. Set it and forget it kinda thing.

Then Musk decided to monetize the Twitter API, so I just posted once daily -- a link to our daily email edition -- from MailChimp, and since I had the account linked, there wasn't a need to sign in.

Then I moved to EmailOctopus, which is a great service, but doesn't do the account link thing -- I had to log out of my personal Twitter account, log into the RRND account, and post the email edition link.

Then, yesterday, when I went to do the first full email edition in Firefox, I couldn't log out of my personal account. I'd hit logout, confirm logout ... and I'd still be logged in. I finally managed it by just wiping all the site info and cookies.

I don't know if this is a Firefox problem, or an X/Twitter problem. Anyone else having it?

My solution was to install a small, lightweight browser (Falkon) for no other reason except to log into the RRND X/Twitter account each day so that I can post that one thing.

Side note: Those who would like to get RRND's posts in real time like they used to be able to do on X/Twitter can follow us on Mastodon.

Wordle 787 Hint

Hint: A finger, or a book section.

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First Letter: I

The New PC Arrived a Day Early ...

... and the changeover to my brand new CyberGeek Nano J1 Linux Mini PC is complete enough for me to be posting from it.

Step one was wiping the ATOPNUC Mini PC completely, putting a clean install of Ubuntu on it, unplugging all the cables (two HDMI outputs, USB keyboard, USB dongle for wireless mouse, and Ethernet), and putting it away (in the box the new PC came in, since the beautiful box the ATOPNUC came in seems to have gone missing).

Step two was plugging all of those cables into the new PC, booting it up, letting it get far enough into Ubuntu configuration that I knew things were working OK, rebooting it to a live/install Lubuntu USB, installing Ubuntu, configuring Ubuntu (including all my preferences for taskbars, quick launch icons, etc.), then working my way through a cheat sheet I'd pre-written of various Firefox tweaks and necessary installs (e.g. Dropbox).

All of that went reasonably well (for some reason, Dropbox wanted to install/configure VERY slowly, and I still don't have a system tray icon for it ... but I'm definitely connected/syncing, so not too worried about it).

I installed the System Profiler and Benchmark app to verify that it has the processor and RAM advertised, and it does.

It's noticeably faster than the ATOPNUC (which will sit in its box as an emergency "oh shit, another machine went down" option until someone, fairly soon, wants or needs it for something). I'm already liking it a lot, and am getting used to Firefox quickly enough that I have no intention of installing Chrome.

What I am doing is a better and more thorough (and probably multi-day) job than previously of uninstalling a bunch of crap that I never wanted but that comes standard. For example, while LibreOffice is nice, I've not had occasion to use it in years ... but uninstalling its various elements using Lubuntu's "Discover" package manager leaves an overall item on the menu that can't be deleted. So I did a little looking around and found out that yeah, the whole suite has to be purged from the command line to be really gone. No need to have a bunch of stuff I don't want taking up disk space and remaining in my application menus.

In a few days, I may get ambitious and start figuring out how to use Wine or some virtual machine app to emulate Windows 98, and install Starcraft. Been a few years since I've played that.

Apropos of Nothing I Particularly Care to Specify

A non sequitur fallacy:

"There is no innocent explanation Event for A. Therefore, the guilty explanation is whatever the hell I happen to want it to be for purposes of proving Claim X."

Wordle 786 Hint

Hint: Today's Wordle is a lot like Medusa's hair.

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First Letter: S

Will He or Won't He?

Per The Hill: 

Former President Trump is seeking to keep the spotlight on him by drawing out his decision on whether or not to join his fellow candidates in the first GOP presidential primary debate later this month.

Trump has been threatening to skip the Republican National Committee’s Aug. 23 debate for months, citing his frontrunner status in the primary, but he said this week that he hasn’t "totally ruled it out."

My prediction, in which I am reasonably confident:

He will, because he both loves the spotlight and knows he has to keep himself in it as much as humanly possible to succeed in getting nominated and elected (more the latter than the former).

My analysis, in which I am completely (although perhaps not justifiably) confident:

He shouldn't, because at this point at least one of his opponents (Chris Christie), and maybe more, has his number and the guts to open a can of whip-ass on him, if he (or they) can just get face to face with him in public to do so with real effect.

If there's a path to the GOP nomination for anyone other than Trump, the entrance to that path is the place where that someone just walks all over the guy.

Calls him a lying sack of shit, to his face, in public.

Calls him a loser, to his face, in public.

Calls him a self-dealing scammer (and not much of a businessman), to his face, in public.

Calls him out as the dipshit who cost the GOP the 2018 midterms, the 2020 election, and the 2022 "red wave," to his face, in public.

Calls him out as the sore loser who engaged -- regardless of whether he's convicted or not, he did much of it in public -- in various efforts and conspiracies to overturn an election he lost, solely because he lost it, to his face, in public.

Invites his supporters to extract crania from recta and drop him like the bad habit he is -- with him standing right there and unable to do anything about it but fume, tantrum (and get his mic cut), or walk out.

All that might not work. But it's the only approach that might work, so he'd be ill-advised to give anyone the opportunity to take it.

Ah, Those "Gotta Get Used to New Habits" Things are Starting to Show Up ...

... in the move from Google Chrome to Mozilla Firefox.

Naturally in any move to a new browser (or, although less so recently, installing a new copy of the same browser -- these days, you can just sync various things to an account and they automatically populate), there's a period of changing settings, etc. to get things just so.

Until today, apart from installing directly analogous extensions (ProtonPass, uBlock Origin, etc.), consulting some "optimize Firefox" search results for tips, etc., the only really significant thing I've had to do is grab some CSS and create a file to override a Firefox feature I don't like (lack of clear tab separation). I suspect I'll adding some more CSS to that file, or adding an extension, to force all tabs onto the screen instead of it going to "horizontal scroll" when I have "too many" open.

But tomorrow will be the first daily email edition of Rational Review News Digest created entirely in/from Firefox since ... well, basically since Chrome debuted ... and I've already noticed that cutting from Firefox and pasting into Geany produces different output than cutting/pasting the same content from Chrome.

Which means that a bunch of little shortcuts I've been using for years now to make things look the way I want them to look will have to change. So far, it looks pretty minor. It will probably add single-digit minutes per day to my work process for a short period, after which it will become second nature.

While I tend to resist change, once I've made it over the change hump, I usually end up wondering what I ever saw in the previous way of doing things.

The Elephant in the "Migrating Away From Google" Room ...

... is this blog. It's been located right here at Blogspot for 19 years. This post will be its 6,020th, and I'm on track to exceed 550 posts this year. It's ... home.

Blogspot is owned by Google.

Should I move KN@PPSTER elsewhere?

If so, where?

Two obvious options are self-hosted Wordpress or Substack.

I don't want to do either of those.

I already run several self-hosted Wordpress sites and like the idea of my personal blog being on a service where someone else does the back end work.

I've got nothing against Substack, but I'm not that fond of the formatting I see there, and while I do try to monetize things here, I'd rather not be on a platform that inherently emphasizes paid subscriptions through its own mechanisms.

I suspect I'll end up staying here. But it's something I definitely have to think about and would value y'all's advice on.

Wordle 785 Hint

Hint: Among the seven deadly sins as portrayed in the Star Trek universe, this one is Khan's specialty.

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First Letter: W

A Health Update

I've got my follow-up with a pulmonary specialist this coming week, preparatory to which I got a chest CT week before last. I was previously told that if I quit smoking (I did, at the end of April), my Langerhans cell histiocytosis might get better. From the CT scan report:

The largest pulmonary nodule seen on the prior exam appears to have decreased in size, now measuring less than 4 mm (series 3, image 219) compared to 9 mm on the prior exam (series 3, image 197). A nodule in the left upper lobe appears slightly increased in size measuring 5 mm (series 3, image 226) compared to 4 mm prior. There are few new nodules. For example 4 mm right upper lobe pulmonary nodule (series 3 image 166). Some of the nodules have resolved. No evidence of cavitation.

Which, if I'm reading it right, sounds like good news.

A Video Review of My Soon-to-Arrive New Mini PC (Sort Of)

My 16Gb/128Gb Linux version of the CyberGeek Nano J1 Mini PC (not an affiliate link) arrives on Tuesday.

Here's an extensive video review of the 8Gb/256Gb Windows 11 Pro version from Carey Holzman, whose channel I've now subscribed to and intend to follow because it looks like he reviews lots of these little machines I'm a fan of, and he does so in detail. Very worthwhile channel if your interests run in that direction.

I find the review encouraging -- the review model he tore apart had major brand internals (including a Western Digital SSD and a known brand I can't remember of RAM).

The video is about two hours long but is time well spent. In addition to this particular machine, you also learn a lot about eBay scams.

Irony

In the sense of "incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs":

Firefox seems to run Google's Gmail better -- much better, in fact -- than Google's own browser, Chrome. At least in Linux.

The site loads faster. When you click something, whatever is supposed to happen happens faster. When you choose to "send from" a secondary email address and hit BCC, the bug that just goes back to address selection, requiring you to do it again, doesn't seem to exist. And when you paste a metric shit ton of addresses into the BCC field, it takes single-digit, rather than double-digit, seconds to process.

The experimental change from Chrome to Firefox is looking more and more like a permanent thing. I did have to figure out how to create the visible tab separators that Mozilla, for some insane reason, got rid of (that involved creating and populating a CSS file), but for the most part things are going swimmingly.

I'll know for sure after Monday morning, when I'll publish the first daily email edition of RRND since maybe 2008, that hasn't involved Chrome. The only thing Chrome had that I would have missed vis a vis my daily work requirements was the ability to use the Caret text editor Chrome app ... and Google, in its wisdom, recently decided to not allow those apps to work in Linux, meaning I'd already changed over to Geany anyway.

Wordle 784 Hint

Hint: Today's Wordle took me five tries to solve, but that turned out to be  speedy.

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First Letter: Q

I Really Dislike Change, But ...

... in anticipation of the new computer arriving, I'm messing with Firefox. I'd like to get away from as much Google stuff as possible. So far, so good, although I'm looking at themes in hope of finding something that shows tab separation better.

Given my "depart Google" goals, I also pulled the trigger on upgrading my ProtonMail account  to their "Mail Plus" version with unlimited messages, 15Gb of Proton Drive space, etc. Notes on that:

• This is an affiliate link! If you join ProtonMail through me, they give you a free month of their upgraded version (they do have a free version). If you decide to keep paying them, I get some kind of credit toward my own subscription.
• Their ProtonDrive application is an obvious counterpart to Google Drive. Not much storage at the free level, but 15Gb at Mail Plus. At the moment, I don't find it particularly useful because there's no sync app for Linux yet (I'm using Dropbox (not an affiliate link) to sync some important but not confidential/sensitive work files for ease of using them between machines). There is a sync app for Windows, though.
• Their ProtonPass application is a great password manager, and I've pretty much settled on it. There's a free version that's plenty for my needs.
• They also have a VPN (with a free version). I don't use VPNs much, but it does work (I may install Mozilla's VPN (and/or Tor now that I'm trying to be a Firefox user).
• There's also a calendar app. I don't normally make much use of calendars, but I may give it a whirl and report on its usefulness.
  
• They sell gift cards. I'm on their monthly plan at the moment, but the price comes down with a one- or two-year buy. Feel free to send one of those gift cards to thomaslknapp@protonmail.com if you'd like to see me keep hanging with them.

Getting away from Google is definitely a long-term project. My Gmail address is the recovery address for lots of accounts elsewhere, and I even "log in with Google" at certain places. But if I can turn Firefox into an enjoyable user experience, there's a good chance that I won't even install Chrome on the new machine.

Wordle 783 Hint

Hint: Greetings! Howdy! What's up?

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First Letter: H

Bucket List Item Checked Off

I'm frequently over at my neighbor's/friend's/go-to mechanic's shop doing minor tasks that require little or no mechanical aptitude ("hand me a ratchet with a 10mm socket on it," "can you pull the right front tire while I'm doing real mechanic shit over here?" etc.). I'll never be a real mechanic myself, but I find it interesting and we also share other interests to gab about (Marvel Cinematic Universe, for example).

So anyway, one of the things he's been doing this week is installing a nitrous oxide rig in a Pontiac GTO.

Now I can say I've been in a car accelerating under a 50-horsepower NOS shot. Significant push back into the seat. I don't think he took it over 90 or so. He was just making sure the nitrous was getting into the fuel mix to do its thing. But still very nice. I've already called dibs on a crew spot for the Honda Civic he's building as a drag car for himself.

New PC On The Way ...

... thanks to some folks I do contract work for!

It's not the one I was looking at last week (the really good deal on that one went away). It's this one (not an affiliate link):

Twice as much RAM (16Gb) as my ATOPNUC Mini PC. And a much better CPU. As for OS, no need to delete Windoze, it's got Ubuntu Linux pre-installed (I may change that to Lubuntu, which I use and prefer, or to Linux MATE, which I've got on a flash drive and will likely preview this weekend).

Not that the ATOPNUC was really anything to complain about. But I should have looked more closely at its CPU before I bought it. I saw "AMD" and didn't check up. If I had, I'd have found that its "5 cores" are split between 2 CPU and 3 GPU, and that it was really intended for use in cell phones. The new machine has 4 CPU cores and a dedicated Intel UHD Graphics co-processor. I suspect this will cure the (mostly minor) slowdown problems I have with the ATOPNUC, which was faster than the old ARM CPU Raspberry Pi 4B.

Wordle 782 Hint

Hint: In 1964, the Rolling Stones felt like they wanted to cry over hearts and lives being this way; but by 1977, Jackson Browne was running on it.

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First Letter: E

Wordle 781 Hint

Hint: Today's Wordle isn't a fighter. It's something else instead.

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First Letter: L

Wordle 780 Hint

Hint: Today's Wordle may try to intimidate you and push you around.

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First Letter: B

Wordle 779 Hint

Hint: Nature talks to us in us in various ways; this particular feature of it usually just babbles, though.

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First Letter: B

Wordle 778 Hint

Hint: Today's Wordle might be found growing in the ocean, or in one's intestines.

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First Letter: P

Wordle 777 Hint

Hint: Don't pair today's Wordle with a cathode unless you want to be charged with battery.

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First Letter: A

Wordle 776 Hint

Hint: Your doctor keeps track of yours. For many years, Casey Kasem kept track of pop music's.

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First Letter: C

Wordle 775 Hint

Hint: If today's Wordle is a unit of five, Matthew Fox and Neve Campbell might play two of them.

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First Letter: P

Thinking of Upgrading, Just Because

My current "daily driver" computer is an ATOPNUC Mini PC (not an affiliate link) with 8Gb of RAM, running (usually) Lubuntu.

It gets the job done (especially since discovering and correcting an unduly small swap file). I don't really need to replace it ... at the moment, anyway.

But I see that the TRIGKEY Micro Computer W11 Desktop (not an affiliate link) is on sale for about $120 (after a $50 coupon). It's got 16Gb of RAM, and its Intel Celeron N5095 CPU looks like it greatly outperforms the ATOPNUC's AMD A9-9400.

And I always operate on the assumption that I will eventually need more RAM and a better CPU to keep up with the various new crap the Internet throws at me, even though my work mostly runs to editing text and administering Wordpress sites.

So I'm considering getting ahead of the curve instead of waiting.

Then again, that ATOPNUC sells, today, for about $30 less than it did eight months ago. So if I wait, I might end up getting the TRIGKEY for even less than it costs at the moment (I hear that demand for PCs is down and that price cuts are ongoing).

I'll be mulling the decision for a little while, probably (but I have, of course, added the TRIGKEY to my Amazon Wish List in case someone wants to make that decision for me).

On the Third Day of NewListservProviderMas ...

... it looks like EmailOctopus (affiliate link!) is the new daily email edition vehicle for Rational Review News Digest.

The first daily edition via EmailOctopus went out this morning. Here's what it looked like. And here's where to become a (free! Only one message per non-holiday weekday and we never sell/rent/share your address!) subscriber if you're not already one.

Last night, I received notice from Mailchimp that "Your account has been reviewed and is now active for sending."

That ship has sailed, though (see the previous chapters of the saga here). I’m really not interested in risking our ability to deliver you your daily edition of the freedom movement’s daily newspaper to an outfit that takes us down for two days on the basis of an automated "said something we may not like" auditing system.

After eight years with Mailchimp, it looks like I'll experience a slight learning curve before formatting everything becomes second nature again. I'm OK with that.

Wordle 774 Hint

Hint: To make babies, in King James Version phrasing.

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First Letter: B

On the Second Day of NewListservProviderMas ...

... I'll be trying EmailOctopus.

Gaggle seemed so promising ... and then held up the very first daily email edition of RRND, after which I got an explanation that they're really more for groups than newsletters (I discussed with them, on the initial review, the fact that RRND is a newsletter). So, onward.

And yes, I've thought about just setting up Mailman or Listserv, or even dragging out the old Raspberry Pi 4B and just running my very own mail server. But I like to do things in a modular way using cheap, "free," or freemium services for various reasons, including breaking things up  for no "single point of complete failure" and not having it all on my own hardware, relying on my own ISP connection, etc. (ditto).

Wordle 773 Hint

Hint: For a baseball outing, an overtime inning.

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First Letter: T

Thanks For Asking! -- 08/01/23

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