Archiving my Twitter, Facebook and other social network activity
Slightly related: Took the kid to meet-and-greet/supply pickup with the new teacher, which was all done as drive-through in the school parking lot.
1.5-hour time slot per grade, with each teacher camping out under a different awning next to the parking lot with grocery bags of books & supplies for each student. Drive up wearing masks, go to the right teacher, roll down the windows, say hi, pick up the supplies, stop by the PTA awning on the way out & go.
Online classes start tomorrow.
Discovered that the 404 page on npr.org features stories about Amelia Earhart, the Watergate tapes, Jimmy Hoffa, “your luggage,” Atlantis, and Waldo. 😂
No surprise the same people who reject climate science because they don’t like policies to deal with climate change are rejecting epidemiology because they don’t like policies to deal with a pandemic. That’s not rationality, skepticism or critical thinking. It’s willful ignorance
I remember easily moving a Windows 10 system to an SSD using Acronis. Not this time. The clone tool isn’t willing to clone *some* partitions instead of a whole disk, so I can’t use that, and the bootable restore tool can’t see the external drive where I put the backup file.
Looking into alternatives. For tomorrow. Or maybe Saturday.
Next morning:
It’s my dual-boot system, so I’ve got a full Linux installation on there anyway. Last night I created an image of the Windows partition, saved it to the external drive (which Linux can see just fine, unlike the so-called universal restore image) and now I’m trying to restore it to the new drive.
Beginning to wonder if it *would* be easier to install Windows fresh and then figure out how to transfer all my saved games. All the other data is easy.
That evening:
I did a clean install, copied my AppData folders, got everything working…then discovered I couldn’t boot it without going through the BIOS screen. I’d accidentally booted the install image without UEFI, so it installed MBR. I couldn’t get GRUB2 to chain load it & the Windows UEFI boot loader could only see the old installation I wanted to remove.
So I did ANOTHER clean install, in UEFI mode, but this time set aside just the save files I wanted.
Bleah.
But it’s working now!
I’ve got UEFI loading GRUB2, which can boot Fedora or chain to the Windows UEFI menu, which will load the shiny new installation of Windows.
Now I just need to figure out how to tell the Windows boot menu that the alternate Windows installation isn’t there anymore & remove it from the list!
1. Criticism is not censorship.
2. The 1st amendment protects individuals & companies from interference from the government, not the other way around.
3. If Twitter is liable for users’ words, that gives them more incentive to actually censor the content they’re just labeling.
A private company labeling falsehoods as such is not a violation of the first amendment. A government action to punish the company for doing so would be.
Birb, or serious bird? What a difference a few seconds makes!
Did a mid-day trip to the grocery store. Managed to find almost everything I needed, or a reasonable substitute. Most food (except flour) seems to be either back in stock at a normal level or at the point where stock is low, rather than completely out.
The things I couldn’t find at all, or could only find a handful of one brand/variety, were mainly cleaning supplies — and flour, despite the bread aisle being full again.
This is sorta near Los Angeles. No idea what grocery stock is anywhere else. Or even in different parts of town.
I was really expecting it to be worse based on my last two grocery runs (2 weeks ago and 4 weeks ago) and the inventory I’ve found online.
They even had toilet paper. Yeah, it was only 2 sizes taking up about 1/4 of the usual shelf space and a limit of 1 per customer, but it didn’t look like they were going to run out by the time I got to checkout.
A month ago the same store offered, I kid you not, 1 roll per customer for 99 cents while supplies lasted.
Still sorta kicking myself for not mailing my passport renewal as soon as I got over the flu (it’s been on my desk since literally the day the flu hit me), but it’s not like I’m going to be traveling internationally for a while anyway.
At least I got my driver’s license renewed before all this hit.
US stops processing passports except for emergencies
They’ve postponed the RealId deadline to October 2021, so that’s something at least.
Funny thing is I would’ve sent my passport renewal in sooner if I hadn’t been waiting for my driver’s license to show up first.
So tired of text-based communication systems that use email purely as a notification and not as an actual communication system.
I have a message from the kid’s teacher that I can’t read because the app isn’t working, but if the system had just included it in the “you have a message!” email, I would know what it was.
Email is a tried and true communication system. It should be used as a backup channel, not just an advertisement.
Switching from a wireless keyboard to a wired one for my WFH setup has made a huge difference.
I can get used to the windows/mac key labels being wrong. But the fact that it kept dropping/duplicating letters & cutting out entirely from time to time was seriously annoying.
I mean, yeah, I get it, it was a whole foot from the transmitter, who would expect it to be stable at that distance, right? 🙄
A lot of the maps I see showing coronavirus cases, even from sources like the CDC, have a problem: They’re labeled by country, or by state. Labeling the # of cases reported in the US doesn’t tell you that they’re mostly in clusters in Washington & California. Labeling the # of cases in CA doesn’t tell you that they’re mostly in northern CA.
What matters for tracking its spread is actual location & transportation links, not jurisdiction.
some examples of the kind of map I’m talking about here:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/locations-confirmed-cases.html
I’m always torn between trying to contribute to making my corner of Twitter better and just staying away from the dumpster fire.
And between trying to ignore the train wreck and making sure I stay informed about it.
This is part of why I’m not as active here as I could be.
I always find it interesting when a language reveals or clarifies connections between two others.
Like, it’s not obvious at first glance that cheese and queso are related, but if you also know Käse, they’re clearly all the same word.
Similarly, I could never see the connection between John & Ivan, until I realized that if you write Juan in all-caps ancient Roman chiseled stone style, it comes out as IVAN. (I know that’s not how it happened, but it makes the connection clearer.)
#linguistics
I’ve never understood the mindset that thinks taxes are more invasive than, say, eavesdropping on your communications, deporting you for a years-old traffic violation, shooting you for jaywalking, or locking up your kids because you fled a war-torn country to seek asylum.
You know that game UI thing where a glow or ring will highlight something you can (or should) interact with?
I just read a chapter of a book where a character’s visual migraine aura does that. It doesn’t seem to have happened before, but he just sort of takes it in stride.
(It would be nice if mine worked that way.)
By “takes it in stride,” of course, I mean he figures wow, that’s really useful, now I need to lie down until the flashing lights move out of view and I can actually see clearly again, instead of “WTF HOW IS MY VISUAL MIGRAINE TALKING TO ME?????”
In response to someone asking which book:
The Secret Commonwealth, by Philip Pullman. It’s the middle book in the sequel trilogy he’s writing to His Dark Materials. The character is one who was introduced in the previous book. He makes a comparison between the lights of the migraine aura and the lights of the Aurora borealis, which I expect is going to turn out to be important eventually.
At the time I read an article where Pullman mentions getting them himself, and decided to use the idea with one of his characters.
At the time the first book was out, I mean.
