Battle of Lepanto post, R.I.P.

In case you  missed it, I made a post yesterday about the Battle of Lepanto, October 7, 1571. It had a link to the Wikipedia page (that link) and another to G.K. Chesterton's poem "Lepanto" with some excerpts from the latter. 

There was also a meme making a joke about putting your feet up on an ottoman while saying your rosary. (Link. It might work.)

Now I had a devil of a time with stray code showing up in that blog post, screwing up the formatting but I thought I finally had the stray code stripped out. However, when I checked this morning I saw that I had a couple big white bars there indicating there were some stray "div" references, so I went to edit them out.

And somehow screwed up the layout of the entire blog so that my let sidebar was just gone, and only some of the right sidebar was there; what there was, was at the bottom of the page.

I tried several things, but finally deleted that post, and viola! Sidebars are back. So for the eight or nine people that even know this blog exists, that's the story of how I lost a really entertaining, informative post, but also how I came to have a new theme on the page.

I'm glad that week is over. EDITS

At least, I sure hope it is...

A rare glimpse into Why Drang Drinks.

M-F, 0800-1200, FEMA Instructor Development Workshop via Zoom, two presentations evaluated by other students and instructors. Followed on Monday and Thursday by an additional 8 hour shift, starting at noon. (Fortunately, I was authorized to telework...)

And Mrs. Drang had an online class Tuesday and today. Except she didn't know that it was a two-parter when she signed up for it. Remember this, it will be significant...

Monday morning she discovered that the compressor had gone out on the fridge. So while I was slaving away over a hot internet connection, she was searching for dry ice and on the phone trying to get a repair technician to come out.

He did, finally, at 6 PM. And the replacement part he had didn't work. 

Expecting him to come out Tuesday morning, she got a text that he had been rescheduled to Thursday. A couple of angry phone calls later, she got hold of them and him and he showed up shortly after her class was done, and had the fridge running right away. It had finally cooled off to the point we could take food out of coolers nd put them in the freezer and fridge compartments at about 9 PM.

Somewhere in there I was informed that a package had been delivered to the office for me, and from the return address I deduced that it was course material. I managed OK with .pdfs, but I decided that rather than have it take up space on a (shared) desk, I would pop in quickly and pick it up...

...and discovered upon arrival that the the personnel scheduled to be in-office had 1) requested and been approved to telework due to illness  -- OK -- and 2) overslept and decided to telework to avoid being late. Without running it by anyone. Resulting on me making several phone calls, tracking down my boss -- who was speaking to the director -- and suggesting we needed to talk, being told to spit it out, and, of course, embarrassing my boss...

Also, one employee from first shift doing an hour of overtime, and me sitting in the office working the phones, in jeans and a t-shirt, when I was supposed to be off...

Then, last night (after I had gone to bed), the intert00bz died. 

I had already planned to get up early and put some finishing touches on my final presentation, but spent most of that time trying to get connected. My laptop with LTE connectivity wasn't getting a strong enough signal to connect, so I finally used my brand new (less than a week old!) cell phone as a mobile hotspot...

Which was about the time I learned about Part 2 of Mrs. Drang's class. So I told her how I had gotten online, thinking that would work for her...

And then she told me she needed my laptop AND hers to have two screens... 

(Fortunately I was using the desktop, with dual monitors. Which, BTW, can lead to odd behavior from Zoom...)

...And just as I was about to start my presentation she informed me (by screaming) that she was unable to connect...

I finished and talked the rest of the small group to give me a five minute break so I could try and get her online.

Which I did, by logging her into MY cell phone. So for the rest of the mornings Samsung's finest was providing internet for THREE computers. I am told that my audio signal garbled a couple of times, but was readable. 

So with that over with we called customer service to see if they could trouble shoot the "Home WiFi Gateway", the results of which effort was to suggest we take it to the local store and exchange it, "Or we can ship you one for delivery next week."  

Went to store, store said they couldn't just swap it after we had been in possession for over 30 days, but they can have one delivered to us "Next Day", which, this being Friday, probably means Monday. Which means she should be back online in time for Tuesday's class.

But I need a drink or three...

Edit 1, originally a comment: First World Problems all, of course, but the cumulative effect of multiple First World Problems within a short period can be just as detrimental.

Edit 2: Yep, Mrs. Drang picked it up Monday while I was at work, Mrs. Drang realized that we had left the old box and its power supply in my car, so we plugged it in when I got home. Connected to it, and... Nothing.

She had ANOTHER online class yesterday morning, which I didn't want to interrupt by calling customer service. She got done about the time I was leaving for work, so she called CS. She and the tech went back and forth, wound up Mrs. Drang reading stuff off the label, while the tech looked stuff up in "the manual". Eventually Mrs. Drang got to "SIM" and the tech says "A-ha!! What's the number?" and then "OK, don't hang up or mess with the box, I'll be back in ten minutes."

Apparently the sim card listed on our account had to be reset by them, before we could use it. Which was fine, but it should have been mentioned on some documentation in the box...

You, me, Mewe

 mewe.com/i/dwdrang

LOL!

 Seen on Gab:

I'm on Gab as @DW_Drang, some imposter 😛 was already using "Drang".

Thought For The Day

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” 

Frank Herbert, Dune

I have been wondering if the Butlerian Jihad is going to begin earlier, and look different, than Herbert thought... 

A Boot, Stomping On A Human Face..

 So Twitter has initiated a purge against President Trump and anyone that doesn't want to see him die in  fire. 

Many of whom have jumped to the Twitter rival, Parler. 

Which is hosted on Amazon Web Services.

Which is shutting it down until Parler starts censoring speech in accordance with the wishes of the technocratic oligarchs. 

Who constitute a kakocracy.

So, fine, here we go to Gab. Which hosts it's own content. 

Might be worth reminding folks...

 ...if they can do it to Trump, they'll do it to you without even a first thought, let alone a second.

Mozilla, developers of Firefox: 'We need more than deplatforming'

News of the Obscure

 Just deleted my Twitter account.

Stopped using Facebook long ago, and the only reason I don't ditch Blogger is that I'm not quite ready to completely give up the blog, but the alternatives I know of all are all for pay. I see no reason to shell out $$$ for a non-monetized blog as, well, obscure as this one. (Or even ¢¢¢.)

Unfortunately, if you want a smart phone these days, you options are to get involved with one of two evil Commifornia Big Tech outfits. 

Somebody -- Kevin Baker at Gun Blogger Rendezvous, maybe -- had a t-shirt that was lamenting to the effect of having been a science fiction fan all his life, and getting the dark dystopian future of his teen aged years.

Heinlein's Crazy Years aren't even fully launched yet, and I'm already tired of them.

For A Site Generally Considered Unreliable...

...it is sure easy to spend a LOT of time on Wikipedia!

Today's rabbit holes include:

• Keweenaw Peninsula
• Keweenaw County, Michigan
• Keweenaw National Historical Park
• Rubus parviflorus, which sounds like a disease but is actually the delicious Thimbleberry.
• Fort Wilkins Historic State Park which is on 
• Lake Fanny Hooe, allegedly named for the sister (or sister-in-law, I forget which) of the post commander, after her disappearance. Evidence is that she eloped with... someone.
• And how in the hell did I never hear of the Keweenaw Rocket Range? (Link fixed!) I wonder if my parents knew about it and conspired to keep it from me...?*
  

Pronunciation note: KEE-wuh-naw: despite the spelling the first "e" is long, and the paired e's are short. 

Obviously, I was in a mood to Say Yah to da UP, eh today. Holy Wah and all dat.

That particular Wikipedia Rabbit Hole exploration was actually sparked by a Tweet in Iowahawk's Twitter weekly (or more often) feature #DavesCarIDService. (URL included, since embedding tweets these days is a mess in my browser.)

(Look, I understand if you don't want to get on Twitter, but Dave "Iowahawk" Burge's feed is worth it, if only for #DavesCarIDService, especially if you have old family photos featuring cars. Tweet him with the hashtag, and he'll try to get it when he can.)

Speaking of Iowahawk and old cars, another Wikipedia expedition started out with the 

• Volkswagen 181, AKA "The Thing" in the US of A, which led to the 
• Kubelwagen and then the 
• Europa Jeep, followed by the 
• Schwimmwagen and wound up on 
• Ford GPA "Seep"
• Also inspired by Iowahawk, at some point this morning I looked up the Dodge WC Series "Weapons Carriers".

*If so, I don't blame them, especially since they probably discouraged tourists, and it sounds like it was pretty hard to get to. Also, closed by the time I was old enough to visit on my own.

I have a new plan

Whenever someone asks me (which they don't) why my blog is not more popular, I will tell them it's because of shadow-banning!

 Twitter: Setting the record straight on shadow banning

tl;dr version: "Twitter totally doesn't shadow-ban accounts, we just make up reasons why tweets from those accounts don't belong in your timeline. And those reasons totally have nothing to do with politics or ideology, it's all based on relevance. Because we totally know better than you what is relevant to you."

To give the devil xhir's¹ due, by their definition of "shadow banning" it's probably true; if you define shadow-banning as "making so that no one see's an account but the account owner", setting it so that an account never show in a timeline, but is still visible by clicking the account link, is not shadow banning.

But it completely subverts the point of a timeline, and is (I would argue), antithetical to the point of Twitter: A medium designed for short, (hopefully) pithy posts would seem to call for an automatic "loading" of posts, in chronological order. That self-righteous screed I linked above makes the claim that Twitter is interested in "conversation", yet they allow co-adherents of their leftist ideology to spew lies, hate, and calls for violence against their perceived opposition (and members of the oppositions family and social circle), while shutting down the accounts of those that criticize such behavior, and deciding for me what is relevant to my interests.

Which is, of course, par for the course on the left today; criticize, for example, Maxine Waters for calling on the left to attack members of President Trump's administration, down to anyone wearing a "MAGA" cap, and you are guilty of hate speech.

Now, Twitter is a private concern, and they make the rules whatever they want.

But this whole business of micturating on our extremities and alleging that it is precipitation² is bullshit.


1. No, that's not a typo, I'm mocking the modern predilection of the left to make up words to avoid using the common English-language pronouns that identify gender.
2. Stolen, appropriately enough, from a tweet. I forget who's tweet it was, but I think it was Dana Loesch. Or Molly Hemingway. Maybe it was Mary Katherine Ham. Pretty sure...

Note to Everybody

Inspired by Tam's post Copypasta from my Bookface wall...

Go ahead and unfriend me.

The only way I am going back to Facebook is if they change their rules to let one post using a pseudonym with your "legal ID" not publicly available, and not searchable, without a warrant.

I'd even be willing to pay a double sawbuck (that's a Jackson for you kids, AKA an Irony Note, until Harriet replaces Andy, at which time it will be a Freedom Note, I guess) per annum for the service.

Facebook can be a useful way to stay in touch with family and friends; people evacuating from Hurricane Harvey only need a couple of minutes to post to their wall "Safe in Dallas, more later" and everyone will know they made it out OK.

Google+ could do that much, too, and anyone who has an Android phone has a Google+ account by virtue of having an Android, AKA GMail, AKA Google, account. And Google+ does not demand you post your legal ID anywhere. (Ask me how I know...)

But Zuckerberg et. al. are more interested in making piles of money and in manipulating society than in providing a simple service that people would actually like.

So feel no guilt at all about trimming your friends list by one there.

BTW, I'm still on Twitter, as of this week. Not real active, compared to some, but posting a link to the blog posts will (or used to) cross-post to Facebook, and occasionally some SJW does or says something stupid...

PSA, Cybersecurity Edition

Generating a Bunch Of "Internet Noise" Isn't Going to Hide Your Browsing Habits

I thought that was obvious, but maybe that's because traffic analysis is what I do did.

Note that the guy who wrote the "Internet Noise" app actually says in his write up of the thing that it's "protest-ware", not an actual privacy/security app.

Which seems pointless, but what do I know? If it makes you happy to clog system resources in a gesture the people you're protesting at won't even notice, go for it.

Oh, Internet, you so crazy!

President Cheetoh has been in office for 2 and a half days and already I am seeing "Rate President Trump!" links on various and sundry web sites.

Happy Birthday...

...Schlock Mercenary.

Which, if you've never read it -- and why not? -- is a webcomic Comic Space Opera by Howard Tayler.

Which actually launched 16 hears ago yesterday.  As Howard says

Commentary: Today's strip is the 5,845th daily installment of Schlock Mercenary. The strip has been running for 835 weeks, Monday through Sunday, which means that today it has been online for sixteen years and one day.
When Schlock Mercenary first aired on June 12th of 2000 the #1 song on the Pop charts was Santana's "Maria, Maria" and the #10 song was Britney Spears' "Oops!.. I Did It Again." Tony Blair was the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Bill Clinton was the President of the United States, and Americans had yet to be introduced to the term "dimpled chad."
There was no Facebook, no Twitter, and LiveJournal was just 14 months old. MySpace hadn't been born yet, nor had two of the kids living at Chez Tayler with Sandra and Howard. Beginning with today's Schlock Mercenary strip, Americans born after Schlock Mercenary launched will start being able to drive...

 He left out "SFC D.W. Drang was still in Korea, waiting for his retirement leave to start", but one cannot expect artists to keep track of these things.

An Observation...

It's amazing how many "How To" videos on YouTube prominently feature the wannabe teacher's back, or hands, or...

Especially when he's saying "Take this like that and push there..."

"WHAT? WHAT? HOW AND WHERE?!"

What He Said

Screw The Facebooks... - The Minuteman

So. This makes three. Does that make it enemy action?

Once is happenstance...

...Twice is coincidence: SayUncle » And speaking of the internet of things.

One need be neither a trained Intelligence Analyst nor a raving paranoid conspiracy theorist to wonder if there will be a third* gun blogger told to upload photo ID to continue accessing Facebook.


*The full quote is "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."

Attention, Facebook Friends!

Facebook wants me to upload digital copies of my photo ID to them.

Fuck that.

Sorry, it's been real.

"Fetchez la pistolet!"

The following has been in my drafts file for years. It consist of a blog post from Elmo Iscariot ("Vox Michaeli") from 2011; a the time, I copy-pasta'd the entire thing thinking to use parts as the basis for a post of my own...

Fetchez la pistolet!: "British friend-who-lives-in-my-computer knirirr is a scholar of modern but endangered European martial arts. One of his ongoing projects is the translation of French instructor Joseph Renaud’s 1912 book on street defense, 'La Defense Dans La Rue'. This is a great service to English-speaking enthusiasts, and I'd recommend it to anybody interested in practical, untheatrical defensive martial arts and how they've been taught through the twentieth century. 'Every person walking the street at night should carry a revolver,' he says, and this was just 99 years ago.

Knirirr could tell you better than I could how much unarmed fighting instruction has changed since Renaud, but of greatest interest to me is his brief chapter on self defense with a revolver.

The biggest difference, of course, is that Renaud assumed his Parisian students could simply decide to buy revolvers and carry them in their overcoats. It's easy to forget just how recently Europe decided to get collectively hysterical about guns.

He recommends carrying a '38 Smith and Wesson', but avoiding the newfangled hammerless models because you want to shoot single-action when taking a shot at a fleeing mugger. He considers 'semi-automatic Browning' a 'fashionable weapon of today', but declines to recommend it as he can't vouch for its reliability. He insists on practical training at short distances with the actual gun you carry. He recommends unaimed point-shooting at slightly undersized silhouette targets, evidently counting a hit anywhere on the body as a success. He recommends against using a holster, and suggests that at very close ranges you plan to shoot the attacker through your overcoat pocket. He suggests the reader try shooting with the index finger along the gun's frame, pulling the trigger with the middle finger, because it 'makes instinctive shooting more accurate'.

It's a very, very strange mix of advice.

Never got around to it; obviously recent events made me think of it.

I did find this: Guns in France — Firearms, gun law and gun control; I'm thinking a lot of Frenchmen are wishing for a revival of the days when one could slip one's "knuckle duster revolver" (which I believe was referred to in France as an "Apache") into one's pocket before a night one the town, toujour pret and all that.

So far as I can tell, though, the only measures proposed so far in response to the Charlie Hebdo and Kosher Market murders are for "crackdowns" on "illegal weapons."

Need networking advice

I have the following devices connected to the ethernet ports on the modem/wireless router:

• Desktop Computer
• TV
• Satellite Box

I want to add the following devices to the network:

• Printer
• Blue-Ray Player
• Networked Attached Storage

Simply adding an 8 port switch didn't work.  I couldn't find anything in the modem/router's software that addressed adding a switch. The plan is to purchase a modem, and a router, and return the modem we got from the Internet provider.  (Renting the thing is a pittance, monthly, but it adds up.  The upside is, if it doesn't work they'll replace it.)

Before we switched to Windows 7 I had a freeware networking app that handled all this, but 7 wasn't supported, and since then it is hit or miss whether the laptop will see the printer on the wifi, even if the desktop is "awake." However, if the printer is attached to the router via ethernet,the laptops won't print at all, even if the "see" the printer.  Same thing if the printer is plugged into the switch, which is plugged into the modem/router.

It would be really nice if I could configure it so that the Android devices could print, and access files stored on the NAS, as well.

Any advice?

Thanks!

UPDATE:  Modem is an Actiontec Q1000.  Provider says bridging is only supported for commercial accounts.  Sounds like I need a new modem and wireless route,r which was the plan anyway.