Cowboy Who?

Virginia Giuffre's claims against the Duke of York can continue to be heard, a US court says.

Ho there! I am a humble laborer at Cooper & Watson Ironworks, and though my life is filled with sweat and toil, I await the day this factory will be filled with vegan hibachi restaurants and boutique cocktail bars.

I awake each day at dawn to pound away at rods of molten ore knowing that, one glorious day, this foundry will shut down and be refashioned into an industrial-chic dining room with a little Greek place and a doughnut shop where they make the doughnuts right there in front of you. Though it shall be many-a-year before this grand vision becomes reality (I presume sometime around the summer of 2014), and I shall be long dead… a faded memory… I work in the knowledge that my labor will not be in vain.

Each strike of my hammer against the raw iron will pave the way for a cute but slightly overpriced first date spot! Each man who loses a limb in a piece of industrial equipment is laying down his own body for the future revitalization of downtown!

O, the pain and drudgery I have seen in this new land! Unwashed children hired off the street for their small nimble fingers, men reduced to the most revolting work by their want for bread alone! Though I have survived two factory fires, three boiler room explosions, and a cholera outbreak, and despite the fact that my wife and seven children must share a single bed in our small tenement, I refuse to lose hope. I foresee the coming of a better world! A world where the masses who occupy this city will not be made to feed on coarse gruel! A world where you’ll have to be fourteen, perhaps even fifteen, before you begin to work at the factory, and where you can get a smoothie with a hemp protein infusion and try an assortment of regional cheeses all under the same exposed brick.

For this part of the city is, at present, filled with desperate immigrant laborers like myself, but soon, after what I assume will be a period of urban decay and rampant crime, it will be transformed into a hip neighborhood full of artists and people in finance! Where will these monied bohemian-types eat? At home? A tavern perhaps? No! They will flock to an upscale community eating space where they could try a new dish every time if they are feeling adventurous and willing to spend twenty-five dollars! O, the splendor! The glory!

Gadzooks! My foreman approaches. Enough of these daydreams! I must return to the incessant hammering that fills all my mortal days, but I trust in a future full of locally sourced ingredients and fusion foods!

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Hoping this one delivers a few laughs to all the medical people out there. I've been reading reddit /nursing, and holy crap there's a parallel nightmare universe most of us never have to encounter.

Today's News:

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Last Tuesday, in an effort to gain assistance from the public, the National Park Service (NPS) released information about recent vandalism at Big Bend National Park. On December 26, 2021, visitors scratched the names Isaac, Ariel, Norma, and Adrian, along with the date, across a petroglyph. The prehistoric rock carving is estimated to be 4,000 to 8,500 years old. NPS has stated that the rock has since been treated, but that the damage is irreparable. While the names of the perpetrators are etched in the stone, NPS is looking for any information that may assist in identifying the vandals.

Big Bend was established in 1935 and opened to the public in 1944. At 1,252 square miles of land — larger than the state of Rhode Island — the park preserves the largest section of Chihuahuan desert in the United States. Early in its history, Big Bend had no paved roads and remained largely unknown to the public. In the 1960s it became a destination for rafting, hiking, birding, and the study of natural history. NPS has noted an increase in vandalism and graffiti in the area, reporting over 50 instances of vandalism since 2015.

Since their creation, National Parks have been a haven for artists. From photographers like Carleton Watkins and Ansel Adams to landscape painters like Albert Bierstadt and Sandy Rodriguez, artists have documented and been inspired by these spaces. A number of national parks even have residency opportunities for artists, including Big Bend. The park’s Art on the Borderland program offers two residencies a year.  

Fort Worth-based photographer Paul Leicht documented the now-defaced petroglyphs in early December while visiting Big Bend with his wife, Challyn. Upon learning there were petroglyphs in the area, the pair set out to search for and document these artifacts. Mr. Leicht took to social media to share his frustration about this most recent case of destruction and shared additional thoughts with Glasstire. See our conversation with him below.

Glasstire (GT): As an artist, why are you drawn to National and State Parks?

Paul Leicht (PL): National and State parks are an invaluable resource. Especially in Texas where 95% of the land is privately owned. It really is awesome that there are pockets of land set aside and preserved for everyone to enjoy. Not just the few lucky enough to own or inherit wide swaths of land — it’s for everyone. Regardless of your income level, there’s a place that you can go and experience the natural wonders, the history of the land and learn about the people who once inhabited it throughout all of its eras. 

GT: Why are these sites important to you personally?

PL: These places are important to me personally because I need to feel a connection to this land, this state. I feel a need to explore and learn its history.  And for me that involves getting out there to immerse myself in it,  I can’t really understand it until I’m standing in the middle of it. 

GT:How did you feel when you saw the news that this petroglyph had been defaced? 

PL: Betrayed, disappointed, angry, sad and honestly, scared. Betrayed because you want to trust people not to ruin things that you hold valuable. Disappointed because these people didn’t hold this place valuable. Angry that they destroyed evidence of history that can teach and inspire. Sad for all those reasons, and scared because I don’t want sites like this to get restricted. I don’t think hiding or pretending sites like this don’t exist serves our greater good. 

I feel that it’s one of the most culturally valuable parts of the park and it’s a shame more resources haven’t been diverted to protect it and present it in a way that it deserves. 

GT:NPS has noted an increase in graffiti and vandalism in recent years. What do you think might be the cause of this?

PL: A lack of respect and lack of knowledge on how to behave at a site like this.  A lack of curiosity in understanding history. A lack of awareness in how our actions affect others and a general culture of selfishness.  

The National Park Service asks that anyone with information regarding this or other vandalism at Big Bend contact law enforcement staff at (432) 477-1187.

The post An Artist’s Take on the Vandalism of Petroglyphs at Big Bend National Park appeared first on Glasstire.

For now there’s no indication of extremely cold weather, but the rest of January does look to be rather winter-like for Houston. While there may be the odd 70-degree day, for the most part we’ll be colder during the daytime, with plenty of nights in the 30s and 40s. A freeze is possible as soon as Sunday morning in outlying areas of the region, and it will definitely make for a cold Houston Marathon.

Wednesday

Temperatures have fallen to around 50 degrees this morning, and with a fair amount of cloud cover they’ll be slow to rise before noon. But with more sunshine this afternoon, I’d expect much of the region to see high temperatures in the low- to mid-60s. Light northeast winds will turn more westerly this afternoon. With clearing skies later today and tonight, most areas should see low temperatures drop into the 40s overnight.

Thursday and Friday

These will be a pair of splendid days, with sunny skies and highs between 70 and 75 degrees. Overnight lows will range from the upper 40s to low 50s, for the most part, with generally moderate winds. Dewpoints will creep into the upper 50s by Friday afternoon or evening, so it will feel a bit humid, but overall these will just be wonderful weather days for the region. Enjoy!

Saturday

Change will arrive by Saturday morning, with a strong front pushing into northwest areas probably sometime around sunrise or shortly thereafter, into Houston during the mid-morning hours, and arriving near the coast around Noon. It’s likely that the front’s passage will be a dry one, or with only a bit of light rain, but with plenty of wind. Gusts on Saturday afternoon may well get above 30 mph as temperatures hover in the 50s despite sunny skies. Winds will continue to blow on Saturday night as lows drop into the upper 30s in Houston.

Sunday

The good news if you’re running the marathon is that we can be highly confident in dry conditions, both in terms of humidity as well as clear skies. For those who like the cold, Houston Marathon start line temperatures will be rather chilly, too. Expect the mercury to be somewhere between 35 and 40 degrees. The less good news is that while winds will slacken some from Saturday, I think we’ll still see a persistent northerly wind on Sunday morning of about 10 mph, with gusts from 15 to 20 mph. That is less than ideal for both runners and all the amazing volunteers at the marathon. Highs will climb into the 50s during the afternoon. Lows will drop into the 30s on Sunday night, with some inland areas again seeing a light freeze.

Next week

Temperatures will gradually warm next week through about Wednesday, when the next front arrives. This one has a better chance of producing some rainfall, but nothing that looks too crazy in terms of amounts. Lows should drop back into the 40s toward the weekend.

This post, my boss wants me to deep-clean the office, company is going to ruin my credit, and more , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My boss wants me to deep-clean the office

I recently started working as an administrative assistant. The job description and interview process made it clear that some cleaning duties would be necessary, and I was okay with that. However, a month into the job, my boss asked me to make a schedule for when I intend to “deep clean” the office, and told me they used to have cleaners come thrice weekly, but stopped to save money. This means I am responsible for cleaning the bathrooms, kitchen, and high traffic meeting rooms. Additionally, colleagues come up to my desk and rudely tell me to go do things like pick up trash in the parking lot.

I don’t look down on cleaning as a profession but this is a busy office (dozens upon dozens of people come in and out weekly!), the business is healthcare-adjacent, and we’re in a pandemic. I don’t feel qualified to clean and sanitize to the standard we should, plus I have regular admin duties to deal with. I have been an admin before and I happen to know exactly how much office cleaning costs in our area, and I know that the company has the money to pay for professional services. Is what they are asking me to do unreasonable?

Yes. Try saying this: “When I accepted the job, I understood there would be light cleaning, such as X and Y. But deep cleaning the bathrooms and kitchens or picking up trash from the parking lot isn’t work that’s normally part of an assistant job, and that’s not work I’m comfortable taking on. We need a professional service to handle those jobs, like most offices do.”

If your boss won’t back down, at that point you’d need to decide how much you’re willing to push back and whether you still want the job if he insists that this is now part of it. But it’s reasonable to try this and see what happens.

2. Can I ask about salary before an interview?

I have a job but am looking for a new opportunity due to work culture and company growth. I recently had an interesting conversation with an internal recruiter for a company I really like, but the recruiter talked almost the whole time. I had to interrupt them to even tell them about myself! Needless to say, we had no time for questions and I was unable to ask about salary expectations.

Well, they must have really liked my three-minute spiel about myself because I was asked for a second round interview. However, I don’t want to proceed without knowing an expected salary range and waste anyone’s time. Is it impolite to email them before scheduling the interview?

Nope! This used to be a thing that you had to dance around (which was always absurd and never made sense) but the norms on it have really changed in recent years. When you’re setting up the interview, it’s fine to say, “We didn’t have a chance to touch base on salary in our initial conversation. To make sure we’re on the same page before we move forward, can you tell me the salary range for the role?”

Be prepared, though, that they might turn the question back on you and ask what you’re looking for, which is annoying but really common (although also less common than it used to be) unless you’re in one of the small number of states that now require them to tell you.

3. My company may ruin my credit report

A couple of months ago, I took a business trip for my company and was given a corporate credit card, issued under my name. As instructed, I filed the expenses (hotel, rental car, etc.), which were approved. But the company is more than 30 days late paying the credit card bill of $1,500, and the credit card company informed me that it’ll be reported on MY credit report after 60 days.

When I informed the finance department, they said the payment was sent but there was an issue with payment details and their account rep is “clearing it up/working on it.” That was a week ago, and the account still shows a late payment and the credit card has sent a collection notice and called me three times.

I’m extremely concerned because I don’t want my credit score to take a dip. I’m in the middle of applying for a mortgage and I’ve worked hard for the last couple of years to improve my credit score and pay down debt.

I’ve had a corporate card at two former companies and I’ve never had this happen. It’s deeply concerning because I feel like I can’t trust my company and it puts me in a weird position of trying to hold them accountable as an employee without jeopardizing my job. Is there any action I can take? What’s the best way for me to address this?

If you haven’t already, loop in your boss immediately and explain that your credit is about to be harmed, which is going to jeopardize the mortgage you’re applying for, that the finance department hasn’t been responding with any urgency, and you need her help to get this fixed ASAP. Often a manager’s intervention will light a fire under another team that you can’t do on your own. If your boss isn’t the type to do that, you shouldn’t feel weird about being extremely assertive with the finance people yourself — as in calling (or going by, if you’re in person) every morning and at the end of every day to keep leaning on them until it’s resolved. Use the words, “This is jeopardizing my mortgage and must be fixed ASAP. How can I make sure it’s paid today?”

It’s utter BS that you need to plead and cajole them into fixing this, and if it’s possible for you to do your job without a corporate card in your name, I’d seriously consider it canceled once this is done.

4. Do “tell me about a time when…” questions really help?

I recently had a phone screening for a new role and the recruiter asked basically all “give me an example of a time…” questions. I understand one or two for specific needs but this was around four or five. Do these questions really prove much? I feel like often times candidates end up stretching the truth or racking their brains frantically trying to think of examples. I can understand for specific instances and needs to ask these but this was for a general more entry-level role. Do these questions really help determine if a candidate is a good fit?

Yeah, those questions can be highly differentiating among candidates. As an interviewer, it’s a lot more useful to hear how someone really has operated in the past — in real situations with real complexities and challenges — than to just talk about how they’d approach a more hypothetical interview question (which people can often just bluff their way through without it lining up with how they’d really handle the situation if it happened in real life).

That’s especially true if you then have a genuine conversation about their answers, including asking probing follow-up questions — “X must have been a tough element of that; how did you handle that?” … “how did you approach Y?” … “what made you choose Z?” … and so forth. That makes it much more likely that you’ll get beyond surface answers and into the nitty-gritty of how the person truly operates.

You’re right, though, that people don’t always have these examples at their tips of their tongues. So it can be really helpful to ask candidates to think through some specific examples ahead of time and come prepared to discuss them, so they don’t have to think up examples on the spot.

5. Am I accidentally mixing up my project deadlines?

I was wondering if you could please weigh in on something that has come up with a few of my freelance clients recently.

If the deadline of a project is, say, the 1st of February, would you take that to mean that the project is due by close of business on that date, or that it should be submitted so it can be reviewed on that date? Recently a client asked me to finish a project by a particular date, and emailed me at 6 am that morning asking where it was. I told her I would have it over by close of business that day, and she sounded a little surprised but didn’t comment any further on it.

In the future I’ll be clearer when setting expectations with clients, and I’ll clarify at what point on a day they’d like work submitted, but what’s your take here?

Typically if someone says a project is due on February 1, that means by close of business on February 1 unless something else is specified. Emailing you at 6 am (!) to find out where it was is bizarre.

Getting into the habit of specifying “close of business on (date)” isn’t a bad idea when you’re dealing with deadlines, at least until you’ve established norms with any given person. That will also help avoid that thing where some people think that February 1 means any time up until business opens on February 2, which can cause problems if you assumed you were getting it by 5 pm and planned to look at it that evening.

In any case, the weirdness here was with her, not you. (And you might just ask her about it directly: “My understanding was that I’d send this to you by the close of business on February 1, but when you emailed me looking for it before the start of business that day, I wondered if we had miscommunicated about the deadline you needed.”)

The World Wide Web started with so much promise: to connect people across any distance, to allow anyone to become a publisher, and to democratize access to knowledge. However, today the Web seems to be failing us. It’s not private, secure, or unifying. The internet has, in large part, ended up centralizing access and power in the hands of a few dominant platforms.

What if we could build something better—what some are calling the decentralized web?

In this series of six workshops, “Imagining a Better Online World: Exploring the Decentralized Web,” we’ll explore the ways in which moving to decentralized technologies may enhance your privacy, empower you to control your own data, and resist censorship. Join us to hear from experts in the leading peer-to-peer technologies, from identity to data storage. We’ll see demonstrations of how decentralized tech is being used in publishing, data management and preserving cultural assets. Learn how the decentralized web might yet create systems that empower individuals by eliminating central points of control.

This series is a partnership between Internet Archive, DWeb, Library Futures, and presented by the Metropolitan New York Library Council.

Sessions Include:

The Decentralized Web: An Introduction
What is the decentralized web, why is it important, and where is it along the path of development? What are the problems the decentralized web seeks to solve? Who are the players working to realize this vision? Why is the Internet Archive, a library, a leader in the decentralized web movement?
Thursday, January 27th, from 4:00pm to 5:00pm EST
Watch Video

In an Ever-Expanding Library, Using Decentralized Storage to Keep Your Materials Safe
Libraries understand the headache of storing materials. How do you create room for an ever-expanding collection? What if you don’t want to weed materials to make room? Enter decentralized storage—a network of P-2-P servers that store materials across a global network of storage nodes. What problems does this solve? What problems does this create? Where is the state of decentralized storage today? We ‘ll see media collections and how they are preserved in Storj, Filecoin, and beyond.
Thursday, February 24th, from 4:00pm to 5:00pm EST
Register

Keeping Your Personal Data Personal: How Decentralized Identity Drives Data Privacy
Want your FedEx package? Now you must allow the company to scan your ID. Check into a hotel? Hand over your passport. Rent an e-bike? Key in your driver’s license, which includes your address, birthdate, and weight. What if you could maintain control over your personal identity and share only what is needed? Enter decentralized or self-sovereign identity (SSI). In the future, we believe each person will hold an e-wallet and control his/her/their own personal information.
Thursday, March 31, from 4:00pm to 5:00pm EST
Register

Goodbye Facebook, Hello Decentralized Social Media? Can Peer-to-Peer Lead to Less Toxic Online Platforms?
Facebook, Twitter… we’ve seen them go awry when faced with the scourges of misinformation and trolling. In authoritarian regimes, entire platforms are easily blocked. Would decentralized social media, where there is no central controlling entity, be better? How do you take down damaging posts when there is no central command center? We walk you through some of the top decentralized social media platforms, from Matrix to Twitter’s Blue Sky initiative. Demonstrations of how to get on some of these systems.
Thursday, April 28, from 4:00pm to 5:00pm EST
Register

Decentralized Apps, the Metaverse and the “Next Big Thing”
Why did Facebook rename itself for the Metaverse? What is the metaverse & how are people experiencing it? How are artists, nonprofits, even the NBA are racking up seven-figure payouts for otherwise mundane pieces of media called NFTs (non-fungible tokens)? Why are they so despised? In this session, we look at the crazy breakthrough apps and items populating decentralized web. Plus demonstrations of how people are working, trading & creating in the metaverse.
Thursday, May 26, from 4:00pm to 5:00pm EST
Register

Ethics of the Decentralized Web & Uses for the Law, Journalism and Humanitarian Work
Web 1.0 and 2.0 started out full of idealism, too. What is to prevent the decentralized web from being corrupted by profit, market domination, and bad actors? What is the normative or social layer we need to build alongside the tech?
Thursday, June 30, from 4:00pm to 5:00pm EST
Register

The post Imagining a Better Online World: Exploring the Decentralized Web appeared first on Internet Archive Blogs.

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Get Help
Solving the Problems in Your Life
Gilbert
1989

This is essentially a directory of agencies and organizations aimed at young people with problems. In 1989, this would be a reasonable purchase for a teen nonfiction collection. However, in 2022 it is simply taking up shelf space. It would never occur to a teen to use a book to look up an organization. This book should have been tossed with all the telephone books and other directories when the Internet took over the job of being a giant directory.

Mary

The post Get some help! appeared first on Awful Library Books.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple hasn't stopped selling Intel Macs just yet, but it's safe to say that we'll never see a Mac with one of Intel's 12th-generation Core processors in it. But that minor detail isn't stopping the Hackintosh community from supporting new Intel and AMD processors and platforms. The developers behind OpenCore, the most powerful and actively maintained bootloader for loading macOS on standard PC hardware, improved its Alder Lake support in this month's release, version 0.7.7. In a blog post over the weekend, the developers also detailed their efforts to update OpenCore and its associated software to work with Intel's Z690 chipset. The key to building a functional Hackintosh is normally to build a PC that's as close as possible to actual Intel Mac hardware -- most crucially, the CPU, GPU, and chipset. OpenCore's job is to bridge whatever gap is left between your PC and real Mac hardware so that macOS boots and works properly. It adds support for reading and booting macOS filesystems, loads kernel extensions to support additional hardware, tells macOS how to handle your system's audio outputs and USB ports, and spoofs hardware to take advantage of macOS's built-in support (if, for example, your PC has a GPU that is similar to but not quite identical to a GPU included in a real Intel Mac). As OpenCore has developed and matured, it has gotten better at bridging larger and larger gaps between PC hardware and "real" Macs. It can get old versions of macOS like Tiger (10.4) and Snow Leopard (10.6) up and running on old hardware, and it can even be used to run newer macOS versions on real Macs that Apple has dropped from the official support list. It can even run macOS on AMD processors, albeit with some caveats for software that relies on Intel-specific functionality. The still-active Hackintosh Reddit community is full of people running macOS on all kinds of different hardware. It's that sort of flexibility that will keep macOS working on 12th-generation Intel CPUs and the Z690 chipset. All of that said, running macOS on newer hardware isn't for the faint of heart, and some things just aren't going to work. Trying to use 12th-gen processors' new efficiency cores (or E-cores) can also cause general slowdowns because macOS doesn't know how to best distribute work between the different types of cores -- macOS doesn't (and never will) support Intel's "Thread Director" technology, which needs to be baked into your operating system to get the best performance. The GPUs from 11th- and 12th-generation Intel processors also won't work in Hackintoshes because they were never supported in real Macs, so you would need to rely on a dedicated AMD GPU to handle display output and other tasks (in real Intel Macs, even iMacs and MacBook Pros with dedicated GPUs still use the integrated Intel GPUs for video and photo encoding and decoding). Apple is still adding support for newer AMD GPUs in macOS releases, presumably so those cards can work in the Mac Pro -- the Radeon RX 6900 series, 6800 series, and RX 6600 XT are all supported -- but Apple could easily decide to stop supporting newer GPUs whenever it wants. And Nvidia GPUs aren't supported at all.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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I have a feeling EO Wilson would've laughed at this one.

Today's News:

A pair of LAPD officers lost their jobs after ignoring a robbery to play Pokémon Go instead.

This post, how do I balance my labor shortage sympathy with annoyance at the inconvenience it causes? , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I want to start off this letter by saying I support workers 100% in organizing for better conditions and wages, whether by leaving their jobs or organizing for better treatment either via a formal union or collective bargaining. I applaud the people doing this right now and making the job market more employee-focused than employer-focused.

But … it kinda sucks in a practical way. Vendors and clients are late with everything because they don’t have the staff to meet deadlines anymore, which can make me and my company seem unreliable. When I had to go on an emergency road trip due to my mom’s failing health, I had to pee in the woods off the interstate because every gas station, restaurant, hotel, church, and store had their lobby or bathroom closed within a 50-mile radius at 12 p.m. on a Wednesday. (My mom is fine now, but it was good I could go.)

My friends and family are very split on this issue, and many are in the “suck it up and get back to work” camp, even though I strongly disagree and have always defended the side of worker’s rights when in these conversations. But it’s kind of tough to do that when I’m peeing in the sparse greens off the interstate and a trucker is honking at me because the sixth McDonald’s/gas station combo in a row won’t let me come in to use their bathroom, even though they’re all inside doing take-away food, and frankly it was dangerous for me as a woman traveling across the country alone. And I know, I know it’s against policy and could get them in trouble and I don’t want to do that, so I didn’t insist or anything but I did start asking around mile 30 (explaining my situation) and even felt crappy for trying to circumvent their stated hours…

I guess I’m just looking for advice on how to help advocate for workers better and not get overly frustrated in times of labor shortage like this.

Be frustrated! Just don’t be frustrated with workers. Be frustrated with the companies and social and political structures that are responsible.

No one has an obligation to work at any given job. If someone decides that a job isn’t safe enough, doesn’t pay enough, doesn’t treat them well enough, or otherwise doesn’t suit their needs, they have zero obligation to pay their dues to the capitalist machine by working there anyway. If they’re able to support themselves in a way more aligned with their own well-being, why wouldn’t they? (Hell, even if a job pays generously and treats workers well, people still have no obligation to work there. This is sort of the whole point of a free society.)

And really, if people feel they have options other than working at low-wage jobs in unsafe conditions … that’s a good thing for society as a whole, even when it causes personal inconveniences.

If employers with shortages really wanted to staff up, there are some well-proven ways of doing that: raise wages, improve working conditions, treat people well, be a workplace where people are willing to show up even when they have other options. But companies have gotten used to not having to do those things, and some of them are strongly resisting doing them now. That’s on them. They can’t say “the market supports this” when underpaying and mistreating people is to their advantage and then cry about that same free market when conditions turn against them.

(And for all the stories you see out there about labor shortages at companies that are offering good pay and decent working conditions, I say: read those stories with some skepticism. Last week’s post about companies trying to hire obviously wasn’t a scientific study, but it was full of accounts from people whose companies say they’re desperate to hire but are still paying way below market and haven’t taken obvious steps to make themselves more attractive to workers. That doesn’t mean there aren’t exceptions to that … but there’s a larger picture to the stories some companies are telling about themselves right now.)

So by all means be frustrated! But look at what’s happening with clear eyes and be frustrated with the employers and the system that got us here.

Feels like you could've brought that up sooner.

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#ep20 #SometimesITalkToThePills #danganronpa2

“Small possession of marijuana is not the type of violation that we want to stockpile jails with,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Monday.

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A Second Book of Canadian Animals
May
1967

Animal books are a slam dunk choice in any public library youth collection. They are always popular, and I have weeded those books on condition more often than not. They simply wear out from use.

There is nothing particularly wrong with this book, other than the outdated language. The black and white illustrations aren’t as appealing as color photographs or illustrations. This book just looks dated. I am not sure references to Canadian animals makes any sense, especially since this is sitting in a Michigan public library. I find it kind of amusing that the publisher would use a political boundary rather than simply refer to these as North American animals. It’s not like these critters pay particular attention to a country’s borders. I am quite sure a few of these animals are able to slip in via the tunnel to Detroit or maybe on the west coast into Alaska.

This is an easy weed. Put it in the book sale and someone will pick it up for the nostalgia factor.

Mary

The post Canadian Animals in the USA appeared first on Awful Library Books.

Space Cadet Pinball has a special place in the hearts of many Windows enthusiasts. A customer used their support contract to ask how to change among the three levels of play in Space Cadet Pinball. My proudest achievement of Windows XP was fixing the game so it didn’t consume 100% CPU. People keep asking if it can be brought back.

One point of contention is over my claim that I removed Pinball from Windows because I couldn’t get the 64-bit version to work. Retrocomputing enthusiast NCommander even undertook a Zapruder-level analysis of all of the 64-bit versions of Windows he could find to prove or disprove my story.

I was amazed at the level of thoroughness (and the fortitude it required to get those Itanium systems up and running, much less debug them), but there’s one version of 64-bit Windows that NCommander didn’t try out, and that’s the one that’s relevant to the story.

When the 64-bit Windows project started, there was no Itanium hardware yet. The only way you could run any Itanium code was to run it in a simulator. Booting Windows on an Itanium simulator took forever. Clearly not the development environment you wanted when porting millions of lines of code.

On the other hand, the Windows team did have access to a lot of copies of another 64-bit processor: The Alpha AXP.

In 1999, Compaq announced that it would no longer support Windows on the Alpha AXP, which left a lot of Windows team members with cumbersome paperweights on their desks.

Let’s see what we’ve got here.

• A lot of Alpha AXP machines sitting around with nothing to do.
• A bunch of developers who have experience with the Alpha AXP.
• A 32-bit version of Windows that runs on the Alpha AXP.
• No Itanium hardware on the immediate horizon.
• A ticking clock.

The Alpha AXP is internally a 64-bit processor. It’s just that 32-bit Windows used only the 32-bit subset.

Solution: Port the Alpha AXP version of 32-bit Windows to 64-bit Windows.

Now, 64-bit Windows on the Alpha AXP would never ship. But the Alpha AXP did have the advantage of existing in physical form, so the system could finish booting before the heat death of the universe. The assumption is that most of the effort in porting Windows to the Itanium is in the 32-bit to 64-bit transition, and not in dealing with quirks of the specific 64-bit processor you are porting to.

The assumption was somewhat validated by experience: The 32-bit Windows code base had been ported to many 32-bit processors, with relatively few architecture-specific issues. Once you got a 64-bit version of Windows working for the Alpha AXP, it should be a comparatively small amount of additional work to port it to Itanium. The hard part was going from 32-bit to 64-bit.

The team set to work, and we had 64-bit Windows running on physical Alpha AXP hardware long before we had any physical Itanium hardware. I could test my 64-bit port on a physical Alpha AXP system to validate that it was successful. And that’s the system that had the broken collision detector.

NCommander did find a collision detection bug on the Itanium, although that bug was nowhere as severe as the one that existed on the Alpha AXP. My guess is that it had to do with the default rounding mode established by the C runtime library.

My theory as to what happened is that some time after I removed Pinball from the product, the C runtime team realized that they had a compatibility bug in the way they set the default rounding mode, and they fixed it. Or maybe there was a compiler bug, and the compiler team fixed that. Whatever the problem was, somebody fixed it, and then they went back and re-tested Pinball with this fix, and everything worked great, so they put Pinball back.

I’m just guessing about what happened afterward because nobody informed me that they had gotten Pinball working and added it back. I just assumed that it was gone forever.

The post Filling in some gaps in the story of Space Cadet Pinball on 64-bit Windows appeared first on The Old New Thing.

This post, I got in trouble for wearing the same dress every day , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I have a question about work attire and what I consider my “work uniform.”

I work in a professional office of about 12 people. We’re in a small town and therefore are a bit more casual. The office dress code is officially business casual, and we have casual Fridays where most people, including our boss and owner of the business, wear jeans. I work as an admin assistant/receptionist, so I have a more front-facing position than anyone but the boss and his associates, who receive clients. No one has ever had any issues about the way I dress until recently.

I recently discovered this dress. I bought it in black, and I fell in love with it because I think it looks put-together enough for work while also being insanely comfortable. I also learned that the dress brand sponsors a 100 day challenge, where people wear the dress 100 days in a row and document it, then can submit photos for a gift card. I admit that I love the brand so much that the gift card incentive was enough to clinch it for me, but I also like the idea of investing in more sustainable pieces and having a professional yet comfortable “work uniform.”

I started the challenge, and when at work I usually put it together with tights and nice flats or booties, and I throw a cardigan or jacket over top, and accessorize with different jewelry and scarves. Everything I wear with the dress is what I would wear (and have already worn) to work before the challenge. It honestly feels dressier than my previous work clothes, but I feel like it fits the vibe for our office. I didn’t say anything about the challenge except to my husband and some friends, so no one at work knew. I made it to Day 37 before anyone said something.

Jan is our office manager, and she’s been known to be a bit of a busybody. She’s not a direct supervisor (we all report to Owner/Boss) but she sometimes acts like one because she does all the ordering for the business, and she also does payroll. She’s also a friend of the owner’s mom, so I think she feels like she can report back to our boss about issues she perceives in the office? She caught me in the break room a week ago Frdiay and said, “Wow, you really like that dress, you wear it a lot.” I sort of responded with a vague, “Yep, it’s a great dress.” She then went on to question why I wasn’t wearing jeans, like the rest of the office. I said something like, “Oh, this dress is way more comfortable to me than jeans,” which is totally true. Plus, casual Fridays aren’t “you must wear jeans” Friday. Just an option to be more casual, and sometimes the boss participates but sometimes not. I figured it was always up to me if I wanted to dress down. Jan made a couple more comments about how she’d seen me wear the dress a lot lately, and I realized she was going to fixate on this (she does this for other things, too!) so I decided to just tell her about my challenge, figuring it’d get her off my back. I said something to the effect of, I was doing a sustainability challenge and wearing the same dress 100 days in a row, so she’d see me wearing it a lot of different ways.

Well, it backfired spectacularly. The following Monday I was called into my boss’s office and he looked really uncomfortable but said he had to talk to me about how I presented myself at work. I immediately began to panic internally that I’d said or done something inappropriate but then he said, “Jan tells me you wear the same thing to work every day, and she has concerns about hygiene.”

I was kind of stunned, so I stammered out, “What concerns?” He hemmed and hawed (clearly he didn’t feel comfortable talking about my dress, which … same) and finally I realized that when I told Jan about my challenge, she assumed that I wasn’t washing it for 100 days. I was mortified but I rushed to explain that while yes, I am currently wearing the same dress every day, I do wash it and I take a lot of care with my presentation. I didn’t want to outright ask if I stank at work but Alison, I know I don’t. My husband would have noooo problem telling me if I did before I left for work in the morning. This was clearly Jan misrepresenting the issue.

I thought that once my boss understood that I was washing the dress, and if there were no issues with my hygiene or the dress itself, then we could just drop the issue. He seemed relieved when I explained, then said, “Well, just to be on the safe side, probably best to vary things up.”

I was stunned and frankly, insulted. This was coming from the man who wears the same sports coat to work every day. That’s none of my business, and frankly, I figure if I want to wear the same dress every day, and change things up with accessories and other pieces of clothing, that should be none of his business. For all he knows, I could have seven identical dresses and wear a different one every day. I was still rattled so I just said “Mhmm” and got back to work.

But then I got home and got really upset. The challenge isn’t the issue—I can always put on the dress when I’m home from work, which is what I’ve been doing this past week. But I liked the way I dressed, I was comfortable, and I thought the dress looked good. I feel like Jan, for whatever reason, didn’t like that I was wearing a dress on casual Friday (when everyone else was wearing jeans) and decided to make a mountain out of a molehill by going to our boss with (unfounded??) concerns rather than talking to me about it first. (She hasn’t said a single thing to me since about my clothes, but she gave me what I thought was a smug look when I came in on Tuesday wearing something else.) My husband says I should just do as my boss says, but I feel like this is a ridiculous request and since there isn’t a real issue with what I wear, I kind of want to keep wearing my dress anyway. But I also don’t want to get in trouble.

We don’t have HR (small company) but I feel like this is absurd. Can I really get in trouble for continuing to wear my dress every day? Should I do as my boss suggested and vary things up to “be on the safe side”? Does that mean I can maybe get away with wearing my dress some days? Should I talk to Jan and explain that I do wash it frequently? I would really love to go back to wearing my comfortable and classy dress to work, without it being an issue.

Jan’s a real busybody.

If you’re clean and you look professional, who cares? Many, many men wear identical outfits every day and no one comments. Jan and your boss are making an issue of this because you’re a woman, whether they realize that or not. I can practically guarantee you that if Jan complained that Bob in Accounting wore the same suit every day, your boss would not have spoken to Bob about it.

I think you should keep wearing the dress if it’s important to you. But in theory your boss can indeed tell you that you need to change it up, or penalize you in some way if you don’t. Theoretically, you could then have a lawyer help you argue that you were being subjected to different rules based on gender. Whether you’d want to expend the money and energy on that is a different question, as is how it might affect things between you and your boss. Sometimes people decide it’s worth it, and sometimes they don’t.

However, I think it’s likely that your boss won’t take it that far. He doesn’t sound like he really cares about the dress himself; it sounds like he’s just trying to appease Jan. If you make it clear that by appeasing Jan he’ll create a different problem he’ll need to deal with (you) and allude to how gendered this is, there’s a pretty good chance that he’ll back off.

Go back and talk to him again and say, “I was surprised by our conversation, because I’m confident that my appearance is professional and polished. Lots of people wear identical items multiple days in a row — men with suit jackets, for instance. I take a lot of care with my appearance and put a lot of thought into accessories and my presentation overall. I don’t think a man would be told he needed to vary his suits, so I don’t think I should be told I need to vary mine. However, I didn’t want you to think I was simply ignoring our conversation.”

If he pushes back, you could say, “I want to make sure I’m clear: Are you telling me that I need to change what I’m wearing even though I look professional and am in compliance with our dress code, just because Jan thinks I should look different each day?” You might also ask whether men in the office will be told the same thing about varying their blazers.

I’m betting that your boss hadn’t thought this through and was just trying to make the situation go away … and that once you push back, he’ll backtrack. But if he doesn’t, then you’ll have to decide how much capital you want to spend and how okay you are with things becoming more contentious.

Jan sucks.

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Hopefully the breaker box was labeled correctly; I hate it when I think I've flipped the right one and then come back upstairs and find that all the molten lava has drained out of my home's heating system.

This comic was written by Norrin!

Good morning. Over the next seven days Houston will see mostly winter-like weather, with only one or two days with a high temperature of around 70 degrees. If you’re participating in the Houston full or half marathon this Sunday, I’m now highly confident that conditions will be cold, perhaps with start line temperatures in the upper 30s or low 40s.

Monday

Skies have cleared out this morning for inland areas, and will soon for the coast. This will lead to a mostly sunny day, with highs in the upper 50s for most areas. Winds will blow out of the north at about 15 mph, with higher gusts, keeping a chill in the air all day. As winds die down this evening we’ll see ideal conditions for radiational cooling, with lows dropping to about 40 degrees in the city of Houston, with cooler temperatures further inland, and slightly warmer temperatures along the coast.

Tuesday

This will be another cool and sunny day, with highs of around 60 degrees. Winds will be lighter, but shift to come from the northeast and then the east. As a result, temperatures on Tuesday night will still be chilly, but 5 to 10 degrees warmer.

Wednesday

A bit warmer, with highs in the mid-60s, and a few more clouds as high pressure shifts away. Lows will be around 50 degrees in Houston, with colder conditions in outlying areas.

Thursday and Friday

These should be the warmest days of the week, with a southerly and southwesterly flow pushing highs into the upper 60s on Thursday, and low- to mid-70s on Friday. Expect mostly sunny skies. Dewpoints will remain in the 50s, so it’s never really going to be “sticky” outside, however.

Saturday and Sunday

A strong cold front should arrive sometime between Friday evening and mid-day Saturday. Questions yet to be answered are whether any rain will accompany the front (probably not) and how cold the air mass will be (fairly cold, probably). Depending on the front’s timing, high temperatures on Saturday are likely to be around 60 degrees, with gusty northerly winds. Saturday night should be quite chilly, with a colder day on Sunday likely in the 50s. Winds should be lighter on Sunday, helping with the run. Details to come. A warming trend should begin on Monday.

In light of the recent Omicron wave and the skyrocketing pediatric hospital admissions, we’ve compiled a list of questions from concerned parents. Please submit your questions via the form below.

“If I’m fully vaccinated and boosted, will my newborn receive any immunity to Omicron while breastfeeding, and will she be able to meet her grandparents before she turns five?”
— Jill, new mother

“When I take my kids to the indoor Playspace because it’s twenty degrees outside and there is a sign next to an empty hand sanitizer that says, LEAVE THE GERMS OUTSIDE, but fifty people are gathering indoors without masks, should I laugh or cry?”
— Delante, father of three

“If an unmasked person does not adhere to six feet of distance in the supermarket near my unvaccinated children, do I unleash the diatribe of vitriol I’ve been lulling myself to sleep with for the past two years for just this occasion or invite them home to spend time alone with my kids for the approximate one million hours that exist between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.?”
— Melody, mother of three children under five
.
“When I am at the drugstore with my infant and an unmasked patron ridicules me for maintaining distance while fake-coughing in my direction, can I punch her in the face or would that put me at risk for Omicron?”
— Sam, first-time mom

“If my unvaccinated toddler has to attend preschool so I can work to pay for said preschool and to assuage the crippling debt of my never-ending student loans, when will the Equal Rights Amendment be ratified by all fifty states?”
— Joanna, mother of two

“With Omicron being the most contagious variant yet and my baby too young to wear a mask for supermarket trips, should I splurge on Instacart for groceries or begin hunting wild game in my backyard and building a complicated gutter system to capture rainwater?”
— Cal, first-time dad

“If I’m living in a town that will not impose a mask mandate, so we are forced to stay at home quarantined in eighteen-degree weather, is drinking alone still a red flag for alcoholism?”
— Valerie, mother of four

“Since we’ve been quarantining to protect our child for nearly two years while anti-vax, anti-mask contingents populate our playground while wearing pro-life paraphernalia, is there a God and does she believe in chaos theory?”
— Kayla, parent of toddler

“If I keep my unvaccinated children home from school to protect them from the latest COVID surge, who will be more developmentally delayed—the twins because they missed preschool or me because I had to leave my career at forty?”
— Ellen, mother of twins

“Why does God hate me? Is it something I did? Did I have too many sexual thoughts as a teen? Is this because I bent that car’s fender while pulling out of the parking garage and didn’t leave a note on the other car’s windshield?”
— Jo, parent of a one-year-old

“Day after day, I dream of driving my head through a wall and watching the small pieces of plaster and dust gather at my feet while the pain slowly builds in my forehead and spreads behind my eyes. Is this an Omicron thing?”
— Stan, father of four

“As a high-risk pregnancy, I’m concerned about contracting Omicron. With no universal mask or vaccine mandates to protect our most vulnerable population, children, as well as the abrupt end to the child tax credit, and zero support for parents navigating the unassailable reality of raising children during a pandemic while struggling to afford childcare, health care, and groceries, I’m just wondering… will people give a shit about my children once they are born or do people only care about them while they are still in the womb?”
— Julie, expectant mother

Thank you for your questions. We look forward to qualifying and hedging on the softball ones during our Friday briefing at noon.

In light of the recent Omicron wave and the skyrocketing pediatric hospital admissions, we’ve compiled a list of questions from concerned parents. Please submit your questions via the form below.

“If I’m fully vaccinated and boosted, will my newborn receive any immunity to Omicron while breastfeeding, and will she be able to meet her grandparents before she turns five?”
— Jill, new mother

“When I take my kids to the indoor Playspace because it’s twenty degrees outside and there is a sign next to an empty hand sanitizer that says, LEAVE THE GERMS OUTSIDE, but fifty people are gathering indoors without masks, should I laugh or cry?”
— Delante, father of three

“If an unmasked person does not adhere to six feet of distance in the supermarket near my unvaccinated children, do I unleash the diatribe of vitriol I’ve been lulling myself to sleep with for the past two years for just this occasion or invite them home to spend time alone with my kids for the approximate one million hours that exist between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.?”
— Melody, mother of three children under five
.
“When I am at the drugstore with my infant and an unmasked patron ridicules me for maintaining distance while fake-coughing in my direction, can I punch her in the face or would that put me at risk for Omicron?”
— Sam, first-time mom

“If my unvaccinated toddler has to attend preschool so I can work to pay for said preschool and to assuage the crippling debt of my never-ending student loans, when will the Equal Rights Amendment be ratified by all fifty states?”
— Joanna, mother of two

“With Omicron being the most contagious variant yet and my baby too young to wear a mask for supermarket trips, should I splurge on Instacart for groceries or begin hunting wild game in my backyard and building a complicated gutter system to capture rainwater?”
— Cal, first-time dad

“If I’m living in a town that will not impose a mask mandate, so we are forced to stay at home quarantined in eighteen-degree weather, is drinking alone still a red flag for alcoholism?”
— Valerie, mother of four

“Since we’ve been quarantining to protect our child for nearly two years while anti-vax, anti-mask contingents populate our playground while wearing pro-life paraphernalia, is there a God and does she believe in chaos theory?”
— Kayla, parent of toddler

“If I keep my unvaccinated children home from school to protect them from the latest COVID surge, who will be more developmentally delayed—the twins because they missed preschool or me because I had to leave my career at forty?”
— Ellen, mother of twins

“Why does God hate me? Is it something I did? Did I have too many sexual thoughts as a teen? Is this because I bent that car’s fender while pulling out of the parking garage and didn’t leave a note on the other car’s windshield?”
— Jo, parent of a one-year-old

“Day after day, I dream of driving my head through a wall and watching the small pieces of plaster and dust gather at my feet while the pain slowly builds in my forehead and spreads behind my eyes. Is this an Omicron thing?”
— Stan, father of four

“As a high-risk pregnancy, I’m concerned about contracting Omicron. With no universal mask or vaccine mandates to protect our most vulnerable population, children, as well as the abrupt end to the child tax credit, and zero support for parents navigating the unassailable reality of raising children during a pandemic while struggling to afford childcare, health care, and groceries, I’m just wondering… will people give a shit about my children once they are born or do people only care about them while they are still in the womb?”
— Julie, expectant mother

Thank you for your questions. We look forward to qualifying and hedging on the softball ones during our Friday briefing at noon.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

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