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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • I upgraded from Windows XP to Vista after the 2nd servicepack fixed most of the shit. By that point it was a tolerable OS.

    I am currently hoping for a major service pack next year to fix all the stupid shit they did in Windows 11.

    You know kind of like when they fucked up windows 8, attempted a quick fix in 8.1 and finally fixed it in win10.

    Of course they are at 4 major updates with win11 and it’s still shit so the hope is very thin.




  • Firing middle managers is a fun way to kill the company. Not that cleaning house is a bad idea. Unfortunately the people making decisions of who to keep and who to let go are usually idiots.

    Middle Managers are promoted for two reasons: technical expertise and ass-kissing expertise. Now the technical experts tend to not mix well with incompetent parasitic c-suite types idiots. The ass-kissers are beloved by the c-suite as that is their only role in life.

    So when firings come around guess who they get rid of? Then 1-3 years later everyone is shocked when everything starts to fall apart.


  • LMAO. I did have some fun making this one up. Like any good but fiction it’s a mixture of facts and fabrications to make it believable.

    Well…spit… growing up on the ranch we had between 13 to 18 horses around all the time. Everything from Arabians to some workhorses.

    100% true. I even sent a nice loogie to get into character.

    Now we only shoed them in late summer for the fall when we were working cattle.

    Partially true - we shoed them in late summer as it was our pack train for guided hunts etc. we only used the 3 quarter horses to work cattle with. Those we kept shoed year round.

    Now swimming is an interesting topic. During the hot days in the summer we would hop on a few hoses bareback and race across in the ponds.

    Fabrication. The ponds were all spring fed and came out of the ground at 40F. The ponds held a 50F temperature all summer. Nobody swam in them other than a few dares. We did stock them with trout.

    You would think the massive workhorses with their oversized hooves would win. Poweful, strong animals with big flippers on the bottom. Unfortunately they were the slowest in the water. They were stiff and inflexible, dumb and slow. They tended to swim a few feet, decide it was too much work, turn around and find some nice grass to eat.

    This is one of my better fabrications. I used the personality of the Belgium’s we had. They were slow and powerful and always eating. However I never once saw them swim. We used them for trail clearing and pack horses in the woods.

    Now the Arabians with the smaller stature and dainty little hooves were by far the fastest in the water. The fastest was horse named ugly. He was a swayed back ill tempered little guy with a massive chip on his shoulder. He just had to be first everywhere. He was almost as vicious as the Spawn of Satan aka “Shetland pony”. Now Spawn of Satan didn’t like the water because brimstone and water don’t go together so we never got him to swim.

    Mix of fabrication and truth. Ugly was an smaller appaloosa whose name started out as chief. So we called him Chief Ugly then just Ugly. The Spawn of Satan was really called “Cookie” but if you know anything ponies the Spawn of Satan is more apt.

    What’s curious is after they were shod and their hoofs trimmed down, they all seemed a wee bit faster. I guess the smaller hoof works better for their swimming mechanism.

    Total bullshit. I have no idea what makes a horse swim faster or not.


  • Well…spit… growing up on the ranch we had between 13 to 18 horses around all the time. Everything from Arabians to some workhorses.

    Now we only shoed them in late summer for the fall when we were working cattle.

    Now swimming is an interesting topic. During the hot days in the summer we would hop on a few hoses bareback and race across in the ponds.

    You would think the massive workhorses with their oversized hooves would win. Poweful, strong animals with big flippers on the bottom. Unfortunately they were the slowest in the water. They were stiff and inflexible, dumb and slow. They tended to swim a few feet, decide it was too much work, turn around and find some nice grass to eat.

    Now the Arabians with the smaller stature and dainty little hooves were by far the fastest in the water. The fastest was horse named ugly. He was a swayed back ill tempered little guy with a massive chip on his shoulder. He just had to be first everywhere. He was almost as vicious as the Spawn of Satan aka “Shetland pony”. Now Spawn of Satan didn’t like the water because brimstone and water don’t go together so we never got him to swim.

    What’s curious is after they were shod and their hoofs trimmed down, they all seemed a wee bit faster. I guess the smaller hoof works better for their swimming mechanism.






  • I have been using custom start menus since the whole win8 full screen disaster. Every time I see the default win 10 or Win 11 menu I cringe. So much crap in the way.

    Process optimization reaches a point of diminishing returns. Then if tweaked further it degrades the performance. Microsoft reached the close to the optimal OS design at Win7. It’s all been downhill since then.

    The mobile OS systems are reaching the same point. Optimization has occured and most of the “new” additions degrade the user experience.


  • The issue with wine is quality control is dependent many factors, weather, fertilizer management, water management, disease pressure, pest pressure, harvest conditions, unpredictable fermentations and the skill of the winemaker. The more variable the conditions the more unpredictable the finished wine product is.

    A good bottle is really tough to make. A mediocre bottle is difficult to make. A poor bottle is what is usually made. I’ve never had an excellent bottle of wine and I think it is a myth. Pricing is mostly unrelated to the quality of the product as well.

    When you usually put out a poor product people tend to avoid it unless there is a cultural expectation of low performance. What’s changing is the cultural acceptance of drinking horrible tasting stuff.

    The wine industry in needs to adapt and put out a better product or else they will go under.


  • I did a little assassin creed run this summer. Started with Unity and went to Odyssey.

    Unity by far has the best story-line. The game mechanics are also more focused on being an assassin, not a brawler. Sneak and stab, drop smoke and disappear when you get in trouble.

    Syndicate - they changed the focus to more brawling. However the mechanics were pretty bad and the storyline was predictable and stupid to say the least. You can still play the assasin for most of it if you want.

    Origins - They went all out into brawling with this one. Complicated all of the controls. Easiest way to make it through the game is as an archer. The story lines are dull and some are just plain weird. The offer you tons of different options in gear but only a few are worth keeping. Not much chance to actually assainate anyone. Lots of weird half baked stuff like the naval warfare in the story line but nowhere else.

    Odyssey - it’s basically the same as origins. They spent more time fleshing out the mechanics. Added in a ton of options but you only use a few. Added in a ton more brawling combat and very little assassination. In many instances trying to play as an assassin is just not possible. The combat is often broken. Beating the bosses is all the same. Spam arrows while dodging until they weaken, get a hit in and run away- repeat. Save often because the game crashes regularly.

    Yes I played all the way through and beat the main quests and side quest on all of them.





  • Why is basic math.

    In a made up scenario let’s start with a dumb 50"ish TV. That cost them around $100 to build. Add in another $50 for shipping and distribution fees. It’s at the store for $150 cost. If they set the price at $400. There is $250 dollars of profit to share between the store and the manufacturer. The manufactuerer likely gets under $100.

    Now for a smart TV the revenue stream looks different. First their costs only go up by a few dollars for adding the “smart” chips. So let’s say $155 cost. Then they collect revenue from the streaming providers to be supported by their smart TV say $30 per set. Then they collect the $20 per set per year in user data collected. So if they price the smart TV the same as the dumb one they generate $95 from the sale of the set.

    So the profit from a dumb TV is $100 at he point of sale.

    The profit from a smart TV is $225+ in a constant revenue stream over 5 years.

    And this is why we see so much advertising for smart TV’s as being the best thing.