Posts by jake

@JEDIDIAH

Even our rainy season tends towards temperate ... I have a half dozen tomato plants up against the south wall of one of the barns. I planted them three years ago. I'm still harvesting fruit from them.

It's true that Californians don't really grok weather. We had a couple hundredths of an inch of rain the other day ... The police logs were full of fender-benders.

But don't paint us all with the same brush. The wife & I were in New Jersey about 8 winters ago (she was brought in as a consultant at a ranch just outside Newton for about 6 months). We drove out with enough kit for the duration in a Penski rental truck, trailering our aging '93 Toyota 2WD pickup[1].

The first snowfall of the season we got ~18 inches ... Two days later, and another 8 inches, I needed to make a grocery run. I took the little Toyota. When I got back, the local staff lined up to see the Californian get into trouble in the snow. I calmly drove back up the driveway, into our designated parking place (about an 80 foot elevation over a quarter mile), without any issues. My wife collected several hundred dollars in bets ...

[1] "HiLux" in the rest of the world ... Does anyone really understand Marketing?

@Peter Simpson 1

Yep. But only once ... I brought twenty seven eight-by-ten colo(u)r glossy photographs, with circles and arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence into court. I took pictures of the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner, the southwest corner ... and that's not to mention the aerial photography I took from my Cessna A152.

The presiding judge realized what I was doing about 30 seconds into my testimony, busted a gut laughing, and disappeared into his chambers for a couple minutes to compose himself. When he came out, he threatened to charge me with making a mockery of justice, contempt of court, causing a ruckus and anything else he could think of if I ever tried a stunt like that again.

My testimony was stricken from the record, and I was dismissed with a warning. The prosecutor won her case anyway. The Judge is now a friend of mine.

@Jolyon

Not certain where you are going with your comment.

Me, I offer input from my perspective on articles that aren't necessarily always IT related. I do it in the hopes of making people think "outside the box". Am I tilting at windmills? Yes.

On the other hand, is my contribution always entirely on-topic? No, of course not. But topic drift (thread drift) have long been one of the engines that drive online community (see: alt.folklore.computers, alt.folklore.urban, alt.callahans, and the Scary Devil Monastery, for a fairly good & diverse selection of this).

On the gripping hand, if your question was serious, yes there are online fora for particular marques of old cars (and carriages). Metacrawl for them, they aren't hard to find.

Clenched between my toes, if you are suggesting I contribute more formerly to ElReg, I seriously doubt I'd fit in with ElReg's current staff. I'm fine with that, and I suspect (most of) ElReg's staff are fine with that, too ;-)

@AC:15:59

You do know that "resources" include enough land, a steady supply of usable water, and human beings, all of which remain unmolested long enough to produce food, right? Now look up the meaning of the word "fixable". And you call ME condescending?

That's an odd "thumbs down" ...

Did the "voter" honestly not know that human males almost always get their hair from their maternal grandfather?

(I don't really give a rat's ass about "thumbs", up or down, here on ElReg ... but every once in awhile one pops up that intrigues me ... )

@Gordon 10

Uh ... no.

Do try to keep up ...

@mantrik00

I'm glad your life has improved. Honestly, every human should have a chance in this modern world, at least in my humble opinion.

But this is a technical forum. We don't do testimonials.

Woops.

Actually, the other Steve did the demo. The Woz nervously hovered around in the background, as was nearly always the case in the early years. Jobs==Marketing; Woz==Engineering.

@Beau

I have a wife, my daughter's daughter is just over a year old, and my nieces & nephews are 5 to 14 years old. None of us use !GooMyFaceYouMsTwit.

We don't stop the kids from accessing multi-billion-dollar marketing corporation's internet presence, rather we explain why it's not a good idea. They seem to share "kid stuff" with their friends just fine using alternatives that I provide.

And they are learning how TehIntraWebTubes[tm] actually work, instead of how to fondle an iFad. In my opinion, my option provides better long-term results. YMMV.

@Ralph 5

What's wrong with PDF is that the vast majority of PDFs would be better off presented as ASCII text, at least from a bandwidth and storage perspective.

I mean, seriously ... I've seen B&W job applications that could be delivered as <40K of ASCII text rendered as >19 Meg PDFs. This is not a positive use of computing resources, no matter how you look at it.

And that word "everyone" ... I don't think it means what you think it does. Many people cannot perceive your "formatting, colo(u)r, fonts, etc." And many of the rest of us don't give a rat's ass about your attempt at "brightening up" what should be a simple document.

@It wasnt me

I help my family out all the time. I just refuse to fix b0rken-by-design Microsoft-based toys for free. My time is valuable, and I don't consider gaming useful.

My commercial computer rates are considerably lower than what I get from "pulling off[1]" horses, hour-for-hour ... but horse-porn only lasts a couple minutes; computer porn can go on for weeks, and pays the bills.

[1] It always amuses me when city folks try to discuss livestock breeding :-)

@Just Thinking

The so-called "gamblers" are investing in a scheme that cannot make an overall profit, to the advantage of the site operators. That's "ponzi" (or Tigg, if you have an education).

The operators skimming off the top is just plain stupid, and only gets the authorities involved sooner. As we see in this case.

But either way, the marks get taken; 'tis the nature of the beast. See Amway.