General Discussion, Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Posted on April 12, 2017 by Stella

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157 Responses to General Discussion, Wednesday, April 12, 2017

  1. czarowniczy says:
    April 12, 2017 at 12:11 am

    Yaaaaayyyyy! A whole new fresh day to mess up!

    Liked by 10 people

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  2. nyetneetot says:
    April 12, 2017 at 12:17 am

    Just in case….. Coffee up!

    Liked by 7 people

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  3. Wooly Phlox says:
    April 12, 2017 at 5:46 am

    “Calvin and Hobbs is never out of season.” — Czar

    Solzhenitsyn is never out of season. This speech is from 1979 at a Harvard graduation.

    http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/alexandersolzhenitsynharvard.htm

    Growing up, we never missed the yearly airing of Charlie Brown specials, at their appointed seasons, nor of Wizard of Oz every year.

    Would that this speech instead were hyped and played every year, and looked forward to, by all.

    Philippians 4:8 doesn’t mean Only Think and Speak Happy Thoughts. Truth is the first item.

    Liked by 5 people

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  5. nyetneetot says:
    April 12, 2017 at 7:54 am

    Mornin’ stella! (Smiter of those that ought to be smote) 😎 🍸 (Long Island Iced Tea)
    Mornin’ WeeWeed! (Master Mixologist Extrodinare) 😎 🍸 (Old Fashioned)
    Mornin’ Menagerie! 😎 |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| (Jack Daniels – Single Barrel )
    Mornin’ Ad rem! (Queen Felis catus) 🐱 🍸 (Flaming Lamborghini)
    Mornin’ Sharon! 😎 🍸 🍸 (earthquake)
    Mornin’ ytz4mee! 😎 🍸 (cosmopolitan)
    Mornin’ waltzingmtilda! 🙂 🍸 (white wine and perrier)
    Mornin’ partyzantski! 🙂 |_| (Tom Collins)
    Mornin’ texan59! 🙂 |_| (Black & Tan)
    Mornin’ ZurichMike! 🙂 🍸 (fuzzy navel)
    Mornin’ Col.(R) Ken! (hand salute) 🙂 |_| (Boilermaker)
    Mornin’ Czarina! 🙂 🍸 (Lynchburg Lemonade)
    Mornin’ czarowniczy! 🙂 |_| (Wild Turkey Rare Breed)
    Mornin’ letjusticeprevail2014! 🙂 |_| (Irish Car Bomb)
    Mornin’ Patriot1783-ctdar! (aka “ctdar”) 🙂 🍸 (grasshopper)
    Mornin’ tessa50! 🙂 🍸 (flaming volcano)
    Mornin’ waltzingmtilda! 🙂 🍸 (sidecar)
    Mornin’ varsityward! 🙂 |_| (Godfather)
    Mornin’ MaryfromMarin! 😀 |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| (Mortlach)
    Mornin’ Wooly Phlox! (aka “taqiyyologist”) 🙂 |_| (Roy Rogers)
    Mornin’ Howie! (aka “doodahdaze”) 🙂 |_| (Classic Daiquiri)
    Mornin’ TwoLaine! 🙂 |_| (Gin & Tonic)
    Mornin’ Sha! 🙂 🍸 (Lemon Drop)
    Mornin’ BigMamaTEA! 🙂 🍸 (Harvey Wallbanger)
    Mornin’ cetera5! (aka “Cetera”) 🙂 |_| (Blackberry wine)
    Mornin’ The Tundra PA! 🙂 🍸 (Baileys Irish Cream on the rocks)
    Mornin’ lovely! 🙂 |_| (Backdraft)
    Mornin’ michellc! 🙂 🍸 (Salty dog)
    Mornin’ auscitizenmom! 🙂 🍸 (Kiss on the Lips)
    Mornin’ Margaret-Ann! 🙂 🍸 (White Russian)
    Mornin’ Auntie Lib! 🙂 🍸 (Tom and Jerry)
    Mornin’ holly100! 🙂 🍸 (Jack & Coke)
    Mornin’ Pam! 🙂 (Not even water)
    Mornin’ Ms.Tee! 🙂 🍸 (Mojito)
    Mornin’ koolkosherkitchen! 🙂 🍸 🍸 (Cuba Libre)
    Mornin’ ImpeachEmAll 🙂 |_| (Flaming Dr. Pepper)
    Mornin’ Monroe! 🙂 |_| (Stinger)
    Mornin’ Les! 🙂 |_| (Rusty Nail)
    Mornin’ shiloh1973! 🙂 |_| (Jack Daniels)
    Mornin’ TexasRanger! 🙂 |_| (Whiskey Smash)
    Mornin’ Ziiggii! 🙂 |_| (B52)
    Mornin’ oldiadguy! 🙂 |_| (Rum & Coke)
    Mornin’ smiley! (“stuck in spambucket”) 🙂 🍸 (Spanish coffee)
    Mornin’ derk! (“Stellars”) 🙂 🍸 (Kamikaze)
    Mornin’ Jacqueline Taylor Robson 🙂 🍸 (Shirley Temple)
    Mornin’ facebkwallflower! 🙂 |_| (Night Train Express)
    Mornin’ Ms. Cindy! (aka “Ms Cynlynn” aka “ms cynlynn”) 🙂 🍸 (1970 ducru beaucaillou)
    Mornin’ sandandsea2015! 🙂 🍸 (1961 Château Montrose)
    Mornin’ amwick! 🙂 🍸 (Blue motorcycle)
    Mornin’ hocuspocus13! 🙂 🍸 (1970 Chateau Latour)
    Mornin’ Sloth1963! 🙂 🍸 (1971 Moulin Touchais)
    Mornin’ MTeresa! (Ex-lurker) 🙂 |_| (Albanian Raki Moskat)
    Mornin’ Rhea Salacia Volans! 🙂 |_| (Hot Buttered Rum)
    Mornin’ joshua! 🙂 |_| (Mudslide)
    Mornin’ John Denney! 🙂 |_| (RumChata)
    Mornin’ litenmaus! 🙂 |_| (Stolichnaya elit, no ice)
    Mornin’ kinthenorthwest! 🙂 🍸 (A Lonely Island Lost in the Middle of a Foggy Sea)
    Mornin’ TwoLaine! 🙂 |_| (Smoking Bishop)
    Mornin’ patternpuzzler! 🙂 🍸 (Old Lady)
    Mornin’ Senatssekretär FREISTAAT DANZIG! 🙂 |_| (Red Russian)
    Mornin’ G-d&Country! 🙂 🍸 (Blind Russian)
    Mornin’ whiners and complainers! 😛 (No drink for you!)
    Mornin’ to people posting that I missed. 😳
    Mornin’ to all you lurkers! 😕

    Also just in case someday; mornin’ to Elvis Chupacabra, F.D.R. in Hell and sundance! :mrgreen:

    Breakfast!

    NEW and IMPROVED breakfast with extra bacon for ZurichMike!

    Lemon Scones with Vanilla Lemon Glaze

    Liked by 10 people

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  6. nyetneetot says:
    April 12, 2017 at 8:40 am

    Anyone want to take bets on how long it takes before we start hearing/seeing jokes about United Airlines being chosen as the official airlines for US Immigration enforcement, or cities booking one-way tickets for homeless on United?

    Liked by 3 people

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  7. Wooly Phlox says:
    April 12, 2017 at 10:44 am

    So, I learned how to make fresh steak tartare, the other day. With minced red onion and capers.
    Molded and topped with a raw egg yolk. Who in the heck would eat that? Why, dear God? Why? It looks pretty on a plate, I guess. But, are you kidding me? I like my beef and eggs cooked.

    Liked by 4 people

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  8. Wooly Phlox says:
    April 12, 2017 at 11:07 am

    Here’s a good dog story.

    http://www.dukedougherty.com/short-stories/

    Liked by 1 person

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  9. shiloh1973 says:
    April 12, 2017 at 12:06 pm

    Tillerson is meeting with Putin right now! Several sources reporting. Oh, the press with Tillerson are whining that he ditched them to go to the meeting. I hope he gets on the plane and leaves them in Russia! A few less idiots we would have to listen to.

    Liked by 5 people

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  10. Menagerie says:
    April 12, 2017 at 12:10 pm

    Here’s where we are headed. Modern man thinks himself intellectual and superior. No different from caveman might makes right philosophy. It’s sometimes a disgusting world.

    https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/celebrated-moral-philosopher-its-ok-to-rape-the-disabled

    Liked by 3 people

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  11. Wooly Phlox says:
    April 12, 2017 at 12:15 pm

    This is one chip. One chip.

    Many years ago on the SNES videogame console.

    https://infogalactic.com/info/Music_of_Chrono_Trigger

    A composer used one chip. Awesomeness was the result.

    Liked by 2 people

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    • Wooly Phlox says:
      April 12, 2017 at 12:23 pm

      Digital strings and pizzicatto at 15:00 is incredible.

      This composer used a game console, and used it well.

      Liked by 2 people

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    • nyetneetot says:
      April 12, 2017 at 5:57 pm

      One of my younger brothers had this game when it was new. I remember the music. I think the artist was the same guy that drew Dragon Ball.

      Liked by 1 person

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      • Wooly Phlox says:
        April 12, 2017 at 9:18 pm

        Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu did the equivalent of making, with this one soundtrack, spanning three CDs (before CDs existed, I believe), on one chip, a symphony with one violin string. They pushed the chip to it’s limits, and then broke the limits. When I listen to it, and both Mitsuda’s and Uematsu’s vast portfolio of chiptune music, especially for Square-ENIX, I have to remind myself — this is one chip. From 1995.

        Pink Floyd, eat your heart out. They had a whole building full of giant, state-of-the-art devices to make Ummagumma and Dark Side of the Moon. This is one chip.

        I became less fascinated with video game music soundtracks upon the advent of the CD.
        Then, the soundtracks could be whole, actual symphonies. I was more impressed with what musicians could do with one sound chip, and how far they could push it. When CDs came out, they could get lazy. Uematsu never did get lazy, even then. He directed actual orchestras, to make video game music.

        Even today, musicians are saying, “How much musical complexity can I squeeze out of this chip?”, with the Sega Genesis, SNES, C=64, etc. “How far can I push it?” It’s a very niche hobby, but it amazes me, still.

        I just listened to half of that soundtrack (Chrono Trigger) with studio headphones, and had to stop. So stunned. I remember playing the game itself, on a cartridge, on a TV with one tinny speaker and an R.F. modulator connected to the antenna screws. We’ve come a long, long way in 20 years, but what they did with the old tech is more poignant than what they are doing with the new tech. The old tech had limits that could be tested and pushed and broken.

        Liked by 1 person

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        • Wooly Phlox says:
          April 12, 2017 at 9:44 pm

          This was made last year. The Commodore 64 computer hasn’t been in common use since the rotary-dial phone, and people are still pushing its limits today. Lots of people.

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          • Wooly Phlox says:
            April 12, 2017 at 9:51 pm

            Pause at 0:26, and see the comparison.

            Commodore could have been, had they had better marketing, far bigger than Apple and Microsoft. The Amiga™ was what every single TV station used for their on-screen chromakeyed graphics. Commodore died from poor marketing.

            What folks in groups like Offence and Fairlight (wow, Fairlight. They must be in their 50s, now.) do is program musical and graphical demos. They see how much awesome graphics and music and shout-outs they can stuff onto a 512k or 1024k double-sided floppy for the 1541 drive, and they try to outdo each other with their programming. Elegance and brevity-of-code, plus soul in the music. All coded like nerds in hex or machine language, which makes no sense to us cro-mags.

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          • Wooly Phlox says:
            April 12, 2017 at 10:09 pm

            Groups of hardcore programmers still do it today in the PC scene.

            They have to set limits, though. What can you make a PC do with a 64k file, for instance. It’s still not the same, though, as back in the day. PCs have a great variety of graphics and sound cards, which is why the competitions set limits.

            Google “demoscene”. These folks are pushing the limits of Texas Instruments’™ calculators.

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          • Wooly Phlox says:
            April 12, 2017 at 10:26 pm

            I neglected to mention the group Noice.

            Everything in this C64 demo would have been considered absolutely impossible, 34 years ago. The 64 had a border around the screen, and you couldn’t draw in it. You can see the border at the beginning of the video, when it’s loading. Even at the END of the 64’s lifespan (when Apple and IBM destroyed Commodore, Atari, Texas Instruments, Tandy, and the rest…) the hackers had just begun to figure out how to draw in that border. How to make actual graphics and text in that previously un-draw-able border.

            I think the first published game that made use of that border was Beyond the Forbidden Forest, by Cosmi. Now the border area is nonexistant. Years after the computer itself is obsolete.

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  12. shiloh1973 says:
    April 12, 2017 at 12:20 pm

    Stella, just wanted to thank you for the beautiful pictures you post every day. We are getting rain and wind all day. It was 28 degrees yesterday morning and we had snow the day before! We are so water logged hills are sliding, roads are damaged, and I have small ponds everywhere. I talked to a friend yesterday and he said ranchers are having a terrible calving season. Calves are drowning and some were buried under the snow. I’m afraid the winter wheat will have rust and root rot. This is dryland wheat and never gets this much moisture. Crazy year.

    Liked by 4 people

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  13. Wooly Phlox says:
    April 12, 2017 at 1:21 pm

    Rob Hubbard too a monophonic chip and made it his third arm.

    Those were the days.

    Liked by 1 person

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  14. lovely says:
    April 12, 2017 at 4:20 pm

    Ha ha!

    After Andrea Mitchel rudely shouts a question at Secretary Tillerson Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov asks her, ”Who was bringing you up? Who gave you your manners?”

    The smile on Tillerson’s face is priceless.

    The video cuts out but I believe after the scolding Andrea asks Secretary Tillerson to please explain to his Russian colleague why she isn’t rude.

    😂

    To quote Travis Tritt “It’s a great day to be alive, I know the sun still shinning when I close my eyes.

    Liked by 3 people

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  15. czarowniczy says:
    April 12, 2017 at 6:54 pm

    Well, now I have a pretty good idea of how a proctologist feels at the end of the day. You may have guessed it by now… another day dealing with the VA.
    Last month I filed a claim with the VA for a disability based on diabetes in turn based on Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam. By law the VA must presume the type 2 diabetes resulted from AgentnOrange exposure if you were in VN for even a boot on the ground for one day between Jan 9, 1962 and May 7,1975, period, end of report. All you have to prove is that you have type 2 and you were in VN between those two dates.
    I sent them the extensive check sheets they require, filled out by my doctor, and presumed they still had my DD214 (proof of serving on active duty) in my files from my last claim. Makes sense, eh (now don’t get ahead of me)? Anyway, today I get a letter saying that they need DD214s for ALL periods of active service. I called and asked if they really needed them or if that were, as it seems, a nonspecific boilerplate letter…the phonetoad didn’t know nor could she direct me to anyone who knew. I told her that I had three periods of active service between 9-11-2001 and 3- 2003 that, because of how we were activated and deactivated, most of us didn’t get 214s. After listening to her tell me that ‘that was impossible’ and my mentioning to her that I had more time in the bathroom than she had in military admin and how glad, given the time, I would be to explain to her how that could happen and give her examples, I asked if she could see the shoebox full of pay receipts I’d sent to them in 2013 to prove these periods (they took originsls, won’t take copies) and she said ‘no’.
    Next, it seems that as I’m retired if I receive a disability pay for a less-than-50%-disability the disability payment is subtracted from my retirement pay BUT if I file a form with the Air Force and the Air Force agrees that the disability is combat related I get that money back and receive full disability and retirement pay. Here’s the rub: if the disability cause came from Agent Orange exposure it’s AUTOMATICALLY considered combat-related BUT the individual’s service must chime in anyway duplicating, for no discernible reason , that individual’s DD214 certified by his branch of service actually says what it does.
    Now, my claim was opened in October of last year and determination (rubber stamping, actually) is expected NLT mid-December of this year. Once determination’s made and they start the disability pay (reducing my pay by the like amount), I can apply for them combat rubber-stamp determination, which will take more months. Remember, the question of ‘is the diabetes service-connected’ is automatically a ‘yes’ if VN service is proven and VN service again makes it combat related…..
    Please God, let President Trump cut the living @&$*# out of the bureaucracy.

    Liked by 8 people

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    • amwick says:
      April 12, 2017 at 7:21 pm

      Jeez, good luck. Dh went through something like that having to do with asbestos exposure..Not with the VA,, but with the company… It is worth pursuing…
      Good luck,,, persevere!.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
      • czarowniczy says:
        April 12, 2017 at 8:11 pm

        It’s karma. In the early 70s when I was in undergrad school I worked on WWII VA screwups with a Senator’s office. It was somewhst worse then, the VA got to roll you over a barrel and there was bupkis uou could do about it, but the bureaucratic meatgrinder is still alive and strong.

        Liked by 2 people

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  16. czarowniczy says:
    April 12, 2017 at 7:04 pm

    I know, it’s juvenile, but you’d think a TV station could phrase a headline better: “Dazzling Bursts of Light Erupt from Uranus”. Or msybevit was just a slow day…..

    http://www.fox8live.com/story/35133103/dazzling-bursts-of-light-erupt-from-uranus

    Liked by 7 people

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  17. auscitizenmom says:
    April 12, 2017 at 9:00 pm

    lilbirdee12’s prayer:

    Our Heavenly Father, Your children come to you tonight to ask for healing and peace throughout our country so that we may return to being One Nation Under God. Guide us to be leaders in Your Kingdom, spreading Your Love and Salvation to all. Forgive us our sins and deliver us from evil.

    Lord, we ask for a blanket of protection over all our troops and law enforcement who serve to defend and protect us. Bless our representatives with the strength and wisdom they need to achieve the path You have chosen for us.

    Please place Your Guardian Angels of Protection around Donald Trump and Mike Pence and their families as they seek to lead America back to You.

    Grant us patience, Lord, as the evil ones try to anger us and cause us to fall.
    Spread blessings over Israel and Netanyahu.

    We humbly ask that You please comfort those who are grieving and in pain.
    Thank you Father, for Your Love and the gift of Life.

    In Jesus name, we pray. Amen

    Liked by 4 people

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