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Cake day: March 29th, 2025

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  • I got a single-cup Keruig for a gift, but found that when it gets used by several people in short duration, condensation builds in the electronics, and shorts it out. I returned 2 of them for replacements before figuring out what was causing the problem. My daughters like to use it for tea, so I normally use an old Corningware 6-cup percolator. We use the reusable cups…While I can certainly rationalize justification for being much less of a tree-hugger for other things, I choose to be too much of a tree hugger to enjoy the full Keruig experience.


  • Oh, reading your reply made me feel a bit hypercritical, LOL! While I’ve never heard of the “juicero,” I do own a “Bartesian.” It’s a cocktail-making machine, where you supply the alcohol, and the various cocktail mixers come in a Keruig-like packet. You insert the packet, select the strength of beverage you want, between non-alcoholic (who does that?) to strong, place the appropriate cocktail stemware (or Soho cup) underneath, then drink away.

    I’m not too hypercritical though…it works really well, and is a party hit.









  • IMO, only 3 things hold social order together…Laws, Consequences, and Prosperity. The loss of any one of those things will result in some pretty nasty stuff. We’re not going to go the way of Germany - at least not as fast…there are simply too many guns in this nation, too much communications capacity, too much ability for quick travel, etc.

    Through trump 45, all the lawsuits, hearings, censures, lawsuits, protests, and impeachments were simply seen as “liberal tears.” When thenorange voters are directly, and negatively impacted by what they voted for, those liberal tears will a protest of government that will mean something. We’re still in the shocked-look, “I thought the other people were the problem” phase of things.

    Orange voters are starting to lose their jobs. Orange farmers are starting to have distressed farms, or fields with rotting product waiting for harvest. Stress fractures are beginning to appear with Medicare/Medicaid and SS. Wait until the Farmbill is canceled.

    Republican town hall meetings will reach a point where they’ll be canceled entirely. They’re starting to crack down on the ever-growing population of homeless and people living in their cars. They’re starting to crack down on social media negativity towards government. Just wait until conservatives come after the guns.

    Our allies are doing their best to help us out by economic means, but they can only do so much, as the threat to our nation is coming from within our nation. Canada is rocking it with their tariffs, being focused squarely on red states.

    Things will likely get uglier, but that might just be the way it has to be, before things can improve, and it’ll be scary for everyone. The US has been on a downward/rightward spiral since the early 1970s, and we’ve let it slowly happen to ourselves. Setting things right Will be difficult, and will certainly take more than a few 4-8 year presidential cycles, and people need to understand that.







  • Oh, I don’t discourage them from using/learning Microsoft products at all - they just don’t happen to be in our home, because as consumers, my wife and I don’t spend our money in Microsofts direction. While I can’t say it with accuracy anymore, because it’s been 20 years since my switch, one of the selling points with the Linux distributions was that some of them looked and felt like either Mac or Windows. My Ubuntu distribution looks pretty similar to my wife’s Mac, and the initial installation of Linux Mint, several years ago was made to look and feel like Windows XP. Honestly, the last time I touched Windows was before retiring from the US Navy, where the Submarine LAN was run on Windown NT - but I retired in 2009.

    If my kids came home with a Windows PC, or the cheaper option, wanted to turn one of my laptops into a dual-boot machine, I wouldn’t care…more exposure to (that bad word) diversity in operating systems. I don’t think they’re missing out on not having Microsoft in our home though. Microsoft Word in the Tux world is Open Office, Microsofts Excel is Calc, etc…if you know one, you’ll be able to work on the other.



  • Ukraine should declare that they’re withdrawing from the Lisbon Protocol, and will start working towards creation/procurement of nuclear weapons. Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belaruse agreed to give up their nuclear weapons, in exchange for guarantees on their border security, secured by the US and Russia. Since Russia has reneged, and the US appears to be doing the same, maybe Ukraine could bolster the “cards in their hand” by looking towards rearming. While I hate the idea of another nuclear power, Ukraine was the #3 nuclear power, between separation from the USSR and the 1992 Lisbon Protocol. Maybe their next strategic move should be to fail, like the US and Russia have.

    I understand Russian concerns - Gorbachev was told, when the Berlin Wall came down, that NATO would not expand towards the Russian Border. That promise was not ratified by NATO, but was a part of the decision making process, as it was a Russian concern. NATO has expanded 12 times since then, towards the Russian Border. As mad as they might be, the answer is not to simply take back lands they gave up.

    The same goes for the US. A few decades passing by, is no excuse to simply decide to not honor obligations previously entered into.

    But, if everybody is just changing their minds, and simply “doing whatever we want” is on the table, I’m sure, since Ukraine supplied much of the Cold War hardware and expertise to the USSR, that manufacturing and knowledge base is still there, at least to some degree.

    They probably wouldn’t have to do it…mentioning the interest as a strategic consideration could be the kick in the ass needed, to help the Lisbon Protocol participants to remember their roles in the guarantees made, on the condition of giving up those nukes.


  • Last week, I got a 3 day ban from Reddit. The next day it turned into a permanent ban. Reddit claimed that it was due to a comment made about a video, showing a coach pull the ponytail of one of the girls on his team. While I don’t recall what my comment was, as the father of a HS girl who plays sports, it bothered me, but as a man in his 50s, who played football in the 1980s, who periodically got his ass kicked by his coach, when he screwed up, it didn’t bother me enough to say anything terrible. Of course, they deleted the post, and refused to elaborate. I’ve been supportive of Luigi, and have heard that Reddit was coming after Luigi supporters, so I thought that could be the real reason. Who really knows?


  • So, shortly after checking aboard the first fast-attack submarine I served on, in April 1991, the boat was locked down one evening, when the engineer couldn’t find his Zenith SuperSport 286e computer. Suspecting someone stole it, the boat was locked down and searched - for 3 hours. Everyone was really angry… It’s 2025 and I remember it well.

    Anyway, after 3 hours or so, at the Captains insistence, the ENG, doing paperwork in his stateroom, let someone else in, to look for his computer. There it was, sitting plain as day, on his bunk, where his pillow should have been. The ENG said he didn’t notice it, as he thought it was his pillow…gross, considering everyone else’s pillowcase was white.

    The Captain immediately lifted the lockdown, and all the off-duty people went home. The anger lingered though, and the Engineer seemed to have a dark cloud over his head. He was fired a few months later, and I’ve always wondered if it had something to do with that computer - I was just too new to know anything about the guy, and I didn’t work in engineering.