Personal

How I Spent My Day Off

by Al
written by Al

I spent my morning cleaning up the mess made by our broken waste pipe. Good times. As I mentioned yesterday, we finally found a plumber that could make it to the house before Thanksgiving. He did his job and this morning I did mine.

I suited up in my best decontamination gear, grabbed the wet/drive vac, slid it into the crawlspace and climbed in behind it. Maneuvering through the massive curtains of spiderwebs, I made my way to the spill and vacuumed up the majority of the sludge. Once that was finished, I grabbed a sprayer and soaked the whole area with a mixture of bleach and water. Hopefully that will kill any nasty bacteria or fungus that might find it a good place to set up house.

When I finished up, I got the hose out, cleaned all the equipment multiple times using the remaining bleach solution, and striped down and took a hot shower with lots of soap. My skin is dry from all the scrubbing but at least I think I’m clean.

I’m hoping that this is the last time I’ll ever have to do something like that again. The plumber thought the other pipes were in good shape and said we shouldn’t have any more problems. Hopefully, he’s right.

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Personal

We Found a Plumber!

by Al
written by Al

Yesterday, I posted about discovering a leak in the upstairs drain pipe that connects to the main drain the empties into our septic system. Bad enough in most houses but unfortunately in our house the plumbing is located in a crawlspace. To make matters worse, every plumber we contacted was short staffed because of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday and said they wouldn’t be able to get to us until next week. What a freaking nightmare.

Late yesterday afternoon one of the plumbers called back and said that he would come down and have a look at it. He did, said he didn’t think it would be that big a deal and told me he would show up the next day (today) after he finished his scheduled appointments.

Today he showed up as promised and had the broken pipe replaced in less than an hours time. I can’t express how thankful I am. The thought of going another day with limited water and bathroom facilities was depressing as all hell.

Anyway, his parts done. My part will come tomorrow when I have to go into the crawlspace with a wet/dry vac, suck up the remaining waste water and spray everything down with a bleach solution and rinse and repeat multiple times. I can’t say I’m looking forward to it.

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Personal

Emergency Service 24/7

by Al
written by Al

We purchased our house many years ago and although I am mostly satisfied with it, there are a few things about it that I’ve come to hate. Probably the number one problem on my list is that while half the house has a cellar, the other half sits on top of a crawl space. This limits how much storage space we have available (exacerbated by the lack of an attic) but even worse since a lot of the plumbing is in the crawlspace, when something goes wrong it is a disaster to deal with.

Over the weekend I went down in the cellar to check some mouse traps I had put down during the week and while I was down there I heard the sound of running water coming from the crawlspace. The only entrance to the crawlspace is located a couple of feet behind the furnace about four feet off the floor, so I slipped past the furnace and peered into the entrance; a drain pipe connected to the main drain going out to the septic system was leaking like crazy. I didn’t crawl into the area (an adventure in itself) but from my vantage point it appeared that the pipe had just fractured. Wonderful. There was a flood of waste water on the floor and the water currently emptying into the space was from the shower that my wife had just finished up.

I did some further investigation and it appeared that we could still use the downstairs bathroom since it was a direct connection to the main line, but using the upstairs bathroom and potentially the kitchen would be a problem.

Today my wife contacted our plumber and was told they were booked up and wouldn’t be available to next week. We tried other plumbers, the majority of which have ads touting 24/7 emergency service. Most of them didn’t even return calls and the few that did said they were too busy and not available. It drives me crazy, why advertise 24/7 emergency service if you have no intention of providing it?

Anyway, where things stand is that we have one bathroom that appears to work without flooding the crawlspace, although I hate using it fearing that a rush of water could still be a problem, and no hope of getting the situation fixed until next week. All this just in time for Thanksgiving, my birthday and three vacation days that I have off. Great timing.

It could be worse, the break could have happened on the main line in which case we would have no bathrooms available and would have to move into a hotel for the week but it’s still pretty depressing and stressful. I can’t wait until we get this resolved.

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PoliticsUncategorized

Tech Censorship Insanity

by Al
written by Al

Just an example on how crazy the current state of tech censorship is. I’m in a Facebook astronomy group and someone replied to a post I did suggesting I use a specific filter when attempting an image of the Andromeda galaxy. I wanted some additional clarification and attempted to post the following comment:

“Since I use a black and white camera would I use this in series with the color filters?”

It refused to go through. Every time I attempted to post it it was rejected. I thought about it and rephrased it as follows:

“Since I use a monochrome camera would I use this in series with the color filters?” It posted without a problem.

Apparently the words black and white can no longer be used within a sentence because it might be construed as being racist.

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Reviews

I’m Not Lovin’ It

by Al
written by Al

McDonald’s has had a whole bunch of great slogans over the years. Classics like “Look for the Golden Arches”, “You Deserve a Break Today”, “Two All-Beef Patties” and “I’m Lovin’ It.”

Might I suggest a new one for them… “We no longer give a s#*t!”

Really. Has there ever been a corporation that puts in less effort than McDonald’s? The menu rarely changes and when it does it’s usually just a minor tweak of an existing product. The few times that they’ve come out with something mildly interesting they get rid of it after a few months. Their burgers are small and lack flavor, unlike a lot of the competition, and their fries have steadily declined in quality over the years.

They really don’t seem to care, but then again why should they. Their stock price has steadily increased over the years and although they’ve experience negative growth for the last four years, their net income has held steady. I guess there’s something to be said for just being convenient.

It’s sad really. Management should be ashamed of themselves. With a little effort they could be so much more, but I’m sure the executive team walks away with a nice bit of compensation so why bother.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Their current marketing campaign is “Worldwide Favorites.” They describe it on their website as “Try some of our most popular international McDonald’s favorites, in the U.S. for a limited time. Around the world is now around the corner.”

OK that could be interesting and worth a try.

In Japan they have an Ebi Filet-O Shrimp Burger, which consists of panko-battered ship, covered with a tempura sauce and lettuce. In Austria, they serve McNoodles, which are noodle dishes mixed with various vegetables. In India there’s a McCurry Pan; a crispy bread container with curried vegetables baked in a cream sauce and best of all in Germany there’s a McNurnburger, which consists of three bratwurst on a bun with mustard and onions. All of these things could be interesting to try.

So what are the foreign favorites that they’ve chosen to bless their American customers with.

First on the list is the Grand McExtreme Bacon Burger from Spain.

The Grand McExtreme Bacon Burger consists of one of their crappy 1/4 lb (weight before cooking) burgers, topped with a slice of applewood bacon, some gouda cheese and their smokey McBacon sauce. They really went out on a limb with that one.

I was curious about the Gouda cheese, is that really big in Spain? A web search revealed the following: there is currently no production of Gouda cheese in Spain and even worse, Spain isn’t even a big consumer of Gouda; they’re not even in the top ten. Goudas a product of the Netherlands. That’s in Europe though so I guess that’s close enough for McDonald’s. The rubes in the U.S. will never know the difference.

How about that McBacon sauce. That’s probably something uniquely spanish. Here’s the ingredients list, you judge for yourself:

Ingredients: Soybean Oil, Water, Tomato Paste, Sugar, White Wine Vinegar, Capers, Egg Yolks, Salt, Contains 2% or Less: Cucumbers, Baker’s Yeast Extract, Natural Flavors, Autolyzed Yeast Extract, Distilled Vinegar, Caramel Color, Lactic Acid, Xanthan Gum, Onion, Garlic, Sodium Benzoate (Preservative), Calcium Disodium EDTA (Protect Flavor).

Next on McDonald’s list of international favorites are Cheesy Bacon Fries from Australia.

Cheesy Bacon Fries are made from Russet Burbank and Shepody potatoes and are covered with chopped Applewood bacon and real cheddar cheese sauce (note they don’t say real cheddar cheese, but real cheddar cheese sauce. I’m guessing they are two very different things) Turns out Russet burbanks are from the U.S. and Shepody potatoes are from New Brunswick, Canada. Doesn’t seem very Australian to me but to be fair they never said they were from Austrialia, only that they were a favorite in Austrailia. Using this criteria they could probably just throw a Big Mac on the list cause the mates love them.

Not to be out done, the Canadians also have an entry on the menu. The Tomato Mozzarella Chicken Sandwich.

The Tomato Mozzarella Chicken Sandwich is comprised of crispy chicken, tomatoes mozzarella cheese, lettuce and herb sauce. Nothing here very much Canadian. You would have a least thought they would have added some maple smoked bacon to the mix. Also, if you’re going Canadian, how about some Poutine, which are Canadian fries covered with gravy and cheese curds. That would seem like a natural for them. They already seem to have a supply of Shepody potatoes, but I guess they’re saving them for the Australian dish.

There’s a few other items on the menu, but like the ones I listed above, they’re basically just the standard McDonald’s items with minor changes so that marketing can build a campaign around them.

Like I said before. Zero effort. It really seems like they no longer give a s#*t!”

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Politics

Government Corruption

by Al
written by Al

A guy going by the name of Bob posted this in response to an article over on Instapundit. I thought he hit it right on the nose and lays out the whole story for anyone that cares to be informed about how bad things are in the Federal government. Whether you’re liberal or conservative, this should concern you.

Watergate x 1000:

  1. Hillary ran a pay-for-play scheme at State, to line her pockets in exchange for access to State.
  2. The FBI covered this up.
  3. The Bengazi investigation discovered Hillary’s secret email system, used to facilitate the pay-for-play. When her emails were subpoenad Hillary and Mills and Abedin deleted over 30,000 emails using “Bleach Bit.” When questioned about her secret harddrives being wiped, she looked at America and said, with a wry smile, “You mean like wiped with a cloth?”
  4. Comey’s FBI gave immunity agreements to all of Hillary’s cohorts, protecting them from criminal liability. Comey allowed them to destroy cellphones, harddrives, and anything else they wanted.
  5. Comey’s FBI pre-wrote Hillary’s exoneration letter. Strock wrote the draft that replaced “recklessness” with “carelessness”… allowing Comey to claim her actions with the email system didn’t violate federal law.
  6. Hillary was interviewed by Comey’s FBI, not under oath, not recorded, and with her cohorts present — all in blatant violation of FBI protocols.
  7. AG Lynch met with Bill Clinton in a secret meeting in Lynch’s plane … to discuss (they say) grandchildren. Lynch later expressed “regret” over this meeting. The FBI tried to track down who leaked news of the meeting, clearly in a panic that it was discovered.
  8. In July of 2016 Comey gave his Hillary exoneration speech, saying that “no reasonable prosecutor” would charge her … despite a mountain of evidence. We later learn that Comey, Strock, McCabe, Page, and the high eschelon of the FBI HATED Trump, and they expressed that they were going to do everything they could to stop him from being president.
  9. In Aug of 2016 the FBI began its Russia investigation, using FISA warrants based on the Clinton Steele Dossier. FBI agents, including Comey and Rosenstein, signed off on the veracity of these applications, knowing that the info came from the Hillary camp. This info was not told to the FISA court.
  10. Trump is elected. Obama’s AG and FBI then set about to frame Trump with a “Russian collusion” narrative, which has lasted until this day.
  11. In mid 2017 Trump fires Comey. Rosenstein asks Trump to appoint Comey buddy Mueller to be head of the FBI — Trump refuses. The very next day Rosenstein appoints Mueller as special prosecutor to “investigate” Trump.

The level of treachery by the highest officials in our nation is simply astounding. These crooks did all they could to protect Hillary, and frame Trump. They all should be hanging by their necks for all to see. But they are stiil free, still running the same scam.

Again … Watergate x 1000. Where is the justice?…

Trust these agencies? Uh .no. They just tried, and are still trying, to enact a coup along with their Dem/Media partners.

Hangings. Public hangings….

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Politics

The Resemblance is Uncanny

by Al
written by Al

On the left is Felicity Jones playing the part of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the movie ‘On the Basis of Sex’. On the right is the real Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It’s simply amazing the resemblance!

Not!

Let’s contrast that to Christian Bale playing the part of Dick Cheney in the movie ‘Vice.’

Dick Compare

Bale is on the left, while Cheney’s on the right. Outside of the evil smirk on Bale’s face, they are amazingly similar. It just shows what a good job they can do recreating the likeness of a character when they want to.

But the two movies have very different goals. One is meant to build up a woman while the other is meant to take down a man. Hence, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is shown as a woman much more beautiful than she really is while Dick Cheney is imaged as a much eviler version of himself.

Here’s some corroboration of the message of the movies from a couple of critics.

First is from a review about ‘Vice’ from Owen Gleiberman from Variety:

Yet even when he’s playing it straight, which is most of the time, McKay treats the movie as a slightly cracked burlesque. He turns history into a rollicking circus for liberals, inviting us to revel in Dick Cheney’s Greatest Hits Of Infamy. “Vice” takes a lip-smacking vengeful glee in shining a light on all the dark things that Dick Cheney did behind the scenes, from recklessly grabbing command of the military decision-making process just moments after the first attack on 9/11 (this included Cheney’s wild order to shoot down any planes deemed suspicious) to lining up favors for his cronies in the oil industry to finding arcane “legal” ways to justify the trashing of the Geneva Convention. None of this will come as news to anyone who regularly consumes the front page of The New York Times. Nevertheless, the pop catharsis of “Vice,” to the extent that the movie provides one, is in actually seeing Dick Cheney throw his weight around, elbowing the wimpy, clueless George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell) out of the way as he effectively assumes the role of president.

Here’s what Danielle White from the Austin Chronicle thinks about Vice:

It’s another effort to solidify her sainthood. However, it’s also an easily digestible outline of Ginsburg, her career, and why her work is so important. It’s a biting piece of herstory that we need right now.

And if you read the reviews, you will find that both reviews are pretty sympathetic to the cause.

Leftist Hollywood pulls this sort of thing all the time. They build up their leftist icons while vilifying those on the right. They understand that most peoples view of history will be shaped by the entertainment that they watch and not by the facts and they do their best to mold that entertainment into something that supports their corrupt ideologies. Until those of us on the right find a way to combat this, we will always be behind.

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Technology

Rotating Log Files with Easylogging++

by Al
written by Al

I was looking for a logger to use in some of my C++ projects and came across Easylogging++. It’s pretty easy to use and has a decent feature set, but like so many open source projects it’s a bit lacking in the documentation area. I wanted to set it up to do log rotation when the log file exceeded a given size but how to do this was not really clear. I played around with it this morning and finally figured out how accomplish what I wanted to do, so I’m sharing the code here in case anyone else is trying to solve the same problem.

First the setup process:

  1. Download EasyLogging++ from the repository on GitHub at https://github.com/zuhd-org/easyloggingpp#configuration
  2. Unzip the file and copy the easylogging++.cc and easylogging++.hh into your projects source directory.
  3. Right-click on your project’s header file directory and select ‘Add > Add Existing Item’ and select easylogging++.hh.
  4. Right-click on your project’s source file directory and select ‘Add > Add Existing Item’ and select easylogging++.cc.
  5. Right-click on your project and select ‘Properties’ then select ‘C/C++’ > ‘Preprocessor’. Add ‘ELPP_THREAD_SAFE’ to the ‘Preprocessor Definitions’ section. Make sure you do this for both the Debug and Release sections.
  6. At the top of your main source file add the text ‘INITIALIZE_EASYLOGGINGPP’ to initialize the logger.

That’s it for the setup. The developer did a really nice job with this. It couldn’t be easier to setup.

To actually use the logger in your code, you will need to configure the logger. That can be accomplished by loading a config file and calling reconfigureAllLoggers as follows: 

   const el::Configurations conf(R"(logger.conf)");

   el::Loggers::addFlag(el::LoggingFlag::StrictLogFileSizeCheck);

   el::Loggers::reconfigureAllLoggers(conf);

The config file that I used is as follows:

  • GLOBAL:
    FORMAT = “%datetime %thread %level %msg”
    FILENAME = “D:\Win10_Workspaces\LogTest\LogTest\Logs\Logs.log”
    ENABLED = true
    TO_FILE = true
    TO_STANDARD_OUTPUT = false
    SUBSECOND_PRECISION = 6
    PERFORMANCE_TRACKING = false
    MAX_LOG_FILE_SIZE = 2097152 ## 2MB

I won’t describe it here because the Easylogging++ site does a pretty good job explaining it. For the purpose of this tutorial though the important line is the MAX_LOG_FILE_SIZE. When your log file exceeds this value a new log file will be generated and the old one will be archived.

To setup the software up for rotating logs you will need to install a callback function to do the job. That’s accomplished using the call:

el::Helpers::installPreRollOutCallback(PreRollOutCallback);

This function will be called any time your file size hits the MAX_LOG_FILE_SIZE limit that you’ve set in the config file.

The callback function that I put together is as follows:

void PreRollOutCallback(const char* fullPath, std::size_t s)
{
   char newPath[256];

   ver++;

   std::string str(fullPath);

   std::string pathNoExtension = str.substr(0, str.find_last_of('.'));

   sprintf_s(newPath, sizeof(newPath), "%s_%s_%d.log", pathNoExtension.c_str(), GetDateTime().c_str(), ver);

   rename(fullPath, newPath);
}

All it really does is rename the existing log file with the date and a version number. When the call returns Easylogging++ will generate a new log file with the default name.

And that’s it. I’m including a download for a sample project that does all the above and creates three thread to demonstrate Easylogging++ multi-threading capabilities.

I’d like to give credit to the developers, Zuhd Web Services. They’ve done an excellent job with this and it’s great of them to share their work with others.

Source Files:

Code is signed by Al Carnali

LogTest.zip
LogTest.zip.sig
Hash: 59AC89D5FAB6B6207F9EF81E210AF4CE3FA475A4A2A96C8297B2D61BCBC0A9DA

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Politics

Low Expectations

by Al
written by Al

This crazy lady thinks we should eliminate library fines because they are a hardship for our ‘most vulnerable’ citizens. Once again, more liberal insanity.

Why should anyone listen to advice from a librarian that admits to having paid $500 in fines over the last few years. The woman is so irresponsible that she can’t even make sure that she returns the books that she’s borrowed on time, yet want’s us to believe she’s so intelligent that she knows better than the rest of us.

Why should anyone listen to advice from a librarian that admits to having paid $500 in fines over the last few years. The woman is so irresponsible that she can’t even make sure that she returns the books that she’s borrowed on time, yet want’s us to believe she’s so intelligent that she knows better than the rest of us.

Fines have never been there as a way for libraries to collect revenue. There main purpose is to make sure that books are returned in a timely matter so that they are available for all to borrow. There secondary, and much more important purpose, is that they teach responsibility. When I was a kid, we looked at taking books out from the library as a privilege. I was taught to take care of the books that I was loaned and to return them in a timely matter in the same condition in which they were borrowed. These are simple lessons in life that start to teach children about handling the responsibilities they will face as an adult. They help kids to form good habits that will last them a life time. If you learn to return a book on time or face a nickel a day fine, you will probably have the skills required as an adult to properly manage a credit card, purchase and pay for a house and save money for retirement.

Poor people will continue to remain poor unless they learn the skills required to live a successful life. You do a disservice to them when you treat them like children that are not capable of handling the challenges of life that the rest of us face.

We keep lowering standards instead of trying to make people rise up to meet those standards. It’s not good for them and it’s not good for society.

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