So I’m too migrained-up to do a proper post today, so instead here are some pictures of Ted Nugent, Kid Rock and Sarah Palin visiting the White House earlier this week. Except creepier! I think these are closer to capturing the true existential horror of the visit than the official pics. Click the pics for slightly higher res versions.
Enjoy, I guess! And consider this an open thread.
inklast said
Sure, but we Californians have to own Hollywood denizen and former governor Ronnie Raygun, so…
Nikki the Bluth Wannabe – I don’t listen to the radio or anything much and haven’t for a while but I didn’t manage to miss that awful song, somehow. Didn’t know Kid Rock was responsible for it, so now I know who to blame. I’ve been a Warren Zevon fan since the late 70s, so you mess with him at your own risk.
I do have to say that I liked Adam Sandler’s cover of Werewolves of London a lot more than I thought I would, though I don’t like a lot of his other work.
As this is an open thread… It looked like my second hard drive just suddenly died. Like, I was using firefox (which I have installed on it, as my windows drive is an SSD and I try to keep that as clear as possible) and it suddenly crashed. Then I couldn’t open it. I had updates waiting to be installed when I restarted, so I hoped that was it?
Restarted, still no second drive. Some frantic googling, and I decided on carbonite as a backup solution (encrypts data transfers, will also back up to an onsite hard drive with the one higher plan, not a java based program) and found a cheap 2TB external hard drive to buy to make my on site backup.
Saw that I still??? had updates to install, restarted, checked my BIOS to see if the other hard drive was there. It was! So it wasn’t pooched, thank everything. Exited my BIOS and suddenly that drive is back.
Phewph. I already have one drive that I need to try to replace the USB jack thing that you plug into, because it’s broken. The drive is fine, but that is broken. It’s also a stupid encrypted drive, so everything HAS to go through that stupid little thing. Moral of the story: Don’t buy encrypted drives!
… Computers argh…
I have been giggling and smiling all morning at everyone’s nominations for their home state’s Most Embarrassing Person awards! Thank you all, I do feel MUCH better!
@wwth – I do feel sorry for you having the execrable Vox Day, and Bachmann because WHOA she was a scary, scary person. But on the flipside, MN is also the birthplace of Prince and of Bob Dylan! (although I have to admit I’ve never really understood the mad love for Dylan, I do respect his huge contribution to music).
Likewise, lovely Michigan gave us Aretha and all of Motown, so hopefully that blots out some of the rancidity of Kid & Ted. (I know Motown isn’t completely unproblematic but the music itself is pretty damn wonderful). I’m heartened to learn that outside of Michigan Nugent is mostly known now as a discredited right-wing rabble-rouser and not as any sort of musician.
Also, thanks for the update on Scildfreja, I hope she’s okay and politely doing her Canadian things. I shall continue my platonic crush on her in her absence and hope for her return at a future date.
I was thinking about Scildfreja also. I’ve always enjoyed her posts.
David, I hope you’re feeling better now. I know people who suffer from migraines, and I’m glad I’m not one of them.
Since this is an open thread…the weather in PA where I live, is typical spring…soggy. I must be a human barometer, because the change of seasons from winter into spring, means more mild headaches for me. Coffee, aspirin, and pseudoephedrine help.
Is it considered polite to wear a hat indoors when meeting the president? Aren’t you supposed to take it off?
Rhuu:
Well, encryption’s good, but if the encryption is done by the drive, how do you know you can trust it? That’s why I tend to use software encryption for disks, and accept the performance penalty.
I’m a bit concerned that (if I understand correctly) you decided to do backups only after you thought you’d had a disk failure.
n’thing the good wishes and we-miss-yous to Scildfreja, who is made of awesome with a sparkling of bloody brilliant on top.
@Moggie: i knowwww i knowwwww. I know i should have a back up set up, but every time i looked into it, it just seemed to be so difficult.
I know it’s terrible. But i am finally fixing it, so i’m going to hope that counts for something.
I’m also nervously sitting in a barber shop right now, waiting to get my hair cut. I’m looking forward to a better cut than i get at my local barbershop, but it’s kind of busy and i feel foolish. :/
WWTH, I do have the embarrassment of not only being from the same state, but also the same town as Bachmann. I don’t live there and haven’t lived there in over 30 years.
This one I found rather amusing. (NSFW or people with delicate sensibilities–or taste, for that matter).
Orrin Hatch, Newt Gingrich, John Kasich, Bill Cosby, and both of the R. Paul politicians were born in my state.
So were Guion S. Bluford – first African American man in space, Pete Conrad 3rd man to walk on the moon, Chubby Checker, and Mr. Rogers.
Today I finished turning my homespun BFL into a pussyhat:
@PaganReader – Mr. Rogers should give your state a pass forever, at least in my heart.
@Victorious Parasol – I had to look up what BFL was – does that mean you made the yarn yourself? Is it from your own sheep, too? The hat is adorable, btw, well done! I’m impressed all ’round.
@ dreemr
Thanks! Yes, I spun and dyed the yarn myself, but not from my own sheep.
It’s rude to wear a hat indoors regardless of whom one is meeting. Some exception is made for very frilly women’s hats when the hat is highly decorated and clearly part of the outfit, but IMHO that’s a dumb exception and all hats should come off indoors.
@VP very nice work! I have a friend I’ve known since high school who is now a very talented costume designer for the theater, and I remember him carding and spinning his own yarn. I always thought it was pretty neat although I never learned how myself. I admire it!
Since we’re talking about regrettable repugs from our states, for a long time my congressman was David Dreier, who’s your typical republican asshole. I remember my mom ranting about him quite a lot growing up. Thankfully, in 2010 we were redistricted into Norma Torres’s district.
@PaganReader – Misandrist Spinster
Ooh, ooh, I know: Pennsylvania! (Aka PA to those of us from the great state of PA.)
You left out a notoriously loathsome Pennsylvanian, Rick Santorum. He and I share Penn State as an alma mater. Embarrassing!
And then there’s the school itself. Non-Pennsylvanians might not know that Graham Spanier, the former president of Penn State, was recently found guilty of child endangerment (due to a failure to report) in connection with the Jerry Sandusky child sex case.
Graham Spanier was my professor in the College of Human Development at PSU. He taught Intro to Marriage and the Family. The word ironic is way overused these days, but it surely applies here.
ETA: I’m from SW PA. If you don’t mind saying, how about you?
Good thing about modern disk drives is, they can fail without totally dying immediately. I had one that, every time a particular sector(s) was read, would just stop responding to IO commands entirely until power-cycle. I didn’t realize that was happening for quite some time, it was quite a low-probability error, and would happen only for specific applications, so I just thought the apps were crashing terribly somehow.
Ran a “SMART” checker on it, and it came back with “70% good” or something, AKA get any non-backedup data off the drive NOW. ddrescue running on a Linux Bootable CD saved it very well, since apparently the drive could read any bad sector once or twice, but not too many times. Maybe it was that Linux was less sensitive to the error than Windows, dunno.
Such a slow failure mode seems very low probability, but I’d probably replace that drive even if it “keeps working” they’re fairly cheap these days. Unless it was just an OS/power supply error, that drive’s on its way to being toast.
microUSB (the one on that encrypted drive someone else mentioned) connectors can be replaced, assuming you can safely open the cover. If it’s a paranoid encrypted drive, removing the cover will possibly erase the keys, so you’ll be stuck with no data, but still a working drive perhaps. You’ll need access to either a friend with good desoldering equipment, or a good professional electronics fixer.
Hot air gun with a small tip to make it easier, desolder vacuum, copper braid desolder wick, solder and soldering iron with thin tip, and good muscle control. I could probably still do it, but I don’t have the small tip hot air gun yet.
Yeah, I know, you didn’t ask for that much explanation, but at least I had fun writing it.
Kid Rock is my hyper racist father-in-law’s “favorite rapper”. Yup.
Other lowlights from my recent visit to the US:
Younger son still won’t come out of his room. He has now convinced his mother to ban me from the entire second floor, which involved moving my wife’s old room to the basement, so that he can use the bathroom without fear of running into someone.
Also, he no longer allows his mother to wash his clothes. He wears the same t-shirt and sweatpants every day. He doesn’t wear socks. His mother won’t allow him to wear dirty underwear, so she buys tons of underwear in bulk so that he can put on a new pair every few days. She has no idea where he disposes of the old underwear, and she doesn’t want to ask.
The racist father has been demanding a specific kind of butternut ravioli to be entered into the weekly rotation of dinners. He’s been saying it’s one of the best things he’s ever had – until a few weeks ago. Then he suddenly got upset when he realized it was butternut ravioli night. He blamed his wife for getting “these weird ideas in [her] head”, that he somehow loves this butternut ravioli and wants to eat it all the time. He refused to eat, and went to TGIF and got drunk instead.
Woo hoo! I really really really don’t want to go there again.
@ Imaginary Petal
I’m so sorry.
PoM:
That’s what I thought. But perhaps an exception can be made when the hat is an essential aid to your masculinity? Sort of like how you’re allowed into shops with a service dog?
@Imaginary Petal – I’m really sorry to hear all that, especially about the youngest son, that sounds so worrisome. Hoping for better outcomes for them and more peace for you.
@PoM – agreed, hats indoors are a no-no always for men, and only an exception for women if it’s some eleborate monstrosity like the British seem to favor (j/k my UK friends but y’all do seem to like your elaborate ladies’ hats!)
@Imaginary Petal
Sorry to hear you were subjected to all that. That younger son, very creepily, reminds me of Adam Lanza – the Sandy Hook mass murderer. He, on the other hand, changed socks so many times a day, and probably other articles of clothing, that his mother had a hard time keeping up with the laundry. He also covered the windows in his room with black garbage bags, to keep out the light, or possibly to keep anyone from spying on him. Also, from what I’ve read, he only communicated with his own mother via email.
I haven’t been in contact with my own mother in a number of months. I guess I’ll have to give her a call, and take the heat sooner or later. I didn’t visit her this Easter, because it means being bored silly, and being forced to tiptoe around numerous political issues. I love her dearly, but she’s one of those Fox News true believers.
Brits got nuthin.
https://www.google.com/search?q=kentucky+derby+hat&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjf6IPrgrvTAhUM4IMKHSUxCm8Q_AUICSgC&biw=1138&bih=473&dpr=1.2
@js: thanks for the explanation! When cleaning up my computer, i realised that i had things on there from 2012, which makes everything five years old. Now i’m wondering if i should buy a new SSD and learn how to transfer my OS. :/
I’ll run a drive checker and see what’s up. I don’t want to replace all of ’em, argh…. Q___Q
It’s also great news that the little connector can be resoldered! I figured it could, since it was soldered in the first place. I guess i’ll just have to email around and see if i can find someone who can fix it.
@IP: i’m sorry you and your wife have to deal with all that.
Re:hats- but what about touques when it’s cold? But it’s only the ladies (usually) who are freezing, so the temperature isn’t adjusted? Is a hoodie acceptable in that situation?
Confession: sometimes i need both.