RidgeRoad

RidgeRoad, 9 months ago

iFixit noted yesterday, “Though the bill is strong and should make repairs more available for everyone, it allows manufacturers to continue to engage in parts pairing, a practice by which they limit repairs with software blocks. They can also combine parts into expensive assemblies, which makes repairs more expensive.”

Similarly doubt there’s any way to legislate against the dismal engineering that tempts a failure avalanche like the Ford F150 taillight horrorshow I posted a few days ago.

RidgeRoad, 9 months ago

Odd. I wondered why friends from Chicago always order tuna salad whenever they visit.

RidgeRoad, 10 months ago

Iowa Driver’s License Manual, page 10, § 2.8 Traffic Signals. https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/f471ccd3-905a-4a3c-a422-f89f9f03f0bf.png

ibid., page 15, § 2.21 Intersections. https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/5b9c0466-a58c-41b5-bff7-4ece781b950e.png

RidgeRoad, 10 months ago

I flunked Sunday school, so I’ll take the item description on its word that it’s a “great way to give witness to God’s truth in the Holy Bible.”

RidgeRoad, 10 months ago

Recommend also the seminal TMRC dictionary for several terms absent here, plus some memorably elegant definitions:

Kludge: A crock that works.
Crock: A kludge that doesn’t work.

Same again true of Peter Samson’s original 1959 and 1960 editions.

RidgeRoad, 10 months ago

Republican House Leader Matt Hall quoted in the article: "offering food stamps to the rich does nothing to put food on the tables of Michiganders in need.”

But distribute $1.5 billion to the rich through the Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve fund and Matt will reassure you that it helps create jobs.

RidgeRoad, 11 months ago

As I write this reply, three buttons appear below the text dialog, "Reply," "Cancel" and "Preview." Not having deleted the text from dialog, nor committed to "Reply" or "Cancel," if I now decide to view your profile on this page by clicking your user name, it has no effect. This appears true of all links except !main and those to off-site URLs, for example, the donation heart you mentioned.

I also observe the "Cancel" button is not offered when typing a reply to your initial post.

RidgeRoad, 11 months ago

Reminds me of how cake mixes never really needed you to add eggs, but were formulated to require them, just so customers could feel like they were making a cake.

RidgeRoad, 1 year ago

6 Degrees in Bucktown had them for 13 years, but closed down last year. The owner was the daughter of Paul Keefner of Bachmann & Keefner Drug Store in Springfield, the last in the city to still have a lunch counter when it closed in 2004.

I speculate that horseshoes will migrate north as poutine migrates south, eventually to breed a hybrid called a "mooseshoe."

RidgeRoad, 1 year ago

i really miss the (relative) locality of the old BBS days

I was recalling BBS days with @TurtleTourParty's "99.9999% uptime is overrated" remark. We really have become spoiled in little better than a quarter century. The typical BBS had one phone line. Once you got past a busy signal, you had to economize your time online to give other users a chance. You'd install an offline reader to download new mail, disconnect, reply at leisure, and upload when you got back in.

Aside from the local quality (enforced by a forgotten fact-of-life called "long distance charges," defined as "not far outside city limits"), you never posted anything to discover someone else had replied simultaneously, because you were preventing them from doing so. I have fond memories of message boards that were games designed around this fact.

Have not tried it yet, but this promises to recapture some feel of the "good ol' days." I wish it included a sound effect of that satisfying "connected" modem squawk when you fired it up.