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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • LMAO. I did have some fun making this one up. Like any good but fiction it’s a mixture of facts and fabrications to make it believable.

    Well…spit… growing up on the ranch we had between 13 to 18 horses around all the time. Everything from Arabians to some workhorses.

    100% true. I even sent a nice loogie to get into character.

    Now we only shoed them in late summer for the fall when we were working cattle.

    Partially true - we shoed them in late summer as it was our pack train for guided hunts etc. we only used the 3 quarter horses to work cattle with. Those we kept shoed year round.

    Now swimming is an interesting topic. During the hot days in the summer we would hop on a few hoses bareback and race across in the ponds.

    Fabrication. The ponds were all spring fed and came out of the ground at 40F. The ponds held a 50F temperature all summer. Nobody swam in them other than a few dares. We did stock them with trout.

    You would think the massive workhorses with their oversized hooves would win. Poweful, strong animals with big flippers on the bottom. Unfortunately they were the slowest in the water. They were stiff and inflexible, dumb and slow. They tended to swim a few feet, decide it was too much work, turn around and find some nice grass to eat.

    This is one of my better fabrications. I used the personality of the Belgium’s we had. They were slow and powerful and always eating. However I never once saw them swim. We used them for trail clearing and pack horses in the woods.

    Now the Arabians with the smaller stature and dainty little hooves were by far the fastest in the water. The fastest was horse named ugly. He was a swayed back ill tempered little guy with a massive chip on his shoulder. He just had to be first everywhere. He was almost as vicious as the Spawn of Satan aka “Shetland pony”. Now Spawn of Satan didn’t like the water because brimstone and water don’t go together so we never got him to swim.

    Mix of fabrication and truth. Ugly was an smaller appaloosa whose name started out as chief. So we called him Chief Ugly then just Ugly. The Spawn of Satan was really called “Cookie” but if you know anything ponies the Spawn of Satan is more apt.

    What’s curious is after they were shod and their hoofs trimmed down, they all seemed a wee bit faster. I guess the smaller hoof works better for their swimming mechanism.

    Total bullshit. I have no idea what makes a horse swim faster or not.


  • Well…spit… growing up on the ranch we had between 13 to 18 horses around all the time. Everything from Arabians to some workhorses.

    Now we only shoed them in late summer for the fall when we were working cattle.

    Now swimming is an interesting topic. During the hot days in the summer we would hop on a few hoses bareback and race across in the ponds.

    You would think the massive workhorses with their oversized hooves would win. Poweful, strong animals with big flippers on the bottom. Unfortunately they were the slowest in the water. They were stiff and inflexible, dumb and slow. They tended to swim a few feet, decide it was too much work, turn around and find some nice grass to eat.

    Now the Arabians with the smaller stature and dainty little hooves were by far the fastest in the water. The fastest was horse named ugly. He was a swayed back ill tempered little guy with a massive chip on his shoulder. He just had to be first everywhere. He was almost as vicious as the Spawn of Satan aka “Shetland pony”. Now Spawn of Satan didn’t like the water because brimstone and water don’t go together so we never got him to swim.

    What’s curious is after they were shod and their hoofs trimmed down, they all seemed a wee bit faster. I guess the smaller hoof works better for their swimming mechanism.



  • I am of the opinion that most “supply” issues are due to investors. Except in certain geographic areas we do not have a shortage of actual physical housing. What we have is a shortage of available housing at a mixed pricepoints for purchase.

    All housing that investors purchase for rentals removes it from the supply.

    Traditionally investors have sought out entry level housing for rent. They invest in building rental complexes. They make all cash purchases and then rent it out to people who otherwise would have been first-time homebuyers. Investors used to be the low end offer. Blatant price fixing has increased rent outrageously. Now investors are the high end offer and removing supply constantly.

    With AirB&B, the middle and even upper range market that traditionally has had less investor competition is now a major target. This has led to price wars for investment purposes on previously safe segments.

    The first solution to the housing supply is simple: taxing income from rent so that selling the property is financially more lucrative. It will have to include a prohibition against rental increases to cover the taxes as well.

    The second is to mandate zoning and new construction to match the market needs not the needs of the investors.

    Last would be to create a program where builders who focus on entry level housing receive incentives from governments (also include hefty penalty for substandard construction).


  • I have been attempting to use Linux for 20 years now. It has found its niche used for me over the years. For example when my kids were toddlers they had a old machine that defaulted to PBSkids. Before that I used it to run a gaming server.

    Currently I have a old laptop that I dual boot with win 10 and whatever Linux distro I feel like trying at the moment.

    The win 10 on the laptop barely meets the minimum hardware requirements and takes 10 minutes to load.

    I have tried a few different distros and always had a few issues with the setup. All sorts of different ones - screen orientation, WiFi connection, printer hell, keyboard layout etc. Takes me days to fix the bugs or give up.

    Mint takes 2 minutes to load and so far is working seamlessly. It’s apt manager is the easiest I have used in a Linux distro. It found my network printer automatically. It runs smoother than windows 7 did on my laptop.

    With Microsoft ending win 10 for the shitty win 11, I imagine many people are looking for alternatives. If Mint continues to work to make setup and usage easy, it will gain market share rapidly. It’s not all the way there yet, but it’s a hell of a lot better than before.


  • The 2008 housing crash gave many genX/ older millennials a brief window of opportunity to purchase a home.

    My wife and I purchase our first home in 2009. Every home was a foreclosure that we looked at. 90% of them were investors/flippers who got caught with their pants down. The home we purchased had been sold 2 years previously for almost 2.5x the price.

    Between refinancing at low interest rates and a largish initial down payment from the sale of the first home, my current mortgage is the same as my rent for a 3 bedroom duplex in 2005.

    At the it’s current estimated value and interest rates, my wife and I would barely be able to purchase the home we live in today with our income. We make 2.5x more than we did when we bought it



  • From what I have seen, unhappy marriages are very common in highly religious/conservative groups.

    Most of these groups have stupid “No Sex before marriage” rules. So two horny young adults (teenagers in some cases) get married quickly. Pregnancy follows immediately and they start being parents before they are fully mature.

    Fast forward 5-6 years later and they don’t even like each other anymore. The smart ones do the adult decision and divorce.

    Way too many of them live misery constantly bickering while claiming to be “happily married” because “divorce is a sin”. They then spend most of their time complaining about their spouses. The kids of course have all sorts of baggage from growing up in the toxic environment.


  • How big was the target?

    The olympic airsoft is at 10m. The pellets are 4.5mm and the bullseye is 11.5mm.

    This would similar to hitting at target with a bullseye of 57.5mm or 2.26" at 50m. Adding in greater inaccuracy of the bullet due to wind, etc… say a bullseye 2.5".

    When I was a teen on the ranch in Montana and shooting was my main form of entertainment, I could do it easily. Today, I would be lucky to clip the edge of the paper until I got a few thousand rounds of practice in. It’s about form, breathing, trigger control and a hell of a lot of practice.


  • Jobs was his own worst enemy for a while on the compatibility issue.

    New OS launches- all your old programs don’t work on it.

    Want to use a floppy to transfer files between a Dos/Win and a Mac? Nope, not compatible. When USB drives started coming out they dropped all support for floppy drives, even in machines with them installed.

    Constant driver issues with all sorts of things. Many never got resolved. To be fair the market share for Mac’s was so tiny, offering support for them didn’t make business sense.

    Want to play a game? Good luck. The majority of games didn’t work on Mac. Same reason as the drivers.

    As for stability issues, for a while I ran a computer lab for a college 50:50 win/Mac machines. They both crashed about equally as often.


  • In poorer countries, the investment into each child is minimal. By the time they were 8 or 9 years old they were expected to contribute to the family. Higher child mortality rates also plays into this, as most families lose a few kids to disease etc. Children are seen as a commodity that they control to make the parents/grandparents lives better.

    In industrialized societies the amount of resources dedicated to each child is more than the the resources dedicated to 5 or 6 families in poorer countries. Children are dependent on their parents well into adulthood. As the cost to raise the kids increase the average family size decreases because of limited resources.






  • That is in Saudi Arabia. Not that far from the border with Jordan.

    GPS 30.0095403, 38.3257591

    Those are mostly alfalfa fields that Saudi decided to use a fossil aquifer to water. Their wells are running dry and which is why there is so many abandoned fields. These are areas they don’t have enough water. It’s mixed in with date palms now as well.


  • I support the theory that it was the cats who started it. They are also only partially domesticated. When humans began farming grains the rodent population near them exploded. Cats who were less timid around humans got more rodents. Humans seeing the value of having cats fed the cats during times when the rodent population was low.

    If you’ve ever been around feral barn cats this pattern is the same today. They are constantly on the edge of being wild/domesticated.


  • Been on my own since I as 17. The first few years were rough to say the least.

    I worked 2 jobs, 30-60 hrs per week and went to college. I shared shitty apartments with some pretty creepy people. I moved so constantly I ended up paying for a post office box so I could get my mail. I did not have a vehicle (no car) so I rode a bike for up to 60 miles per day. Even all that wasn’t enough without government grants and student loans to pay for college.

    Food was something that I ate when I had it. I spent a few months with mybe 4-5 real meals. Cornflakes and ramen where the bulk of my diet for a while.

    I took the first professional job I could find. It was terrible but it paid well. I gained 50lbs to be at a healthy weight the first year. The next few years I jumped around jobs until I landed in one I liked.

    The last few weeks before I graduated college I met my wife. Her family has become mine over the past 25 years.

    Today my income alone puts us in the top 10% of earners. My wife makes close to the same. At many crucual times in our lifes we’ve taken advantage of government assistance. To be blunt, it’s not possible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You need a helping hand once in a while no matter how small.


  • I have gotten flamed a few times for telling the Linux fanboys the hard truth.

    If I have to hit Terminal even once with an average setup the OS is not ready for mainstream use. No exceptions. It has to work out of the box on the newest systems.

    I use Linux the same way that you have: for a few applications that need a rock solid stable system. Once you get the damn thing setup, it truly is wonderful. Stable, reliable, easy to use. But getting there… Fuck that.

    I think I had one clean distro install where everything worked. The PC was 7 years old when I installed it.


  • Mac did have a better OS than Win 95 -Win98 It was smoother and crashed less.

    The difference was that Windows still ran DOS programs, 5.25" floppy disks etc… They made the decision to maintain backwards compatibility.

    Mac decided to drop support regularly for what they considered “outdated software and technology.” For example: when USB drives came out they canceled support for 3.5" floppies in their OS. Machines that had a 3.5" drive installed could no longer use it. Put a floppy drive in and nothing happened.

    Although Mac was a smoother more stable OS, windows had more functionality and greater compatability. Windows was a far superior product because of it. Even with the regular apearance of the blue screen of death.

    Linux at the time also suffered from being a terminal based OS. Too much like DOS for way too long. I used it for specific tasks where it excelled at.