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Are Men Ready To Start Wearing Leggings?

You ain't ready yet.

Here in Calgary, summer is like a fart in the wind. You spend all year looking forward to it, then it's over in the blink of an eye. The season of summer starts June 21, and runs through September 21. That is the warm season here -- only 3 months. In Calgary, there are really only two seasons, winter and summer. Fall lasts for the month of October, and spring is mid-May until summer. From November 1 until May 15 it's winter.

Everyone here tries to make the best out of our fleeting summer. Despite being cold most of the year, we have a ton of outdoor patios to enjoy. My mom's house is FULL of plants that she can't wait to get into her gardens. The leaves on the trees are finally popping out. The grass is more green than brown. Last week, I had the street cleaners come by and take the gravel away.

Summer here is a fevered frenzy as everyone tries to book and plan their vacations. Here in Calgary, that usually means going to one of the many lakes in B.C. I've got my first vacation booked. My wife, daughter and I are going camping at McDonald Creek Provinal Park. We have 5 nights booked there in early July.

I've been busy getting ready for summer too. My campervan stopped working last Fall --technically Summer -- after a scary-ass snowstorm near Bow Lake (seriously look at this picture. I think it's prettier than Moiraine Lake or Lake Louise) We were coming back from camping near Jasper and it started SNOWING. Like fat flake spring snow. I was in my van - a 1985 dodge - and it was terrifying. When I'm in my car with my winter tires, I LOVE driving in the snow. In a heavy-ass van with summer tires and no ABS/ASC, it's not fun. The snow packed down and created sheer ice on the mountain highway. Traffic was moving at 20km/h and I gave us a 50/50 chance of ending up in the ditch. We made it home safely, but after that the van woudn't start.

For the last few weeks, I've been trying to get the van going again. I'm not a mechanic. I'm not handy, but I'm learning. I asked my Uncle to come over and help me out one day and together we found that the starter relay wasn't grounded properly. I fixed that, but it still woudn't start. I replaced the starter, and it started(!), but the second start had a not-good-sounding grinding noise. Turns out I got a defective replacement starter. I got it swapped out for another and the van is working great! I was really proud of myself because I've never done actual car work like that before. I'm sure replacing the starter is just about the easiest part to replace, but I'm celebrating my victory.

With the van running well, I'm ready for summer. Like I said before, my first trip is first two weeks of July. I normally like doing things in September when people are back at work too, so hopefully I can get something lined up there as well. I'd also like to try 'random' camping on crown land here. Apperantly there are hundreds of free camp sites all over the place. I've never done that before, so I'd like to try a couple nights like that this year and see if that's my thing.

That's the plan! I can't wait!

Trump administration prepares to release Central American migrants 'across the entire nation'

The Trump administration is preparing to send Central American migrants caught along the southern border to Border Patrol stations "across the entire nation," according to a senior Border Patrol official who confirmed the plans Friday.

With more than 4,500 people being caught each day crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, the agency has run out of room at its Border Patrol facilities in the four border states. The agency has started looking at its facilities around the country, which are mostly along the northern border with Canada and coastal states.

That means states from Oregon to North Dakota to Maine may begin receiving planeloads of migrant families in the weeks to come. On Tuesday, Customs and Border Protection sent its first plane full of migrants from Texas to San Diego.

clickbӓt

My wife's white cell count has stopped doubling (she thought it was going to be at 60 from 30, but it's only at 45.... So, good news in a way...the next test in 3 months should show better? the progress.

Here's hoping it levels out and just becomes chronic and steady.
Fingers crossed.

Taiwan Legislature Approves Asia’s First Same-Sex Marriage Law

Taiwan gay marriage: Parliament legalises same-sex unions

Previously: Taiwanese Court Invalidates Ban on Same-Sex Marriage

Having come from the Unix world, 25 or 30 years ago, it was obvious to use Linux on PCs. I had Windows as well, and some years I used Windows more, other years Linux more. Frankly, both sucked, in different ways. In the early days, Linux driver support was pretty awful. Meanwhile, Windows was pretty much a rattle-trap catastrophe with malware and bluescreens. Both have improved over the years. Probably 10 years ago, I decided to go basically full-time Linux, except for Adobe applications and games.

With Steam, even most of my games now work on Linux, and I thankfully no longer need any Adobe applications. I haven't booted into Windows for months.

So...is Linux trying to drive me back into the arms of Microsoft? A couple of months ago, I upgraded to Ubuntu 18.04. On both of my machines, Ubuntu now starts up with error messages, some system problem or other, and asks if it should report this to Canonical.

Installed printers randomly appear and disappear. Plugging in external hard drives or other devices - sometimes they appear, sometimes not. Re-plug and pray. Just now, I rebooted my PC after an update (which seems necessary more and more often - shades of Redmond), only to have the machine freeze. Hard reset, reboot, and it seems to be back. On my laptop, suspend/resume no longer works, even though it worked just fine under previous versions.

Where's that Linux reliability? I just want to get stuff done - I don't have time or desire to switch to a different distro or fiddle with settings or chase driver problems. I just want it to work.

A few days ago while wasting my life on reddit, I came across this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OADXNGnJok

Two high school (?) kids are given 4 minutes to figure out how to dial a number on a rotary phone. It's adorable.

I love how they 'reset' the phone between tries. The dial tone impersonation also cracked me up.

Damn kids these days...

Samsung Samples 32 Gb DDR4 Memory Chips

JEDEC’s DDR4 specification only describes 4 Gb, 8Gb, and 16 Gb memory devices. As a result, DRAM makers have to use advanced packaging techniques to build chips for high-capacity memory modules for servers or workstations. DDPs are not something particularly new, but 32 Gb DDR4-2666 DDPs are unique to Samsung.

[...] Samsung does not disclose pricing of its 32 Gb DDR4-2666 DDPs, but it is obvious that they will be sold at a premium given the fact that they are only available from Samsung and they are harder to build than SDPs.

The expensive way to double capacity.

By comparison: Samsung Shows Off 256 GB Server Memory Modules Using 16 Gb Chips

The canceling of James Charles: Beauty YouTuber loses 3 million subscribers in a weekend

One video led to YouTube’s biggest makeup vlogger losing millions of subscribers

That's apparently the largest/fastest loss of subscribers in YouTube history.

Funny memes aside, if you look into the circumstances more closely, James Charles got called out for promoting a company's gummy vitamin formulated for sleep (melatonin and other junk) instead of his friend Tati Westbrook's vitamin product. But Tati Westbrook doesn't sell any sleep vitamin products (they are intended for hair/nails and skin). So the whole feud is built on a misunderstanding or deliberate misrepresentation. As for catfishing/trying to turn guys gay, Tati Westbrook kept those allegations under wraps and only decided to bring them up after complaining about a stupid product promotion (or more accurately, her own stupid product not being promoted by her "friend").

That isn't to say that James Charles isn't necessarily a scumbag and scam artist selling overpriced junk and $500 fan meetup tickets. But the recent cancelling of YouTuber "ProJared" (NSFW) is much more clear cut.

New entry, involving red shift, Big Bang, and rethinking the cosmos measurements.

http://physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.com/2019/05/halton-arp-vs-big-bang.html